What Would the Aunties Say?: A brown girl's guide to being yourself and living your best life

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At the movie’s climax (spoilers ahead!), the family repeats the chant, this time to bring Mei’s mother’s panda under control after she hurts herself, raging against Mei’s adolescent rebellion. In the climactic final number, the chant winds up merging with Ludwig Göransson’s score and “Nobody Like U,” one of the songs siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s wrote for Turning Red’s heartthrob boy band 4*Town. PS: Do you have any advice for fellow brown girls that are maybe struggling with their identity or have chosen less-traditional career paths? But director Domee Shi and producer Lindsey Collins couldn’t just have the cast sing any random thing — they had to develop their own chant for the movie. The pair tell Polygon that a lot of work went into making the ritual sound right. A: I think it comes down to like that feeling of shame. You're almost labeled as crazy, and I think everybody is just afraid to look bad, and that's really what it comes down to. It's one of the most brave things that you can do, and if you can openly talk to someone and say, "I go to therapy," I think that is way more brave than anything. You should own it, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It really just comes down to that feeling of shame and the idea of being judged.

What Would the Aunties Say? | Book by Anchal Seda | Official

Shi wanted to make sure a native speaker was involved in developing the chant, so she and her team reached out to Herman Wong, the Hong Kong-based Asian-Pacific operations director for Disney Character Voices International, the Disney division that handles translation and dubbing services. She says she doesn’t remember the exact words of the ritual herself, because it was a translation of a piece Wong helped them find.

PS: What's your experience with it been like so far? And is it something that you were able to talk to your family about? PS: That's another thing, accepting the fact that there actually might be things that are wrong with us, but this is how we're dealing with it. It's OK to have things wrong with you and be able to fix them. Isn’t there a cure?!”, “I hope they get well soon”, “so sorry, she will never have a normal life”, “Your childs illness is paying for your bad karma”. These are some of the things you may hear from a South Asian Auntie when seeing a child or person that may have a disability. This is a huge taboo topic within the culture, and my special guest Manal from @wakeupandmakeup shares the experiences of having a sister with cerebral palsy.

What Would the Aunties Say? by Anchal Seda | Waterstones What Would the Aunties Say? by Anchal Seda | Waterstones

PS: It's a bit of a stereotype, that all Asian parents want you to do these certain careers. Did they ever try to talk you into doing something different? You will never find a husband in this job, be a doctor", "Indian girls never make it in those industries", "You will never make money in a creative job". When talking to South Asian Aunties about getting into a creative career, these are some of the things you might hear them. I'm joined by BBC Women's Hour presenter and broadcaster Anita Rani. We discuss her experiences as a brown woman in a predominantly white industry and the pressures of following a particular career path. The ever trustworthy Dictionary.com, Google, Wikipedia and the Cambridge English Dictionary redirect ‘aunty’ to ‘auntie’, so the latter is most likely more correct. The Merriam-Webster dictionary also does this, and claims the first use of ‘auntie’ was in 1672. However, they don’t reference how they know this or explain more about the story. Aunty or auntie depends on where you are It was also a way for me to get my thoughts and opinions across to my dad or anybody else watching — judgemental aunties, family members, or whatever — for them to know that I didn't think the same as them. I wanted to create a space that was real and relatable, not just for myself, but for others. In our culture, we're always thinking about what would other people think, but really the people are the aunties.You will never find a husband in this job, be a doctor", "Indian girls never make it in those industries", "You will never make money in a creative job". English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese The next step was making sure the voice cast — including Sandra Oh and Ho-Wai Ching as Mei’s mother and grandmother — were comfortable with the poem and with making it sound like something ancient the family had passed down for centuries.

What Would the Aunties Say? | Book by Anchal Seda | Official What Would the Aunties Say? | Book by Anchal Seda | Official

Filled with humour and warmth, and based on the podcast of the same name, in What Would the Aunties Say? Anchal shares her own experiences with the stories and dilemmas of other young women like her. It takes you through every aspect of life - from education and career, beauty standards and colourism, to dating and marriage, as well as mental health and therapy, racism and inequality - and of course, your relationship with your family. What are they saying?” Mei asks Mr. Gao (voiced by James Hong), who’s leading the ritual. He tells her it doesn’t really matter — the ritual just requires participants to sing from the heart. “It doesn’t matter what,” Mr. Gao says. “I like Tony Bennett. But your grandma, she’s from old school.” A: I just want anyone that's listening to it to be like, "Me too." I want them to listen and be like, "Oh my God, I feel that," or, "I know someone that's gone through that." I want it to be a space for real stories, and I want it to be really, really relatable. I'm not sugarcoating anything. Navigating the ups and downs of life in our community can be challenging. We live in a very different world today to our parents, uncles, aunties, and grandparents, which comes with lots of unwritten rules and expectations. But you're not alone. A: They know about it. It's really funny because my dad is plugging it to them and I'd go in and be like, "They don't need to listen to this. It's for the youngsters!" I haven't offended anyone just yet. They think it's a good thing because even they've gone through similar things — probably even worse, being from an older generation. They may feel some shame, but that's on them and that's personal, but all in all, I think everybody gets it, because they were once a young brown girl, too.It’s funny, we had in our head this idea of combining the chant at the end with the 4*Town music and the orchestration, and hoping it all came together,” Shi says. “But it was still a shot in the dark. It was a lot of, like, ‘I don’t know, maybe this will work?’”

aunty or auntie? - Mouths of Mums Which is correct, aunty or auntie? - Mouths of Mums

We were really inspired by Taoist chants that monks would do in Taoist temples,” Shi says. “At first, we wanted to see if there was an existing Taoist chant we could use. But then we thought, because this family is so specific, the situation is so unique — this family has this magical panda curse running through them! — we should come up with our own chant for it.”Well, actually, ‘aunty’ and ‘auntie’ are just informal versions of the word ‘aunt’, and so both are okay to use. But if you’re really pedantic, and you absolutely need to know if it’s aunty or auntie… What the dictionaries say about aunty or auntie And then Ludwig was great,” Collins says. “He was like, ‘All right, so if the 4*Town song is in this key, let’s do this—’ He worked with us to make sure that rhythmically, we were doing what we needed to be doing so he could produce the remix. You know, he’s a pop record producer, in addition to being a composer. So he was able to pull the chant into his own system, along with the 4*Town song, and do this awesome remix where we were like, ‘Oh my God, it works!’ But I think it worked because he’s a magician. I’m not sure it worked because we’re magicians.”