 A hello and a welcome from Renaissance One and the British Library in this partnership event, self-help. I'm your host and the event curator Melanie Abraham's and it's a real pleasure to be here. We are asking the question, can the self-help industry make us better? At the times that you've been able to get to a bookshop or shop for books online, have you happened to see the heaving shells of personal growth and self-help books? We are never short of titles and podcasts to choose from. So how on earth do we make sense of them? And what does this industry do, if anything, for the specificities of women of colour who form this panel today? Have you ever encountered a person claiming to be able to unshackle your true charismatic self? And have you ever asked yourself, why are there so many do-it-yourself help books, but so few that actually relate to me? Maybe the subject is a simple as, what would you tell your younger self about self-help and self-care? So in this event we feature writers and recorders who work actively in the arenas of comedy, literature and performance and will be broaching these very questions. And this event is a partnership between the British Library and Renaissance One. And it's part of This Is Who We Are, which is within the British Council's UK-Australia season. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the first presenter, Candy Bowers, who is a radical mischief maker, a writer and creator and actor, director and lyricist and born of South African political refugees and currently based in Australia. She's the original producer and the co-curator of global phenomenon Hot Brown Honey Bolesk. She's turning her audible AWG scripted comedy pitch into a comedy series for television and she's also developing her first feature film for young adults. So welcome to Candy Bowers. Thank you. Thank you very much, Melanie. I'm just a little anxious, so I'm just going to send to my breath. Okay, also trying not to use the word try or trying. Okay, I just really should. I mean, no, I shouldn't say should or shouldn't or try or trying. I'm just needing to shift my language because I'm working. Actually need is also a low frequency word. So let me just... Okay, so no need, no should, no shouldn't, no try, no trying. I've got that, which sounds negative to limit, but also that's what I'm working on at the moment to limit that sort of language, that sort of low vibration language because I am I'm shifting my language. Yeah, I'm shifting my language in order to be I guess a healthier version of me, a healthier version that radiates on a higher plane. So no, should, no, shouldn't, no try, no trying, no need. Those are low frequency words. This is what I'm learning, but I feel like barbecue chicken most of the time when I talk about this stuff, I just get this like ideation of barbecue chicken. And I feel like if I just ate some barbecue chicken, I'd feel good. But what I'm doing is focusing on language and centering my breathing and acknowledging that language reflects who we are. But I also really feel like barbecue chicken. So it's tricky. You know, it's hard. It's not really sure if I should be acknowledging that it's tricky. Is that out? Also, I'm not sure. I mean, do I need to do that? Should I? Okay, so you know, should no need. All right, fucking hell. Okay. Who am I talking to myself, my inner self, my spirit, or the person, the entity that is allowing me to focus deeper, deeper and greater than my strong desire for barbecue chicken. So I have an addiction, but I am not. I'm not that addiction. I really love barbecue chicken. I mean, I could have it multiple times like after I've had it, I want it again. So that's sort of my main focus alongside language, shifting that language and and and vibrating at a higher level. So I focus and I breathe. I am healthy. I'm wealthy. I'm rich. And that bitch will get that bag of water take your shit. I am a queen. That's a tick tock. Also, that comes into my mind when I think I'm supposed to be emptying my mind in order to radiate on a higher plane and not think about barbecue chicken. But you know, because you've already had lunch, you do not need to get more lunch. I just feel just a sec, I'm just going to look up some NFTs of barbecue chickens, because maybe if I buy a digital barbecue chicken, then it might be better for my body in the long run. But then I'll always live with the fact that I participate in the most foolish digital scan known to this generation and end up drowning my sorrows in ladders of barbecue chicken. So that's not going to work. Just going to listen to that tick tock. If that's that'll that'll focus me a little more. Just help me a little bit. It's actually really calmed me down. Thank you, Candy. After that, I feel so small and unworthy and really hungry for some reason. I'd now like to invite Mona Arshi, a wonderful poet who was born in West London to Punjabi parents. She's worked as a human rights lawyer at Liberty before turning to poetry. And she's the author of two poetry books, including Small Hands, which won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She regularly appears on Radio 4 and her debut novel, Somebody Loves You was published in 2021. A warm welcome, Mona. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I don't really, I don't know how I'm going to follow that, Candy. And I don't have like a chicken or anything like I have. I like probably have like a box of like nuts over there, but that doesn't kind of compare to the chicken. I'm going to just, and I love that subversive take on these themes. So I feel like I'm going old school, but this is kind of my take on self-help. So I come to self-help as a reader of lots and lots of books, but not of the self-help genre. And I feel like there's lots of reasons for that. I think I have become a little bit of a self-help skeptic. I'm flummoxed by what that, the words, the term self-help, what it encompasses. And so I'm not a regular consumer of self-help books or guides or podcasts and all the other paraphernalia that goes alongside this world of self-help. But I also know that self-help is big business, that it's an industry and in the US it's worth over $10 billion. So it's an industry that's driven by a need. And that need is something that I'm interested in, to sell antidotes to the desperate and needy, the insecure, as well as the curious. So when I look at the titles at our best sellers and I went into a bookshop last week just to sort of see what was around and what people are reading and what was being pushed at us, these are the titles that I came up with. Self-help book for women to work on self-worth, love and care and discover inner happiness. They all have really long titles like this. You are a badass, how to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life. And then one with a slightly shorter title of find yourself to help yourself. So and these are all US titles and it's clear that the US have taken self-help to a different level. So at the heart of self-help ideology is this notion of dissatisfaction. I have teenage daughters and I see it already in them that there's a constant feeling of irritation. That irritation is the essential fuel that fuels that market. And it's not surprising because that reflects the culture that we're in, that we inhabit, where nearly everything, our anxieties, our commodified and branded and sold to us through all the mediums now available including TikTok. So this constant need for perfection is saturated our culture for such a long time and in so many help books I flicked through over the last three weeks it's there. And I keep wondering how healthy the philosophy of perpetual growth and striving for an idealized self is. I'm also uneasy about how many of these books are framing success in this really, really narrow way. They so rarely ask questions about what values we bring to the table as a society, alternatives in a culture that is steeped with ideas of body perfection and aesthetic beauty. And also there seems to be like this kind of contract between the reader and the author that the status quo and the structures in our environment are permanent static and we have to fit ourselves into them. And so I suppose when I come to this genre as a writer the