Yang May Ooi

Yang-May Ooi is a cross-cultural author and advocate.

She is Chinese by heritage, Malaysian by birth and British by choice. As a first generation migrant to the UK, she currently lives in the multi-cultural English city of Oxford.

Her creative work emerges from her experience of making her home in both East and West – and a sense of being an insider and also outsider in different cultures. Her stories are infused with themes of belonging – from her novels The Flame Tree and Mindgame (1st ed. Hodder & Stoughton; 2nd ed. Monsoon Books) to her TEDx talk and her family memoir and theatre performance, Bound Feet Blues (Urbane Publications and Tristan Bates Theatre).

Her current multimedia project is Belonging Across Cultures which advocates for difference as a force for creativity and collaborative empowerment.

Yang-May says, “I love British traditions and also my Chinese and Malaysian heritage. My East Asian upbringing made me who I am and I am also shaped by my Western liberal values. I swoon for delicious Malaysian cuisine and I have also come to love hearty English food. I believe very much that if we can be curious about other cultures and other people – especially those that are not like us – we can find connection, joy and a true sense of belonging across any divide.”

You can find out more about Belonging Across Cultures at www.BelongingAcrossCultures.uk. And about Yang-May and her other creative work at www.TigerSpirit.uk.

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