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Why ‘ESEA’ matters, even when it doesn’t fit
Examining the East and Southeast Asia label to determine whether its benefits outweigh its limitations.
Thirty-six years ago, when I moved from the Philippines to the UK to begin a new life with my English husband, only four writers of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) heritage seemed visible in the literary space: Kazuo Ishiguro, Timothy Mo, Jung Chang and Amy Tan. That was it. That was the shelf. Now we have the acronym ESEA to identify both immigrant, diasporic and mixed-identity peoples with heritage from across more than 15 nations. It’s a label that now shapes how we talk about our literature as much as our communities, a useful umbrella for solidarity and advocacy – but can it also be reductive?
It’s a “double-edged sword”, says publicist Maria Garbutt-Lucero. “[ESEA] is helpful for community-building and solidarity, but it also flattens us. ESEA includes so many different cultures and histories.”
“We are looking at a group of people with heritages from the snowy plains east of Siberia to the tropical jungles in the Indonesian archipelago,” writes Anna Sulan Masing in her 2024 memoir Chinese and Any Other Asian. “And yet here we are, being asked to tick ‘Chinese’ or ‘Any other Asian’ on forms.”
The acronym may never capture the full sprawl of our languages, histories or migrations. But as a collective banner, ESEA is a way to organise, to be found and to be heard.
ESEA may unite us, but it also obscures our diversity. There is no monolithic “ESEA voice”; ESEA lit speaks in many registers. Winnie M Li, whose novel What We Left Unsaid explores memory, trauma and family reconnection, says: “ESEA is useful politically, but it also flattens things. Like, I’m Taiwanese American, and that’s very different from being Vietnamese British or Singaporean. But we all get bundled in together, and then we’re supposed to represent this whole group.”
Our publishing industry of majority white editors can’t help its “white gaze”, as Toni Morrison called it, that filters expectations of what an ESEA writer can and should write. Just count the number of ESEA-created picture books that reference the moon and ESEA titles launched in the Lunar New Year. For Li, the antidote is to turn that gaze around: “I want my readers to come into my world, not the other way around.”
Carla Montemayor, whose 2026 debut memoir, Islands of Forgotten Daughters, traces matrilineal stories and forgotten oral epics in her native Philippines, echoes this sense of claiming space. “This is an attempt to place this narrative as one of the grand stories of the world – because it is. The women in my family, and all the things they carried, belong there too.”
In claiming a literary voice, ESEA authors wield language as weapon, balm, spell – sometimes all at once. Indonesian Khairani Barokka’s poetry collection amuk rejects the colonial compulsion for linear time and clear translation. “Bahasa Indonesia has no tenses. Thus, all translations into English are both potentially right and always wrong.” Poet Hongwei Bao’s collection The Passion of the Rabbit God reimagines queer Asian mythology from Inner Mongolia to England in a language he chose – not one he inherited. Filipino-American Elaine Castillo famously refused to italicise Pangasinan words or translate them in her debut novel America Is Not the Heart. Across genres, ESEA writers use English to both unsettle and reclaim – whether through refusal to translate, parody of colonial form, or reimagined myth.
We write in the languages of our conquerors, yet we embody the voices of our ancestors.
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Sometimes, it is not cultural knowledge but its absence that informs the ESEA story. Editor Wendy Tse Shakespeare, who despite the ultimate English surname is of Chinese heritage, described her paradoxical experience of growing up without access to her cultural history. “My mum would be reading Chinese books, watching Chinese dramas,” she told me. “That duality – being brought up British, but watching another world unfold at home – really shaped the stories I’m drawn to.”
Walker Books art director Nghiem Ta, who came to the UK as a Chinese-Vietnamese boat refugee, describes growing up shadowed by inherited trauma. “You’re always trying to keep your head down. You’ve been given this chance at life in another
country and you feel like you can’t mess it up. So I never thought I had a place to talk, only a place to serve.” Ta was art director of The Endless Sea, a picture book that captures author Chi Thai’s memory as a boat refugee fleeing Vietnam. Illustrated by Linh Dao, it gave Ta an unexpected emotional connection. “It felt like I was making the book for my younger self.” For Thai, it was a public act of remembrance: “This story has always been with me. I didn’t have to search for it – it was carried forward through years of retelling, woven into my family’s fabric. To share it publicly is monumental.”
“Seeing yourself in a book” has become the mantra of inclusive storytelling – but for many authors of colour like me, access to audiences has too often meant sitting on yet another diversity panel. Visibility without understanding is another kind of flattening.
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Jasmine Richards, founder of inclusive fiction studio Storymix, says publishers need to take the ESEA space more seriously, not just as a moral imperative but a commercial opportunity. She points to Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters: “Diversity in the room isn’t just a moral good, it’s good business. It’s a rich, diverse cultural space – and it’s lucrative.”
The acronym may never capture the full sprawl of our languages, histories or migrations. But as a collective banner, ESEA is a way to organise, to be found and to be heard. For publishers, the label may not be perfect but it offers a way in to how Britain can read and publish us. “ESEA,” says Garbutt-Lucero, “is a starting point, not an end point.”