language of self care also fascinates me. There are all these tropes and platitudes. It's like you can read these books and they kind of contain the same thing. There's things like being a highly effective something, a highly effective parent, a highly effective leader, a highly effective declutterer. Wisdom is another trope. It's incredible how so many of these books take really complex spiritual ideas and terms from the east and then import them as mere kind of reduced platitudes that bear no resemblance to their origins. Mantra is a word I keep hearing. A hundred mantras, morning mantras that you give yourself in the mirror in the morning. So it's kind of funny and it's kind of sinister. I put off the genre I think and maybe I miss or ignore books that might have been helpful for me. When I was looking at bereavement literature, which I think is sort of part of self-help too, I did turn to some books that were useful in some ways. Kubler Ross's famous text on bereavement is something that I used I think and I felt like I could place my grief in some way in that framework. But there's other books I've read in this genre that have been surprisingly helpful. One of them actually I'm going to name which is about, it's a book about parenting and it's called The Teenage Brain and Neuroscientists Survival to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults and it's actually by a scientist. Now I thought that book was quite helpful because it gave me, it demystified an area that I didn't know anything about but that was information. So is that self-help? I felt like I was, I had information about things like cognitive functioning and you know and in teens that I could, that was helpful to me. So I could extract that and use it. But the main I think I feel, I think the main issue I have actually is the fact that I think that this fetishisation which is kind of what Candy was you know circling around of the improved self is often at the expense of deeper work that we might need to do on ourselves and that is outward facing. So how do we become better citizens? How do we become more engaged parts of our community? How do you participate when Black Lives Matter movement gain momentum? Those are ideal moments for individuals for example to be self-reflexive, to read those works such as René-Ed Lodge's book. I mean I suppose what I'm asking is in this genre where is the perspective taking and because I'm not against inner improvement. I think that as humans we need to have these ideas that we are of mutability or the fact that we can change, that we're not trapped in our histories and our stories and that we have agency to liberate ourselves. I just don't think that if we're going to start thinking about what books help us do that, I think there are better genres to go to. I mean I come from a poetry background and poetry I think has always had an ancient tradition of being able to to do some of this work but we very rarely use poetry in our lives. So I feel like it's I'm kind of conflicted or maybe not so conflicted in this genre. I feel that it's something that I feel quite uncomfortable about and I feel that one of the things that we need to do maybe is think about who it's for and why we use it. Thank you Mona. There was something about your voice just now that helped me to feel calm. Kandi made me hungry and I really love to eat so thank you Kandi but yeah there's something about the power of the voice and tone that can really help us. So for me despite what you might think of the self-help industry I'd suggest that you think about it in terms of yourself because you are a real self-help self there and I guess there is that question which hopefully I think we can turn to later about how can we see more women of color not just being receivers of self-help but actually being able to present their self-help ideas and solutions. I'd now like to invite Ria Lina who is the only Filipina comedian currently performing on the UK circuit. She can be seen performing on Live at the Apollo and have I got news for you as well as Mock the Week. She is educated with a BSC in experimental pathology, an MSc in forensic science and a PhD in viral bioinformatics and she's previously worked as an IT forensic investigator for the serious fraud office. Ria has Asperger's and lives in Covent Garden with her family. A really warm welcome to Ria. Thank you Melanie. Well let's just dig in there. I think we'll all agree we all know that we're all too fat but we're also too thin. Actually we're all just right. We're fine as we are although we should always be working on ourselves. We need to constantly strive but stop running, take a break, enjoy the moment, live life to the fullest. YOLO be happy with who you are, your opinion is valid, your opinion is ill-informed, do your own research, listen to the experts. I mean if we really stop and read all of the internet, none of it agrees. None of it agrees and we're here to talk about self-help. I'm going to be honest with you I've never really consumed self-help because I'm usually the one doing the helping, you know what I mean? One of those and irritating isn't it? People tend to come to me for help so I'm good at it so therefore I never have time to seek out my own help. But the thing about self-help is to remember who it's all for and I think that that's what we need to come down to is who is all of this for? When everybody is screaming all of these different messages at you, the moment that you log on to whichever social media is your addiction of choice and it's telling you all of these mixed messages, who is it for? It's for you. When you scroll through that and you're wasting 10 extra minutes in bed or you're sitting on the toilet a little bit too long, who are you doing it for? You have to remember that it's for you because the moment you invest in any self-help product, no matter what it is, whether you buy a book, whether you pay for a Patreon of a podcast, you're helping them. That's immediately you helping them but it doesn't guarantee that they will help you and you have to remember yourself is at the core of all of this and I think that's really important. I think sometimes that we forget that when we do invest in a product we think that we have to therefore do what that product says or get out of that product what that product promises that it will give you, no you don't. The dos and the don'ts are as important as each other. I do want to do what this book tells me as much as you know what? I don't want to do what this book tells me. That is just as valid and we need to remember that both of those things can coexist and that both of those are valid options. You're allowed to buy the book, which helps the person who wrote it. They thank you very much but you're also allowed to resell that book or give it to charity or give it away or consider it to be rubbish. That is what we need to remember in this whole industry if you decide to engage with it. Why does self-help have to be for you? I think that's an important question because that's one of the things that we're here to discuss. We're here to discuss where is the self-help for those that identify as perhaps women, women of color, non-binary, where is all the self-help for us? But I want to throw that question back at you. Why does self-help have to be for you? This is the question that we're sort of here to answer is where is the self-help for people that identify as us as women or women of color or non-binary or anything outside of that middle of the bell curve that everybody sort of itches to be under? Can I just say, by the way, I'm over at one of the ends of the bell curve and I love it. I love it under there. I mean it's a little bit lower in the ceiling. You have to bend over but it's tight and it's cozy and there aren't too many people here. Personally, I love it at either end. I don't know why people keep racing to the middle but the point is I need you to ask yourself, why does it have to be for you? We have this idea that we have a right to everything, that we have a right to express our opinions on open forums such as Twitter or Facebook, that that is all right and that therefore we are as valid as everyone else in order to do that and the same thing applies to self-help. I deserve