East & South-East Asian Book Club

One of those discussions where everyone just got it.

We all felt this was a deeply believable portrait of what it means to be a mixed heritage woman in modern-day London, the nuances, the contradictions, the weight of it.

It doesn’t shy away from how employers and white men respond to sexual assault, and that felt all too familiar rather than shocking.

A tough read, but one that sparked real recognition and honest conversation.

Looking forward to our next book club and creating that same space to share, question, and unpack it all together 📚

by

Kindle Spring Drop 🌸 ESEA edition — all 99p.
my TBR is officially out of control 📚 Which ones are you getting?

Review: Everyday Movement by Gigi L. Leung is a portrait of Hong Kong during the 2019 protests. Rather than offering a political analysis, it focuses on ordinary lives, from those on the frontlines to those on the periphery, and shows how a city in motion reshapes the people within it.

Through a mosaic of “everyday” characters, Gigi captures the intimate moments behind a historic movement. We see how opinions are formed, how individuals are drawn into taking action or holding back, and how relationships between family and friends are strained or redefined. Much of it echoes the real stories many of us witnessed or heard during that period, which makes it feel particularly real.

What stands out is how deeply the idea that “the personal is political” runs through the book. Decisions to join or stay away from protests are not abstract or ideological, but shaped by family expectations, economic pressures, generational divides, and personal fears. Politics seeps into daily life, into conversations at the dinner table, into friendships, into silence. The movement is not just something happening on the streets, it is something negotiated in private, lived in small choices, and carried in the body.

This is less about politics and more about Hongkongers themselves, their fears, convictions, contradictions, and resilience. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the situation from the ground level and see how it was lived, not just reported. -A

🌸April Book Club Pick: Homeseeking by Karissa Chen🌸

What does it mean to belong when history keeps pulling you apart?

Set against war, migration, and years of separation, Homeseeking follows a love story that just won’t let go, even as everything around it keeps changing. weaves intimate, personal longing with big moments in 20th-century Chinese history, asking: can we ever really go back home, or are we always becoming someone new?

Date & Time: Saturday 18 April, 10am-12pm
Location: Central London

Come ready to talk about memory, identity, and what home really means.

About the book
Suchi first sees Haiwen in their Shanghai neighbourhood when she is seven years old, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossoms into love, but when Haiwen secretly enlists in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, Suchi is left with just his violin and a note: Forgive Me.

Sixty years later, recently widowed Haiwen spots Suchi at a grocery store in Los Angeles. It feels to Haiwen like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. In the twilight of their lives, can they reclaim their past and the love they lost?

follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting at the crucible of their lives. From Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States, neither loses sight of the home they hold in their hearts. (Goodreads)

Available from Amazon from £0.99. 512 pages

Direct all questions to [email protected].

How far are you into Jaded by Ela Lee… and be honest, are you judging the characters or relating? 👀

Looking forward to comparing notes (and questionable life choices) this Saturday, 21 March!

Grab a spot via link in bio or https://luma.com/4hqjmfyw

Books by East & Southeast Asian authors for just 99p on Kindle this March.

If you’ve been wanting to discover a new writer, this is a great (and very affordable) way to explore someone’s work. We love a good book deal, and we also love anything that makes reading more accessible. (You don’t need a Kindle device to read these — just download the Kindle app on your device.)

We know there are mixed feelings about supporting Amazon. We get it. But we’re sharing this because lower prices can make books easier to access for more readers. If you’d rather not support Bezos, feel free to skip this post, and continue supporting ESEA authors through your local bookshops and libraries instead 💛

Either way, we hope you find your next great read!

Did we miss anything (adult fiction/non-fiction only)? 👀
Comment below if there’s a title we should add! Also, very happy to hear if you’ve bought of these titles!

In March, we’re reading Jaded by Ela Lee — for a month of celebrating women, and questioning everything that comes with it.

Ambition, complicity, and survival: what does feminism look like in elite spaces?

Join us as we unpack power, silence, and what it means to “make it” as an East & Southeast Asian woman navigating systems not built for us.

