Multicultural Week 2022: Book Talk by Helena Lee

During the final lunchtime of the first Alleyn's Multicultural Week, we were excited to welcome Alleyn's JS parent and editor Helena Lee to speak to our pupils. Ms. Lee read from her latest book East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain, a collection of personal stories as told by members of the Asian community who are not often heard from or represented in our cultural life. The book, which was published in January 2022, showcases original essays and poetry that takes us to many places such as the frontlines of the NHS in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic to the set of a Harry Potter film and the merchant navy in Liverpool.

Ms Lee said that the impetus for the book came from watching one-dimensional stereotypical depictions of Asian people in film and media. She saw nothing that reflected her own experience of growing up in London. The pandemic exacerbated the discrimination by blame being directed at Chinese people for the virus. The mission of the book was also driven by her own curiosity about the multitude of countries in the Asian diaspora.

She spoke to each contributor for a long time but they only met each other during one of her recent book launches. When asked by a pupil what was the hardest and the best parts of creating this book, Ms Lee said that when she was affected by terrible world news such as the Atlanta spa killings in 2021, where six Asian women were shot, she realised that she was part of a community of people who understood how that felt and could support each other, a beautiful by-product of an endeavour that set out to shed light on the myriad Asian experiences in Britain.