to be helped in this section of the bookstore. Do you though? Do you need to be? I really love what Mona said and I want to pick up on that. I really love the fact that you're in a bookstore. There's an entire bookstore available to you. I'm going to present this idea to you. Here's another word for self-help, education. Self-help is a very small section of the bookstore where we've heard some of those titles already from Mona of the different types of books, how to be this, how to be a warrior, how to speak to your boss at work when your boss is not speaking to you the way that they really should. But self-help is about education and educating yourself. Now once we've flipped our thinking from self-help to education, that opens up the rest of the bookstore and all of that bookstore is for you, all of that bookstore is for you. Every book that's out there is yours to read, to imbibe, to learn from, to put down again if you want to as we already spoke about. And once we consider self-help as education, then it comes back to that question of why does it have to be for you. It really is frustrating and it's something I have children myself and it's something I've always told them that when you go to school that is for you. When you do homework that is for you. It is not for your teacher. Your teacher's going to get paid tomorrow and paid next week and paid next year whether they're your teacher or not because when they set that homework, they're not setting it for themselves, they're setting it for you. And I think that is the flip in our learning that I want children to know that. And once you have that flip in your understanding of what education is for and who it is for, you carry that with you for life. When you go to school, you learn what you want to learn for you. And if you want the best opportunity in life, learn as much as you can. If you don't know what you want to do, then try equally across all of the subjects. If you know from a young age that you really, really want to be a doctor, then perhaps maybe not focusing as much in history or English is going to be something that you can get away with because you know that the science is in the maths of what you really want in order to achieve your dream. Flip that on itself. So self-help, it's for you. Self-help is education and education is for you. So everything that you go, if you want to be more confident, then go in and become a specialist in a subject that allows you to have that chat in the pub that you were never able to have. Pick a different section. Where does confidence comes from? It comes from knowing that you are good at what you do or knowing that you're attractive or that you are loved. Is that in a book? Is that in a book? I leave that with you. Rhea, thank you. That was so informative, challenging in the best way, provoking and encouraging. As well as finding your tone informative, I also found it alluring. Sorry, I've been reading a lot of books about charisma and I feel I've almost cracked this subject. So Rhea, I want to do everything that you say and I really thank God you're not a psychopath. So we're going to move into the conversational part and I wanted to kick off with the question of what is the best or the most unusual piece of self-help advice you've heard or been given, if I can ask Candy. Yeah, my favourite self-help advice is that I am like a monopoly token. My body, my ego, my hair, my attraction to people, unattraction, all of that is like the avatar that my spirit has chosen for this life. And that involves multiple races and huge amounts of intergenerational joy and trauma, but that it isn't necessarily mine, that it is something that I can be inside of and make choices within. So I love the choice-no-choice stuff that comes from kinesiology, but I think actually in a much further back deeper concept, it comes from the Sufi enneagram and those sorts of spaces about choice and no choice. And that allows me to actually absolutely, like I say, I have an addiction but it's not my addiction, to be able to separate myself from the parts that are impossible to live with, impossible to have joy and exist in all of the time. I find that very helpful, yeah. Whether you call it Alexander or you call it Sufism or you call it, you know, whatever Brene Brown said last, but yeah that's my favourite stuff I hear and I hear it in all different ways. It comes in all different ways. Mona, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, well I mean I remember hearing, I'm going to quote Audre Lorde because that wonderful phrase about caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare. I love that. I feel like in her work, which actually I'm going to, I mean I have to say, if you're going to, in terms of like framing things or books that aren't necessarily put in those categories and reframing some of this work, her work is, I think, a work of self-help for women of colour and I think that there's, can I just read you a tiny little extract of a poem that I was sent when I was young, it's called A Litany For Us For Survival. I remember reading it and thinking, okay this, it just starts quickening the heart but you feel really seen, it affirms you and it firms your anger. So it's, I'll just read a little tiny bit of it, A Litany For Survival. For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision, crucial and alone, for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice and then there's a much longer section and it's, and it ends with, so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive. I mean it's just a really incredible way of just being seen somehow and so I feel like what we were talking about earlier, I think that we should, we should reframe some of these amazing texts that actually, as self-help and actually because they are doing something that are taking big leaps in empathy where I think a lot of the self-help isn't doing. Yeah thank you Mona and that's such an important point in that self-help is just a term, it was coined by somebody, it's been packaged, it's been created into an industry but actually self-help was all around me when I was younger. I didn't necessarily pick it up as self-help, it was sometimes the wisdom of my mom or my aunt. Also male figures within my household as well but in particular you know the female figures in my family were always espousing self-help. I just didn't always want to hear it you know and I think also we just need to think about just being flexible about language and just choosing to be on the lookout for where we might find wisdom you know and maybe as you say expanding that term a little bit more. And Rio if I could ask you is there a best or most unusual piece of self-help advice you've heard or been given? I'm going to be slightly more practical with mine I think. The phrase that sticks with me the most is from a practice called BMS Body Mind Spirit which is a martial art practice that was developed originally by Derek Jones and then continued by Steve Jones although unrelated and it's based on Wing Chun and it's a martial art practice not and I want to clarify it's martial art versus martial sport. Martial art is the practice of working on yourself that's what kung fu means is to work on oneself and so that it is a constant practice and so from that is the phrase little and often and little and often applies to everything. Anything you want to change anything you want to achieve if you you know all the things we keep telling ourselves in our everyday busy lives oh I wish I could relax more often I wish you know I could meditate more often I wish I could hang out with my friends more often well little and often is the way to achieve that the first the best in any easiest way that they step you into this practice is when you boil the kettle especially here in the UK everyone has a cup of tea often multiple times a day or that first cup of coffee in the morning that kettle takes 30 seconds to a minute to boil that's 30 seconds to a minute where most of us stand around and zone out take that time little and often take that 30 seconds to a minute read a bit of the book that you're reading take that that moment to meditate and you'll find that by doing that little and often a you're giving yourself a break from being