Date & Time: Saturday 21 March, 10am-12pm
Location: Central London

Come ready for an honest, unfiltered conversation.

Register via link in bio or https://luma.com/4hqjmfyw

About the book
Jade has become everything she ever wanted to be.

Successful lawyer. Dutiful daughter. Beloved girlfriend. Loyal friend.

Until one night, something terrible happens after a work event, and she starts to wonder if she really wants to be the person she’s become.

She’s learned to laugh when she’s felt like crying, opted to be invisible when she wanted to speak up and changed her identity to please people. But now Jade has to make a decision for herself. The question is, which is the right one?

This searing novel explores the strength we find in female friendship, the hope that lights up the dark moments and recovery that’s far from linear, and will leave you asking yourself: what would you have done in Jade’s situation? -Penguin

Caution: Themes of sexual assault, coercion, workplace power dynamics, and emotional distress.

Available from Waterstones from £9.99. 384 pages

Direct all questions to [email protected].

And just like that, book club is back for the year, full steam ahead! We kicked things off with King of Wrath by Ana Huang. Not our usual heavy, literary read, but sometimes you just need something fun, spicy, and wildly entertaining. So lovely seeing everyone again. 💕

We’re switching things up this February and reading something different and very fun. We’re stepping away from literary fiction and turning to romance. Yes, romance. A legit, wildly popular genre that deserves its moment. 🫶

Our pick: King of Wrath by Ana Huang. Think dark romance, a marriage of convenience, ruthless power plays, and intense emotional repression slowly unravelling. Billionaire CEO Dante Russo is blackmailed into an engagement with Vivian Lau, a sharp, ambitious heiress from a new-money Chinese American family trying to break into elite high society.

Beneath the spice and drama, the book plays with familiar tensions: new money vs old money, family pressure, respectability politics, and the weight of expectation placed on daughters in immigrant families. Vivian’s push and pull between duty, desire, and independence will feel… very recognisable.

This is also us showing love to ESEA authors across genres. Not just serious books. Not just heavy reads. Sometimes we read for escapism, pleasure, and a little mess. Romance absolutely counts 😌💖

Date & Time: Saturday 21 February, 10-12pm
Location: Central London

Tickets via link in bio or https://luma.com/oju5xyxf

A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo asks what it means to fall in love in a second language. When two people come from different cultures, different countries, and find themselves living in a third, how do intimacy, misunderstanding, and desire take shape?

In an age where love is expected to be the foundation of marriage, is it still acceptable to marry for other reasons? Does marriage have to be romantic to be meaningful?

The protagonist seems to move through life by letting life happen. Marriage, childbirth, family life unfold as matters of course rather than conscious emotional choices. She rarely names her feelings, or perhaps chooses not to dwell in them. I didn’t read this as wrong or lacking, nor as something sad. Instead, it felt like a different way of being, a quieter mode of living where experience matters more than introspection, and love does not always announce itself loudly.

Maybe this, too, is a valid way to live.

All that we read in 2025. How many of these have you read or are in your TBR?

A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo 🇨🇳🇬🇧
Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise by Lin Yi Han 🇹🇼
The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King 🇨🇳🇺🇸
Human Acts by Han Kang 🇰🇷
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun 🇰🇷
How We Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee 🇸🇬
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang 🇨🇳🇺🇸
Out by Natsuo Kirino 🇯🇵
Mongrel by Hanako Footman 🇯🇵🇬🇧
Bellies by Nicola Dinan 🇲🇾🇬🇧
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki 🇯🇵🇺🇸

Goal for 2026: read more literature from Southeast Asia!

#2025

Our first read for the year! There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and translated by Polly Barton. It’s a radical book for anyone starting the year tired, wary of “new you” culture, and craving a gentler way to exist in work and life.

A woman walks into an employment agency asking for a job with no reading, no writing, and very little thinking. What follows is a series of strange, quietly unsettling roles — watching a hidden-camera feed, fixing bus adverts for shops that disappear, and writing advice for rice cracker wrappers — that slowly reveal deeper questions about burnout, invisible labour and the search for something more meaningful.

No in-person meet-up this month, but come read along with us.