Editorial Picks: East and Southeast Asian Heritage Month Special
The Hinterland editorial team share some of their cultural highlights.
September is East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) Heritage Month here in the UK, and to celebrate ESEA creatives we asked our co-editor Yin F Lim and several contributors of ESEA heritage to share some cultural recommendations.
Yin F Lim
No Man’s Land: Living Between Two Cultures by Anne East (Edinburgh: 404 Ink Ltd, 2021): Published in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting spike in anti-ESEA hate crimes, this slim book was the first I’d come across that discussed the British ESEA experience. Drawing from research, interviews as well as personal anecdotes, East makes thoughtful arguments as she interrogates the identity limbo of being caught between two cultures: feeling British yet not being considered as ‘British enough’, due to her ESEA heritage. It’s a tiny book (under 100 pages) that left me wanting more of these discussions from the perspectives of history, culture and heritage.
A Night At the Symphony, Laufey & the Iceland Symphony Orchestra: I haven't been able to stop listening to Laufey’s music, which evokes the old-time jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, since I discovered her through my Alexa earlier this year. This live album, featuring some of the Icelandic singer’s best-known hits including the jaunty ‘Falling Behind’ and the melancholic ‘Let You Break My Heart Again’, marries her dreamy, mellow voice with the majesty of a symphony orchestra; a lovely nod to her own classical training as well as that of her classical violinist mother and her grandfather, a violin educator with China’s Central Conservatory of Music.
Yin F. Lim is working on a family history project about her grandmother. She is the co-editor of Hinterland. Her article, ‘Tourist in my Homeland’, appears in Hinterland Issue 2.
Jay Prosser
The paintings of Chloé Manesseh, a Singapore-based Jewish artist: Chloé’s artwork draws together the tropical abundance of Singapore and the iconography of her Middle Eastern Jewish heritage. Her fusion of different senses of what it means to be Asian, also of an ancient legacy with adopted surroundings, really resonates for me. Like Chloé’s family, my family were Middle Eastern Jews who settled in Singapore and adapted their Jewishness to their new Southeast Asian surroundings. Plus, Chloé’s art is pure joy: full of colour, playful and very expressive. I would love my writing to read like that!
The hardback of Jay’s book Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, a Legacy, a Son Returns (Black Spring Press), about his Asian Jewish heritage, has just been published. He is now beginning to write the amazing true story of a shoe sole cut from a Torah scroll during the Holocaust in Greece. His article, ‘Clips’, appears in Hinterland Issue 15.
Wendy Gan
The Way of Kueh: Savouring & Saving Singapore’s Heritage Desserts by Christopher Tan (Singapore: Epigram, 2019): Our childhood memories are often bound up with food, kitchens, and the indomitable women who commanded these spaces. Many family specialities never made it onto paper and have since been lost. This is what happened to my grandmother’s kuehs (sweet confections), which she made from memory. When my sister tried to record them, age had already made my grandmother’s touch and recall uncertain. We have never been able to recreate her kueh bangket and kueh salat. This is why books like Christopher Tan’s matter. The Way of Kueh is a treasure trove of recipes, food history, and profiles of kueh makers and sellers in Singapore and Malaysia. Sometimes I dream that one day (if I gather enough courage to try the recipes) I might just be able to resurrect the taste of my grandmother’s kueh again.
Wendy Gan has been co-editing a photo essay journal, Zuihitsu, focused on the neglected charms of the everyday. Zuihitsu publishes photo essays on Southeast Asia and East Asia, and intends to expand its coverage beyond Asia in 2025. Wendy’s article, ‘Let’s Just Survive First’, appears in Hinterland Issue 13.