Writing the Books I Needed When I Was Little
Korean & Turkish
“I was raised in London, bar a brief stint in the Scottish Highlands.
My parents now live in New Malden, and they love being in the centre of London’s Korea Town.”
My parents on their wedding day
“[When I was little] My parents and I had no family in the UK. We alternated every summer in their villages in either Korea or Turkey. It was a huge privilege to have experienced such rich places, languages, cultures and religions from such a young age. This immersion into different environments has instilled in me an empathy and compassion for different people and cultures, especially those that don’t neatly fall into any one community.
I also learned to code-switch early on, though I learnt the terminology for it much later. In Turkey, I was louder, more passionate and more expressive, whereas in Korea, I was a lot quieter, mindful of more defined behavioural norms (such as honorifics etc). Then in London, I was very conscious of coming across as sufficiently British. It’s taught me that identity is really dynamic and fluid, contingent on time and place. “
My dad’s graduation. I was five days old.
“I have never openly discussed [my mixed ethnicity] with my family, but I remember when I was a teenager, I was really into makeup. In Seoul, my mum kept steering me away from the makeup counters. I realise now it’s because they would never have shades to match me.
Even though she didn’t have the word for it, my mum was conscious of colourism that remains prevalent in Asian cultures. She also did face some discrimination related to being in an inter-racial relationship with a Middle-Eastern man, which was still rare in the early nineties. Looking back, I can recall many ways in which my parents tried to protect me from that, without any explicit discussion about it.
Although I was born in the UK, I didn’t get citizenship until I was nine, and that made me feel like I had to prove my Britishness. When pressed on my ethnicity, I would say I was ‘half-Korean, half-Turkish’, although I felt fully both and half of neither. I felt like maybe the ‘half’ would explain my mixed appearance. Now however, I just say I’m Korean-Turkish, but it’s taken a long time to be able to state that so simply, without any caveats.”
I have lots of specific memories [of talking about race and culture with someone who didn’t understand], but it all stems from the elusive feeling of being othered in your home countries. My appearance had always been one of the vehicles for that. In Turkey, I was viewed as too Asian to be Turkish. In Korea, it was constantly noted how ‘dark’ I was.
Then in the UK, being mixed race and ‘ethnically ambiguous’ was fetishized. I started hearing comments about ‘yellow fever’ and my being ‘exotic’. It led to a complex relationship that, for me, couldn’t be neatly resolved with a declaration of self-acceptance. It’s through meeting other mixed-race people and sharing experiences that that niggling unease has started to fade. It’s why communities such as The Halfie Project are so important.”
My mother with her parents. She lived in Tokyo for ten years.
“My parents were really committed to ensuring I was connected to both countries and spoke both their languages. I laugh about it now, but I wasn’t allowed to watch English cartoons as a child - they installed Korean and Turkish satellite dishes for me to watch instead! I didn’t speak much English until I started school, and spoke predominantly Korean at home. We celebrated both countries’ national holidays, food, religious festivals, and traditions.
So growing up I felt really connected to both heritages.”
“The idea for [my] book had been jostling in my head for a long time. One day, I just started writing and it all came out in a cathartic tumble. The novel was my unexpected companion during the pandemic. In a time of collective heartbreak, I found myself writing about another form of grief: about the events that break us and, in turn, shape us.
The novel follows the story of Jade Kaya, a twenty-something half-Korean lawyer who has tried to do everything right. Until an unspeakable act at a work event brings her carefully constructed world crashing down. Jade is left making sense of the life in which she has never truly belonged, and picking apart the person she has been for everyone else. It’s about identity, messy relationships, consent, and finding your place in the world..
Jaded ultimately came from a place of wanting to feel seen and wanting to help others like me feel seen. I wanted to read a book that centred a mixed-race woman navigating the structures that were not built for her, and are skewed against her. Although the book follows Jade’s journey, her story is one that could be so many women’s.
I’m really passionate about the representation of POC voices, particularly mixed-race voices, in fiction. I want to uplift, promote and support the work of POC writers to ensure they are celebrated by a wide, mainstream readership. My dream is to keep writing and supporting the books I needed to read when I was younger.”
My Korean mother with my Turkish grandmother
My maternal grandmother
“The western-centric approach has made us think that only events and people recorded in history books should be remembered. But preservation happens on a more granular, daily basis. For example, there are recipes from the Aegean region of Turkey that have been passed down from my great-grandmother, to my grandmother, to my aunts, and now to me.
You wouldn’t find them in any cookery book, and each time I make that dish at home, I am preserving a tiny piece of a culture that otherwise might be forgotten.
It’s imperative to preserve and celebrate culture and history. It’s one of the primary ways we can learn about the world, foster compassion for others, and encourage openness and understanding between people who might not have anything in common.”
All photos have been provided by Ela Lee
Learn more about Ela Lee at her IG and website. You can pre-order her debut novel “Jaded” here!