East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain

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Surely an Italian would be affronted if they were constantly mistaken for being French; someone of Malaysian heritage should certainly not be conflated with a person from Vietnam.

Gemma Chan on the truth about her father’s life at sea: ‘He

Something I was especially glad to see was that the collection doesn’t rely heavily on the trope of being ‘British Born’, a nomenclature I have always been wary of by its suggestion that birthright is a condition for true acceptance in a society - to me, the implied opposing dichotomy of British Born vs. Her grandmother has painted her as perhaps she would like to see her: her skin lightened, her features made more European. It’s a piece I first saw when I was in my teens, and thought it was such a perfect interpretation of nature.

Like much of Belfast this area has a troubled history, and the communities that live here have been involved in centuries of domestic and international conflict with local people fighting in Two World Wars, as well as in the Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence. Each essay had a distinct focus, and it was really refreshing to hear from people of mixed heritage that were not mixed with black and white. This is a wonderful collection of essays, stories, memories, poems describing what it's like to be East and/or South East Asian (ESEA) in Britain today although I feel it does have an even wider reach. In fellow actor Katie Leung’s essay ‘Getting Into Character’, she describes her refusal to play a character who was assigned a Chinese accent for seemingly no good reason. Publishing in January 2022, EAST SIDE VOICES is a first-of-its-kind essay anthology that showcases the brightest East and Southeast Asian voices in Britain today.

East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian

I was thrilled that the authors Sharlene Teo and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan spoke at our first salons, as did the fashion designer Rejina Pyo.I wondered why casual racism against Asians was never reported on the news, why East and South-east Asian culture in the UK has been elided, planed and smoothed into one narrative under a vague idea of “Chineseness”. She is VICE UK’s editor in chief, where she specialises in arts, culture, identity and current affairs, and has also written for publications such as British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Time Out London. However, when I was younger, there were some things about him that I found hard to understand: his obsession with education, his aversion to waste of any kind, his insistence that we finish every bit of food on our plates; and his constant reminders not to take anything for granted. I also really liked the fact that these essays were written by various figures, ranging from journalists, actors, poets, and even chefs. This cultural non-representation can have more sinister consequences (there was a real uptick in hate crime against British ESEAs after Trump’s rhetoric about the ‘China virus’).