so hard on yourself all the time you know take that 30 seconds to text that friend you keep meaning to text you can achieve a lot with little and often and you'll be surprised at how much suddenly you go oh my goodness I have actually integrated into my life the thing that was stressing me out because I made it a much bigger uh or I made it a much bigger thing to achieve than it was and actually breaking it down I can integrate and and that's how we change habits don't change overnight habits change gradually you know um you know the Grand Canyon was made by drops of water so little and often thank you Ria um I must say you would make a lot of money if you went into self-help right now I'd have to I'd have to give a percentage to Steve Jones in BMS I think yeah yeah but you still end up with a lot you know so noted I think I think all of you would and I guess there's an aspect that may be you know many of us would because it is sometimes as we say about this packaging of this self-help like and sometimes there is so much repetitious aspects about these books I wonder you know and this is my next question to you you know if you had the opportunity or if you're currently considering it what best-selling self-help book would you write for one million pounds who'd like to go first I'll go first is there okay well um I should continue that about Stephen he wrote The Intelligent Warrior uh which is which I just love as a title the Intelligent Warrior is like oh such a great uh title for a self-help book and it in itself is a is a great blend of those two things but for myself I think that the message I'd love to pass on and this does come from having an aspergic mind I think as well it comes from I know that my emotional structure and framework is is different to to someone who's maybe not near diverse but my book would be called sometimes things just is you know it just is and I think that that's something I've felt growing up as an aspergic woman you know is is that people tend to ascribe emotions to things that don't need an emotional state or they give it a value judgment that's positive or negative instead of it just is and I think that that we would be we'd have a lot less conflict right now within ourselves as much as within our world if we just accepted that sometimes things just is and I think that's uh it's a really calming mantra to have if you can learn how to practice not ascribing an emotional state to something or to not have an opinion about something which I know is is counterintuitive to where we are right now we're in a place where everybody's words can be published as you know equally to everyone else's on the internet but but actually does it have to be do you have to have an opinion on everything do you have to decide one way or the other sometimes it is healthier and the best way to take on more information and learn new things is to step back from something and go you know what this just is and what can I learn from it or what can I see or what's coming to me because I have not put up any emotional barriers or filters in order for that information to come in as purely as possible I think you're really onto something because I really can't understand why uh people don't see the world as an ecosystem of many many parts and variation you know and and why for example diversity is often segmented and not seen in its truer sense in terms of you know no one can crack diversity because it just is so um mono do you have any thoughts so what what's your one million pound best-selling self-help book I just want to say if I'm getting a million pounds advanced I'm more than happy to take it in like 10 installments just yeah even 20 installments would be fine um you know what I've been thinking a lot about this question because I I wondered what the deficit like the gap was you know the that what is the deficit and I do think um that we touched on this earlier about empathy I think there's a big empathy deficit and I wonder actually whether or not some of the it's not all but some of the self-help stuff that we that we read is actually an empathy blocker because when you are only concerned about yourself when you are only that is your your your um it's almost like a form of sort of narcissism I think that you don't look outward and I think that where we are as if we look at where we are in the world and and in this country in terms of civil liberties and rolling back rights you know I I feel like we need a book about well we need to think about how to care about the the person the human that we might not know the one that doesn't look like us the one that doesn't have the same language as us um the one that we don't know the unknowable human and I think how to care about that person is something that I'm really kind of interested in how do we how do we activate how do we become more active how do we um how do we kind of like take those leaps of empathy so that we can bring ourselves to put ourselves into the shoes of someone that is a complete stranger that we should care about and I think there is a role for for a book actually that can tease some of these issues out I mean literally I mean a book cannot solve all these issues but I think what it can do is it can provoke and we can um problematize some of this stuff around self-help and whether or not the gaze is so inward that we are not looking outwards enough um so I think that's that those are that would be the book I would want to to write I'm there Mona I am going to order the empathy as soon as I see that out yeah thank you um and also I think as well you know on a serious note a lot of your poetry annual prose I think has been covering aspects of these issues that you talk about you know and and the importance of more broad minded perspectives um can I ask you Kandy what what a one million pound self-help book would you like to write or would you be interested to write I am working on a little something because I got uh pretty much under house arrest last month uh locked in locked down with my mum who has some serious underlying issues and we got long COVID and I found myself in my childhood home which I hadn't probably been in for that period of time about six weeks since I was in my 20 so it was it was confronting so I'm working on a title at the moment which will start as an article called how to masturbate in Campbelltown and I'm really interested it is the hill I will die on which is sexual health and orgasm for women of color and I come from a South African family so I mean there's a lot of comedy in the piece already my mum you know often will say to me you should have been married you should have had children it would have made your life better and I very famously first time she said that to me she I said is that what you wish for all the women in our family mum because you know what I wish for fucking awesome orgasms for them that's what I hope and dream of the most also because the black patriarchy is flexed often in our family factured victory and made it really difficult for some of the elders and aunties in our families to live wonderful healthy lives and I feel like there's a really important golden key uh around sex and sexuality and particularly orgasm so I I think it's a probably it's more it's it's a it's a billion dollar idea really um but also growing up you know I never got to see sexually liberated black women in television shows or um you know I'd only see this really you know black male gaze of it and white male gaze have been in hip hop clips or things like that and what the way black women and young women's bodies are exotified and sexualized and I used to as even in my 20s feel like I could tell whether a woman was doing it for herself or she was doing it you know whether it was any of these you know whether it's Nicki Minaj or anyone I felt like I had this ability which you know of course whatever you think is true but I'm sure it's more about my fascination with how and where out where our power sits and and where our pleasure sits and I feel like it's an area that is still so taboo so incredibly taboo so um yeah it's definitely a space how to masturbate in Campbelltown let's see what who knows this can be a start of a huge thing right now right here yeah and thank you Candy I would