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

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Slowly regretting putting this off for so long because this was amazing and it took me less than a day to finish. Zing Tsjeng is a journalist with over 10 years of experience across print, online and broadcast media as an editor, writer and presenter. 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. Je suis vraiment contente de l'avoir vu "parce qu'une actrice que j'aime en parlait" et qu'au final, c'était instructif et très important.

East Side Voices — besea.n East Side Voices — besea.n

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. Edited by Helena Lee (Acting Deputy Editor at Harper's Bazaar and East Side Voices founder) EAST SIDE VOICES invites us to explore a dazzling spectrum of experience from the East and Southeast Asian diaspora living in Britain today. Showcasing original essays and poetry from celebrities, prize-winning literary stars and exciting new writers, EAST SIDE VOICES takes us many places: from the frontlines of the NHS in the midst of the Covid pandemic, to the set of a Harry Potter film, from a bustling London restaurant to a spirit festival in Myanmar. In the process we navigate the legacies of family history, racial identity, assimilation and difference. This series of essays about Asian Identity in Britain, features not just writers, but actors, chefs and individuals in other professions writing about their own personal experience. Edited by Helena Lee, there is the common thread linking the essays, but each stands alone, and can be read in isolation.Edited by Helena Lee, founder of the East Side Voices cultural salon and Acting Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Featuring writing from: Romalyn Ante, Tash Aw, June Bellebono, Gemma Chan, Mary Jean Chan, Catherine Cho, Tuyen Do, Will Harris, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Claire Kohda, Katie Leung, Amy Poon, Naomi Shimada, Anna Sulan Masing, Sharlene Teo, Zing Tsjeng and Andrew Wong. In this bold, first-of-its kind collection, East Side Voices invites us to explore a dazzling spectrum of experience from the East and Southeast Asian diaspora living in Britain today. It's astonishing that I'm 26 now and I've never read a book like this before. I've read books like The Good Immigrant, but never one that's focussed entirely on the experiences of east Asians in Britain. I'm so glad this book exists. Many of the essays discuss the unseen but inherent racism toward the Asian community in art, and media…which I rarely see discussed but is important that it is. The essays were compiled recently and there were frequent references to covid and the impact that prejudicial misinformation has had on Asian lives. 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. Her persistence paid off, and she played the character with a British accent. I was reminded of some recent work my mother had done – a voiceover piece for a well-known NGO – for which the producers had requested somebody whose voice had a ‘foreign twang.’ They didn’t tell her why.

Interview Harper’s Bazaar’s Helena Lee : The Wick

Fluidity and Resistance - Ideas of Belonging in a Fractured World by Tash Aw was SO vindicating! They talked about British people's obsession with family trees and ancestry and how it's a way of reaffirming their sense of belonging more than any desire to celebrate differences. This articulated a thought I've always had so well.

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I also learned A LOT from these essays. There were various infomation that I did not know and were horrified to learn, such as the fact that Filipinos make up the largest ethnic group of nurses in the NHS and in 2020 were the single largest nationality to die from Covid. In another essay, it was informed that Filipino nurses were the ones assigned most to the Covid wards in the UK during the critical times. There were also some essays here that were written during those first critical months and their experiences of racism that they had to endured because of it. Drawing on her more than 10 years of experience working at Harper’s Bazaar – where she is responsible for the publication’s art and culture content, often collaborating and commissioning award-winning writers and artists, the collection brings together a selection of original essays and poetry from celebrities, prize-winning literary stars and exciting new writers. Many pieces reference meagre cultural representation and insulting stereotypes in TV and film, such as the contribution by Katie Leung, the Glaswegian actor cast as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films. A private school rebel turned art school cool girl, Leung is as far from the cringing, sniffling Cho Chang as it’s possible to be. Yet her success is racialised: “I was not considered [for roles] unless race came into it.” Naomi Shimada is an influential model, BBC podcaster, and co-author of Mixed Feelings. She launched her newsletter Tender Contributions in January 2022. Naomi Shimada’s ‘Ode to Obaa-chan’ (her grandmother). I found it incredibly touching, unapologetically honest, emotionally vulnerable and the relationship itself so beautiful.

East Side Voices by Various, Helena Lee | Waterstones

How long have you had this?” I asked in amazement. He shrugged. This was no ordinary plastic bag. Indeed, the bag was not of this millennium. In the aftermath of the second world war, Britain forcibly deported hundreds of Chinese seamen who had served in the merchant navy, deeming them an “undesirable element” of British society. These men had helped keep the UK fed and fuelled on highly dangerous crossings of the Atlantic (approximately 3,500 vessels of the merchant navy were sunk by German U-boats, with the loss of 72,000 lives). Ladyboy by June Bellebono was a beautiful essay and really highlighted the importance of the intersectionality with race when it comes to talking about LGBT+ issues.Enjoyed reading most of them very much. Fab collection. Very surprised to see Tash Aw in it (pleasantly surprised). 4 and a little more but rounded off to a full 5-star rating. I like how different each story was. This just felt like something that needed to be published. Haven’t read anything quite like this collection before. Very well edited, and for the most part, very well written too. Might write a longer review later. Maybe…