East Side Voices: Amid racism and sexual fetishisation, these thoughtful essays help expand understanding of contemporary Britain – Laura Waddell

My book of the week is East Side Voices edited by Helena Lee. This anthology of short essays explores East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain today.

In East Side Voices, actress Gemma Chan, seen with Eternals co-star Richard Madden, writes about how she learned that her father was paid less than British counterparts when he was in the Merchant Navy (Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

In her introduction, Lee spells out starkly why this book is timely. “Police estimates suggest there was a threefold increase in racially motivated hate crimes in London towards those of East and Southeast Asian heritage in the spring of 2020 compared with the same period the year before. The following October, when Parliament held its first-ever debate on racism experienced by the ESEA community, not one Conservative MP or government minister was present.”

As with all such collections, some pieces stand out. I particularly enjoyed Sharlene Teo’s reflective essay, Mistaken for Strangers, about sexual fetishisation and self-perception.

“Being fetishised isn’t flattering because it’s intensely depersonalising.” She continues, “Every human being, regardless of ethnicity, just wants to be truly witnessed. Rigid constructions of gender and race severely limit our ways of seeing each other and being expansively, generously human.”

Mary Jean Chan, in a piece called The White Series, contemplates her complex relationships with the Cantonese and English languages and how one came to push out the other.

Her biography provides context that she was born and raised in Hong Kong. “I learnt that English meant good, that good meant the satisfaction of being praised, if only for one bright school day… A rumour went around the school that prefects used to patrol the grounds, fining students if they ever spoke to one another in their mother tongue. English at all times, the teachers trilled. I never chose English: English was thrust upon me.”

Other favourites included June Bellebono’s ruminations on “finding out about the existence of indigenous Burmese trans identities” such as the Nat Kadaws, and Gemma Chan (yes, the actress) on her father’s vintage St Michael plastic bag, how in his care nothing goes to waste, and their conversation about how, when he was in the Merchant Navy, Chinese seamen were paid less than British counterparts.

East Side Voices expands the reader’s understanding of contemporary Britain and its makeup. Wide-ranging, the collection moves from frontline work in the NHS, the restaurant and entertainment industries, across language, art, and family histories. Often moving, the writers share generously with the reader their hopes and fears. It is worth listening.

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