buy that one too you know and I think also in the zoom age it's absolutely possible to be reading and using that book as well isn't it um so I wanted to ask you actually um is there any advice um Mona that you would like to give to your younger self about personal growth and self-help gosh um I mean I I think that one of the things just from like being alive and being a person and living that I would give I mean actually that is really important I think that we have advice that we we personal advice that we accumulate in a crew is I think that you can't change anyone else and there's this I think that you can check there is you have an ability to change but I think it's impossible to change anybody else and don't let anybody try and change you and I also think and this is what I say to my teenage daughters all the time things that you don't like about yourself now you might like when in five years time you know this idea of um when you're when you're very young and you're at that very oozy stage of like you know just coming into adulthood I think that you are finding things out and you're not set and it's okay to be uncertain about a hundred and a hundred different things and so don't don't try to fix yourself don't try and try and try and get to a point of certainty it's okay to have to be kind of have these big amorphous ideas about you know yourself and who who you might be so don't pin yourself down too early thank you Mona and and candy um is there any advice you'd give to your younger self so my experience I'm not sure how much everybody understands Australia but um I wrote a piece for growing up African in Australia called dear Australia I love you but and it's about the fact that I grew up in an absolute white out so no um no obviously Instagram and and dear white people on Netflix or whatever no Beyonce no Rihanna um a very very very white world I know the UK get neighbors and home and away that was it the first time I saw a black person an Australian woman with an afro on the front cover of Vogue I was and that she was the first Christina I knew I was 22 so the advice I would give my younger self is to get subscriptions to UK and US and South African magazines and to keep connecting on an international level with with other women of colour with bodies like mine with hair like mine with skin like mine because it was a huge experience to decolonize and de-assimilate and I also went to acting school I went to like NIDA which is like Radar or Julliard and and it's just extraordinary how much the body keeps these strange and twisted notions inside of it um we for the first time when I was back in my hometown a young woman that I um actually teach Milo people are getting us mixed up which I'm quite chuffed about because she's 20 years younger than me and she started doing huge lingerie campaigns in very mainstream bra shops and it's the first time we've seen plus size brown girls in mainstream catalogs this year everyone and I get to my hometown and there is literally a ceiling default picture of her I go into the makeup space or whatever all this mainstream stuff but there's Lupita and Zendaya and it reminded me that I didn't see any colour literally until I was 22 years old so for my younger self I was still really working hard to be acceptable and allowing for the sense of not being right or beautiful to be a part of my narrative you know and the moment I stepped into New York and headed to the UK it absolutely changed my life and put lots in perspective so I think instead of having that Dolly magazine Australian Dolly magazine subscription from 13 to 17 I would have pushed to get like an essence or it could be trash it's just about the reflection back yeah thank you Candy and Rhea is there any advice that you'd give to your younger self you know it's it's an interesting question I mean first of all I would definitely tell my younger self wait for it and look up Mona and Candy and buy their books because I'd buy both of your books so when they've been written please please let me know because I will read both of those um for very for for varying reasons you know the empathy thing I think you're so correct on is that we that in fact we almost need to relearn empathy as as narcissism increases with our access to the internet and who doesn't love an orgasm so uh if there's any secrets in there I'm I'm open I'm open to hearing it but in terms of younger self it's for me it's an interesting question because A I didn't know I was um autistic growing up didn't find that out until I was an adult so that was something that was unknown about myself but B because I I'm not a massive believer in regret I think that regret and it comes back to it is what it is I mean you've made various decisions to get to where you are now and regretting those that you made doesn't serve a lot of purpose unless you use it for positivity going forward and so to go back and say that I would give myself other advice or say take this path or that path or make a different decision would automatically change who I am and where I am now and from that perspective I'm very hesitant to go back and say anything that's being said I think that if someone had helped me to see and I speak you know along the lines of what this form is for as a woman of color someone had helped me to see I did not see myself as a woman of color even though I knew that I was one and I identified as an Asian woman I did not see myself as a woman of color because that wasn't a thing it wasn't it it wasn't it was it it wasn't as prominent as it is now which means that when I was competing in comedy which is let's be honest a very male world I was competing to be male is what was happening and and so I think going back and looking at myself I think what I the one thing I would have liked is if someone had pointed out more fully to me where opportunities had been taken away or denied to me because specifically I was a woman of color because I didn't see that because I assume okay I need to be funnier in order to get where everyone else is or I just need to be well yeah that's it I just need to be funnier I never saw it as well actually you're never going to get that because they see you as a woman or you're never going to get that because you're not the right color I didn't see that in the early days and I think I would have worked differently had I been more aware of the fact that there was very much a ceiling that had been put in place specifically for me and that I was never going to break through that until now where other people before me and I thank those women and all the women that did do that work made it possible for us to be to be a thing for women of color to be something that is being spoken about and and being championed and being lifted up so I think that would be it that's a really important thing you're saying as well about women of color I it's a term that I've increasingly become comfortable with because I'm not black and I'm not white I don't have a white parent nor do I have white grandparents but my both my parents are very light-skinned and they're mixed race so in some ways talking about being a woman of color has been something I've kind of grown into because I'm just aware of the of so many numbers of women of color who look so many different ways around the world and have so many different lifestyles and backgrounds that it's something that I kind of feel is a more embracing of diversity and a multiplicity and different perspectives and yeah I'm really glad that you've said that because I suppose for me as a woman of color that perhaps doesn't look like she has a lot of color it's it's one of those kind of things which I hope gets explored a little bit more rather than things being seen as very kind of binary can I come back on that yeah yeah I think that's interesting you say that because it's a little bit you know everyone says autism is a spectrum everybody's a little bit on the spectrum first of all no they're not if you're you know neurodiversity in the autistic spectrum is a very specific thing but I think that I think that women of color is a spectrum and and a lot like the neurodiverse spectrum it's becoming more and more clear that everybody's on the neurodiverse everybody is on this woman of color