Book reviews – Two more reads for East and South East Asian Heritage Month

I was alerted to it being East and South East Asian Heritage Month by Michelle / Daisybutter on her Instagram (see the list of hers for other books from this region’s communities). I had found both of these books at the same time I found Michelle’s list and had remembered their existence so plucked them from the Kindle TBR and powered through them to give me three books for the Month!

Sue Cheung – “Chinglish: An Almost Entirely True Story”

(14 December 2021, Kindle)

Anyway, why was Tina asking me where I’m really from, as if I couldn’t possibly be from here. I always thought I was from here. Can’t I just be from here?.

The audience for this novel based on the author’s life (autofiction!) is a bit confusing, as it’s got a fair bit of gross-out humour, sibling fights and unfortunate pet incidents (happening to a goat and a hamster, the dog is just sent away), but then has really serious themes of family violence and domestic abuse. The diary format and the cartoons (which were a bit hard to read on my Kindle) added to the YA feel although also added a good layer to the book.

Anyway, we have a novel set around a young woman who lives above a takeaway; they’ve had to move around over the years and she finds out why part way through the book. Like in “Take Away” there’s the pull between the family world of hard work in the takeaway being expected and the British world outside and at school; also like in “Take Away” there is a fair bit of racist abuse (though not contextualised by Covid as this was published in 2019) and also a scene of a senior man of the family chasing a n’er-do-well off the premises, brandishing a meat cleaver.

The narrator follows the author (we find in a note at the end) in changing from only presenting the positive sides of her life to laying it out for all to see, and that’s where the domestic abuse from her (another angry) father comes in. Certainly eye-opening and another important contribution to British narratives about East and Southeast Asian communities’ lived experience.

Phil Wang – “Sidesplitter: How to Be From Two Worlds At Once”

(24 November 2021, Kindle)

I will never know the intense beacon of a single, clear ancestry, and it radiating pull wherever I am in the world. But I will know the gentle pulse of two familiar islands, on opposite ends of the earth, beating softly across Eurasia. Each in my possession. Each possessing me. Each the other’s completing half. Each home.

While Wang claims this isn’t a memoir and also plays it for laughs most of the time, as befits a stand-up comedian who uses his life as his material, he’s also more than capable of heartfelt, lyrical writing, as in the example above.

This is a musing on his both Malaysian and British heritage (and it’s actually more confusing than that, being both ethnic Chinese and of Borneo heritage in one strand and English and French in the other) in ten chapters on themes such as food, love and home, and he does put a funny spin on things, of course, but he’s careful on terms (interestingly, publishing in September 2021 he chooses to use the term non-White for what are increasingly called global majority peoples now, and I can’t help but wonder what he’d choose now; he has some interesting things to say about cultural appropriation and appreciation, too).

He pokes fun at the monoglot, often subtly racist, Brits, but also at Malaysia, and has more serious things to say about forms in which to describe ones origin and the different status of East and Southeast Asian communities as opposed to Black and South Asian communities. A good and warm read. No meat cleavers here, but Wang is both proud and aware of the stereotype of his extended family’s martial arts dojo and, like in “Take Away”, discusses the added racist burden of the Covid crisis.

Other books I’ve read by East and South East Asian writers recently include Take Away, East Side Voices, The Boy You Always Wanted and An Echo in the City, as well as the Good Immigrant UK and Good Immigrant US books which include a variety of voices.

Book review – Angela Hui – “Takeaway”

I was alerted to it being East and South East Asian Heritage Month by Michelle / Daisybutter on her Instagram, which was appropriate as I found her blog when I was looking for books by / about East and South East Asian people in the UK a couple of years ago (the list of hers I found is still relevant and overlaps with the one in this book). And then she alerted me to the existence of this book in a review last year and I popped it on my wishlist, buying it this July when I went to the Heath Bookshop to buy one book, found it wasn’t there, ordered it and bought this one instead. I do have a history of Chinese people in the UK on my TBR but sadly it’s by a White Scottish man, and I wanted to go “own voices” for this Month, so plucked this one from the fourth shelf.

Angela Hui – “Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter”

(28 July 2023, The Heath Bookshop)

It took me too long to find my voice and I’ve silenced myself for so long (it is in our Asian nature to stay quiet), but I don’t want this to be the case for the next generation. My parents risked everything to migrate to a Western country to create a better life and now it’s our turn to tell the story of our immigrant parents, to embrace our culture and to speak up in order to fight racism. (p. 5)

This memoir was published in 2022 and written during lockdown, and the first section offers a note from the author which details the increased hate crimes the East and Southeast Asian community were confronted with during the coronavirus pandemic, a potted history of the Chinese takeaway in the UK and a narrative of Angela’s struggles with her identity, but realisation that she needed to speak up and tell her story. This serves as a powerful introduction to an interesting story.

Hui grew up with her mum and dad and two older brothers, living above the Chinese takeaway they ran in the Welsh Valleys. Torn between her Welsh and Chinese cultures, Angela struggled for years, hating her birth culture and finding ways to fit in in Wales, dealing with parents who didn’t show affection and from whom they were divided by language and culture, and who they had to care for by translating letters and dealing with officials, but fiercely protective when dodgy elements attacked them and the shop. There’s a lot of warmth here, and good relationships in the community, but a lot of stress and worry, and it was really illuminating. Some parts of the narrative were familiar from other first/second-generation immigrant stories I’ve read – the pull of two cultures, hating your birth culture and wanting to be like the majority culture, not always knowing your parents’ stories save some generalisations about sacrifice and movement – some were specifically related to Hui’s Chinese heritage – “returning” to Hong Kong every summer, shopping in Cardiff and occasionally at Wing Yip in Birmingham (hooray!).

As well as the everyday detail of life in the shop and the Valleys, Hui zooms out to look at wider socioeconomic changes including increased competition as more takeaways opened closer by, ignoring the earlier arrangement to have one per area to spread the customers around. There are also authentic recipes for what the family ate for their own meals, very different from what was served up to the mainly White, western families who ordered from the takeaway. As Angela and her brothers grow up and move away, things start to decline and we see the end of the takeaway and what she has learned from living there.

There’s a great book list at the end, which does include two books I have and some including a UK perspective, and I’m going to go through that and make sure I add some to my wishlist. In the meantime, other books I’ve read by East and South East Asian writers recently include East Side Voices, The Boy You Always Wanted and An Echo in the City, as well as the Good Immigrant UK and Good Immigrant US books which include a variety of voices.