This is a fantastic collection of essays. All of them were very different.
This gave me a greater understanding of what life as an Asian is like

Slowly regretting putting this off for so long because this was amazing. East Side Voices is a collection of essays written by people with East and South East Asian identity that lives in Britain. The themes and topics explored in this were very wide, which i appreciate. Every single essay is different from one another as they are all written by different people so it was refreshing to hear about each of their experiences but at the same time, the heart of the essays are the same which is about their journey of assimilating and accepting their identity and their experiences being Asian in Britain.

I appreciate that this essay collection, not only is wide ranging in their topics and themes but also very much intersectional. My favorite essays are probably by June Bellebono who talked about the trans community in Myanmar; Anna Sulan who wrote about her migration story and her identity of having a white mother and an Iban father; and Helena Lee who talked about her guilt and experiences of wanting to belong that when she was little she distanced herself from her heritage, dismissing her parents' experiences of being immigrants and how she finally came to understand it as she grew older (there was a paragraph where she talked about how she realized how different herself is from her friends by all the enid blyton's books she has read and it reminded me of my sixth grade self). I also really liked the fact that these essays were written by various figures, ranging from journalists, actors, poets, and even chefs.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

Read this in a day, and absolutely enjoyed it. 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.. Tash Aw’s probably my favourite one in the collection. He writes so well; I’m ashamed that I’ve still not read his fiction (even though I’ve already got them – all of his books). Might have to get to it quickly now that I’m reminded of them again. My copy is full of highlights, unsurprisingly. Another favourite of mine from the collection is Anna Sulan Masing’s piece which covers her memories of ‘Iban’ farming and food cultures. Maybe because of how the writer had talked about how she had stuck her finger into the soil of her snake plant while watching the rain in her flat in Hackney. And I could picture that scene so clearly. Shimada, Teo, and Buchanan’s contributions to the collection was particularly brilliant (in my opinion). Mary Jean Chan's poem is fab as well.

East Side Voices by Helena Lee is a much-needed and wide-ranging collection of essays exploring the experiences of people from the East and Southeast Asian diaspora living in Britain today. It's about race, identity, family, stereotyping, representation and from voices that have often been side-lined and overlooked before now. It includes contributions and insights from novelists, actors, poets, journalists.

East Side Voices is a collection of essays by people with East and Southeast Asian identity living in Britain, exploring culture, self, family, race and fitting in or standing out. The authors range from well-known writers to others from a variety of backgrounds, and the essays range in styles too, making this a multifaceted collection that brings together many voices.

I found it insightful and interesting, with the essays 'celebrating' as the title says, but also delving deeper into issues at times, including legacies of colonialism and the realities of racism and xenophobia in Britain. There's a lot of authors and poets I've read with essays in the collection, which was exciting, but also other perspectives, like being a frontline nurse in the NHS.

It's quite difficult to review essay collections as a whole, but this one showcases a range of perspectives and experiences and is well worth reading, full of nuance and essays exploring complex senses of self.