spectrum and that it's actually it's actually easier to define those that aren't on the spectrum than it is to define those that are and we find that same thing with neurodiversity is that neurodiversity is wide and diverse and and covers many many things and it's becoming easier to go these are this is what neurotypical is everyone else is neurodiverse and I think it's becoming easier to say this is the spectrum of women of color hear those that that don't identify as such yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah and as well as it not being seen as a visual thing because it really is far more complex in terms of you know we have geographies we have various kind of ethnic and racial identifications but also there's intersectionalities as well kind of woven into it so um language and language too and that's the other thing you know the language intersects too you know mother tongue language and and culture culture so it's such a fascinating and discussion actually talking hearing Ria talk about that because I feel like this old-fashioned idea of solidarity between you know I think I feel is coming back a bit and we need to have we need to be able to embrace this this these ideas of solidarity politically I think because I think where we are at the moment there are there's no alternatives um you know where we're heading otherwise as a as a as a I was going to say too it's interesting like I'm working on a show a comedy show directing a friend who is an Indian adoptee to Indian parents thank love but to an Indian adoptee to Indian parents and she grew up in Thailand and she moved to Australia for love she fell in love with a Somali Australian woman right so the children let's find out but the interesting thing is for me my experience from being a young person growing up in Australia where and my grandfather is quite a famous South African is the first coloured statesman in South Africa coloured being the term they used for mixed race and Malay people with Malay Indian backgrounds so I only realised I was very Chinese when my mum said wanted me to create her you know email address is Santoy Leong and I was like why and she said well that's my Chinese name and I was like I thought we were South African living in Australia and then I find out no no where mum and dad are both mixed race and then um the recently I was working a lot with the South Asian community and going to a whole event and and I realised I hadn't really done a lot of inquiry into the South Asian part of my family which is my other grandmother's side and I said to mum what is our Indian heritage and she goes no one will tell you and I said okay so it's really interesting within the culture of the cultures of the cultures is this stuff that we all of these weird hierarchies and um you know absolutely you know entangled with colonisation so for me I'm like I guess the defining factor is Dutch the Dutch the Dutch did everything that moved all these people together and so I really find that from such a young age I I it was thrust in front of me you know it's why we don't ask white men in a time of crisis for help with a terrible in a time of crisis or adversity because they've never experienced it so they haven't had to think or be good at it or get expert at the sort of responsive um thoughts and actions you you need to have it's just a fact it's just a fact you know it just is because when you've lived a life in multiplicity and in in simultaneous realities it you develop a whole bunch of different skills and this sort of speaks to this idea of also how do you self help seems to me a little um linear a little a to b to z you know and I think Audre Lorde is also a touchstone of mine like absolutely when I think I'm having it hard I was like yeah but I'm not a lesbian woman working in the late 60s and working in university settings like and then whenever I think of these women and I you know when we get afraid to speak I've also worked in the Australian comedy scene which is like the UK plus you know even more even more um I think small mindedness because we're in a village out here so to be pushing up against it and to be visible in those spaces you know it does come at a great cost but it is the writing and definitely the writing in the poetry I don't kind of even think of from those eras of anyone getting close to writing self help but Audre Lorde has been my bible and my self help um you know philosopher from thought from the moment I discovered her in my mid 20s you know so I think that it's so interesting when we begin to break into the nuance and the specificities of of our intersectional spaces but then at the other at the end of the day I also I can't leave I'm not living as a you know like polypansexual um queer multi race person I am myself and I'm the centre of my world and only when people begin to impinge on on those notions do I have to get um you know articulate about it in in response to whiteness but in response to other women and femmes and non-binary people of colour I feel like it's a completely different experience and I feel centred in it and I feel warm in it and I feel safe in it yeah I mean it's uh it's really interesting what you're saying and that uh I guess sometimes in terms of how we might be presented to the public or rather how the public and other people see us um will frame a perception of who we are when actually there are all of these complex realities and intersectionalities underpinning us all the time and I do think that we always have the right to change we always have the right to reframe our statements reframe our identities and evolve as women of colour and even though we might be um framing ourselves as a particular thing or a particular seemingly binary you know racial category um at one stage doesn't mean that within it is a whole range of different ethnicities and complexities and languages as as Mona has spoken about you know I think I don't I mean essentially I don't think that you know people should take us for granted and actually it's about having a kind of open engagement and an open approach which allows for people to be seen in general you know and and it's really lovely that we're having this conversation one of the one of the things that I was aware of with with people within South Africa is that whole range of multifarious ethnicities and backgrounds and languages and different ways of being you know it is so diverse it's one of the most diverse places um as is Trinidad where my mother comes from you know and there are many many others I can't possibly name within this time as well as the fact that the Chinese particularly those of hacker origin have been found throughout the world anyway including many parts of South Africa and the Caribbean so you know like all of this is just music to my ears because it's stuff that I kind of knew or at least was exposed to when I was young and now it's just so nice that a lot of a lot more people are talking about it talking about these things that I knew that somehow for me were like my family secrets you know and so I wanted to ask you another question in terms of a given everything that we've discussed given the fact that it isn't just about us receiving the self-help industry but the fact that self-help has often been part of our lives but also you know we are innately without getting a kind of pay cut or a commission we are influencing the self-help industry and the market what types of self-help should we be focusing on nowadays given the current environmental political and socio-economic circumstances we're in um so I think that when I first of all the publishing industry is in the way that it is currently framed doesn't reflect I don't think reflects me and doesn't reflect many many women of color and that's been the case for a long long time so it doesn't it's not surprising that self-help the self-help industry was also not reflective of that but I think that just just like a really kind of breezy look at the kind of what was going on in you know in the self-help industry over the last couple of weeks where I've sort of been looking at what's around what I think would be maybe useful would be to have something that doesn't doesn't kind of assume a kind of neutrality actually because the books