Welcome to Between Nasi Goreng and Fried Rice.
I’m Eleanor Lisney, originally from Malaysia having lived in the UK, France and the USA .
Over the next few months I’ll be interviewing ESEA people about food, culture, disability and intersecting and shared identities.
This week I meet Eric Wu who is a Master of Public Health student at Imperial College London. He is a registered dietitian and award-winning Community Organiser and Leader who takes pride in being able to help and support the wider community. He has worked with BAME communities across the UK.
I first met Eric during the production of a performance we did at Moongate Mix in 2023. Moongate Mix is a regular salon series at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. Artists in Residence, Moongate Productions, who champion ESEA artists whilst challenging stereotypes produce and program the series.
The ‘Angry Asian Anonymous’ salon was comprised of four people. We begun with a mock type list of “how to be the perfect Asian child”, making fun of the cultural expectations of what Asian cultures and the media envision the perfect Asian child to be.
The second part of the piece is a telling of three different stories and backgrounds of how we deal with the outside world judging and making assumptions about us based on their expectations of our identities. For example, loyalty or putting our identities into neat boxes.
The last part of the piece pulls together the first two pieces into a “Angry Asians Anonymous” help group. Essentially saying to us that the microaggressions which we face are still impactful to us, and that we are allowed to be angry, to be loud, to stand up for ourselves despite what they tell us about being the perfect Asian child.
In short, the work plays with the themes of identity, anger, and stereotypes.
It was a blast and this first podcast with Eric encapsulates a great deal of why I wanted to produce this podcast. It’s to have a conversation about our East and South East Asian identities. The influences that impact us by having this heritage. We come from a diaspora that spans the globe. In Eric's case, from the US to Singapore to London.
Connect with Eric on Linkedin here
Episode 1 Show Notes
Eric and Eleanor discus the differences and similarities about being in the East and South East Asian diaspora in London - from the perspective of being an Asian American as well.
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