that focus on the individual forget that there are deeply entrenched practices and structures there's misogyny there's patriarchal structures and of course there's huge issues around racist structures and it doesn't assume those at all so when you are going to those texts you you feel as if you're on a completely you feel like you're on Mars you know you're like yes but what about all the structures so I think that that's why I think that's what really turns me off because I think well you can't possibly think that we can resolve this without also thinking about even thinking or touching on some of the issues around inequality financial hardship even resilience this idea of resilience you know which is also a kind of a theme actually underpinning a lot of self-help which is that you know we can build resilience how you know financial resilience is a big thing you cannot be an art in the artists that I know that are fine that are okay mentally mentally stable and financially okay it's because they have had resilient finances because their families have had money to be able to support them so but those are the things we don't really discuss this is not neutral so let's not pretend that it is neutral let's actually start from being truthful about where we are where that starting point is and then we can start talking about you know how it is actually to be a woman of color walking down the street is different our experiences are different we're exposed to different things there's a different type of vigilance that we have and I know because I speak to my friends about it all the time it's a very different experience so let's not pretend this is neutral safety for us is different um self-care for us is different you know applying for jobs is different being on a comedy circuit is different let's just not pretend that that it's neutral so I guess something that that provokes those questions actually is probably an anti-self self-help book but I think we need what is it Audre Lorde says you can't use the master's tools we need other tools to battle this stuff and I think that what we have at the moment I think we can't just take what we have at the moment and use them I think we need to think about other ways and other strategies that will help us all can I follow on from that I I agree with everything that you've just said and I think if anything I'd like to take that a step further and say we need to move away from the whole concept of self-help self-help in itself especially the you know the American industry that Mona mentioned the 10 billion dollars a year that is designed to take advantage of people's weaknesses or their insecurities or everything that um it's almost designed to keep people down in a way because it's not in the self-help industry's interests to actually help people not need them anymore and so I would like to say I think what we need to look at is completely new ways of working with each other whereby self-help it's a very individualized concept there's something wrong with you but I can help you and I can help you but I don't want you to help you I'm going to help both of you and what I think we need to do is about networking it's about coming together it's about it's about group help it's about identity help it's it's not about one book to the many it's about the many to the many and I think that that's what I'd like to see I'd like to see us reinvent how we work together because really we there we need to lift each other up that that and that if there's one thing that we've learned it's that the patriarchy has survived this long by dividing and conquering by and that's certainly what happened in comedy is that women were pitted against each other we never wanted to see another woman on the bill we were taught that that was competition whereas men there could be four men on the bill and I and I marveled at it at the time going how and never once thought how does one white guy follow another white guy on stage how do they talk about different things we accepted that and yet when I saw another woman I would panic and go she's going to talk about women's things what am I going to talk about if she talks about women's things we'll both talk about the same thing of course we have so many things to speak about and I think that that we need to actively work against that divide and conquer and we need to come together so everybody has something to give and everybody has something to receive and that's what I want to see is a new system of network that lifts everybody up at the same time because that's what's going to achieve what should always have been the balance in the first place thank you Rhea and I think that kind of aspect of the solidarity is so crucial particularly in these times that we all need to recognize each other rather than you know see all the differences which is often encouraged I suppose for me I wouldn't want there to be not I'm suggesting you're saying this but I wouldn't want there to be like a focus on dismantling something because I think our focus is around what are the assets and the talents and the gifts that we currently have both within ourselves and in our groups and the various constellations that we find ourselves in and that we need to be in and how can we bring those out more in a way in which we then don't need to go to these so-called gurus and self-help marketers you know because I think as we've all been saying we all have it here it's just that it's currently not recognized and it's not being marketed to the hills you know which is which is something to do with obviously the power structures that are there but it's also perhaps that we're not conversing amongst each other to recognize and to amplify these gifts and these assets that we have you know like I'm thinking about the avocado the avocado is so prevalent within the Caribbean and you have so many different varieties of big fat juicy avocados and then suddenly a few years ago there was this whole thing of like it becoming a craze and then becoming a superfood but it was never associated with the countries in which it originated it suddenly became like this kind of western thing and then there was this aspect of having like an arvo hand whereby you would you know you would cut your hand through delicately slicing into an avocado and I'm just amazed with how these aspects of particularities of cultures particularly from marginalized communities then get appropriated and then get completely removed from the cultures in which they originated and I just feel that's kind of been happening with self-help and Candy do you have any thoughts about if there are areas that we should be thinking about? Look I do think white men should continue to try and improve themselves I think that they should do lots of self-help on listening and not speaking words I was at a beautiful fundraiser last night for our first Indigenous member in my local community who's a queer Aboriginal woman and I don't know why this white fella that had helped organize was on the mic more than anyone else and it was a karaoke night too and he just sang a lot of songs and I I don't even want to do the labor of saying dude you need to shut up but I think if there's an area that you know I'm happy for the billions of dollars to go in if like white men shutting up whatever that that the wedge of self-help I definitely think that should continue on the on the tip of of us I'm everything that everybody's discussing is exactly the frameworks and the ecosystems that I've been building you know my great dream is to well it will be I'll be the first you know black female led production house production studio including screen so I've had my theater and live space in Australia and just I also think a lot about absolutely yeah buying each other's books and and products and and you know more Malcolm X than than Martin in that way of absolutely supporting and even doing comedy festival at the moment what I'm very aware of in Australia currently is the concept that you know our comics of color and artists of color are trying to get the same audience that's always gone to comedy festival which is a very white audience and a lot of men it's like going to the gilded balloon at Edinburgh Gardens where you're like first of all all of these children of age and also why do they all have short back and sides and a preppy accent like you know like the coding around who's allowed to be somewhere or not is the thing so I think the main space or work I'd love to do is keep working with you know diverse women and femmes of color and non-binary people of color to hijack all the spaces whatever that takes that's what I'm interested in getting them sent to stage whether it's commercial or independent I'm really interested in that and then just getting those audiences new for us that's a new audience so I've experienced it as an artist you know doing really well and all of a sudden there's not a person of color in the crowd and I think this is weird because this is not the people I made this work for and it just reminds me of class and the elitism of of the industry so I feel like it takes lots lots and lots of visibility a lot of in our case a lot of the cultural gatekeepers to move across so I'm like yep ready at a large Robin D'Angelo go hard dudes and then pass the mic and you know become an accomplice I don't need allyship all of the time what I need are accomplices which is you know you watch the door while I am to the safe so more of those roles of of moving right back and I and I guess that's that's I always think about I think the white community do need self-help I think you know everybody else we're looking at simply in a way handling the power that's coming I do feel like we're on a trajectory of you know of great things shifting and changing and the ability to take it up in a radical way is my dream in a radical and mischievous way yeah thank you candy yeah I mean as someone who when growing up there were a few self-help books that I'd say were very useful in terms of I you know I read really widely and knowledge and learning about different cultures environments was really important to me but I know what you're saying about beyond those kind of books and those kind of wisdoms that we you know that one might have found useful when growing up there is something about the industry and just the endless kind of merciless marketing of it but also as you say this kind of aspect of almost like the the kind of preacher person kind of syndrome whereas you know if you have like a wonderful voice and wonderful charisma you can essentially you know land up with a learjet after a week's worth of offering your kind of self-help wisdoms you know which I find really problematic so we're going to go to the last part which is really about are there any final words on the topic that you'd like to leave our audience with I suppose if there's anything that's been really resonant for me it's the saying by Maya Angelou which is people will forget what you did people will forget what you said but they'll never forget the way you made them feel and I've always gone back to that quote in terms of those kind of aspects from childhood to today where certain people have made me feel a different way a particular way and it's only in retrospect that I kind of feel that I should have thought more about my gut instincts and my and my hunches at the time rather than the kind of formal way that you encourage to be around people and that's really stuck with me so is there anything else you'd like to share um Kandi um look uh I think I was thinking a lot when you first asked me this question it came into my mind there was a book that I picked up as I flew back from an Edinburgh festival and I was supposed to be spending some time with my mum and we were we were living in different states and she then was flying in the air because my grandmother passed and the book was called Go Go Mama and it was about grandmothers and mummies from across the continent of Africa and Sally Sara who's actually an Australian journalist had written it but there was something that hit me as that for that as that young woman which was um the woman they call the vagina woman she uh has won an over peace prize for protecting young girls around genital mutilation um her name's Agnes and she she's Kenyon she's from the Maasai tribes and she used to take a wooden cut out of her vagina with her to show girls of what a um you know a mutilated vagina looks like and vulva looks like and the reason I bring her up is because I saw in the book she talks about and she's laughing and laughing she went to America to get her prize and she's watching American TV and it's like Oprah and Dr. Phil and all this stuff and she's sitting there going why are all these wealthy white people so distressed what have they got to feel upset about and she said she just couldn't understand it the kids were okay they had clothes on their backs they had houses and I I'd always thought about it ever since because I thought the experience of you know really adversity really is different depending on you know what you've gone through where you've come from and for me even in this pandemic I didn't need a global pandemic to remind me that my family is some of the most vulnerable people in the world you know it hits South Africa really hard and it's hit members of my elderly family in Australia too and I do see a really strong intersection around health and well-being and colonization around diabetes and the way we talk about food and health with people of colour of course like everywhere in the world diabetes is disproportionately affecting black and brown people in Australia and South Asian and East Asian and North Asian people and yet all of the products and everything are aimed at white people I have not seen or heard of a black person in the health and wellness which is intersecting with with you know self-help spaces and what I realised was it's cultural we're just not going to listen to white people when it comes to our food and our bodies and I really feel like that's a place of revolution that can begin to really come together in how you know COVID's really outlined some of these underlying health issues for people of colour in my family and that's the sort of stuff where I just think there's nothing else to you know but people's health and good living and that quote from Audre Lorde of taking care of yourself being in a political act it's so true it's super duper true and I just wanted to make sure that I remember to talk about that because I think being from the diaspora you know when I hear people saying oh I wasn't really affected by COVID or there's a lot of that in my neighbourhoods the privilege is so thick that I'm aware that it's those of us that live as diasporic people that live in multiple spaces and sites at once that are the seers and that are the storytellers and the purveyors of parts of culture that people cannot even reckon with you know so there is real a really important space for the voice of that in our current situation and particularly for you know folks living in other spots but also back on the continent as to how we can get stronger have better healthcare and all of those sorts of things so it's just an area that I feel like one of the greatest yeah one of the greatest flips I'd like to see because I do think it's about access so I'd also probably love to see it before just lots and lots of people are colouring this space you know for people who needed on that vibration I just want to see us everywhere really. Thank you Candy and any final words Mona? So I just really want to just push the the books because I think that books are really important and I think that they're just because we don't read self-help books or whatever that is in that genre it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be reading I think reading is so important and I think that just going back to Candy's point I think that it's really important that we read the books from women of colour and remember how hard it would have been for that woman of colour because we're not in neutral neutral space to have published that book just remember that so centre that those books read them don't let them be on the peripheries centre those books and frame them frameworks like Claudia Rankine as a self-care book you know a book that you can use that's useful I mean that's one of the things that I find about the poets that we read people like Audre Lorde you know they are useful they are actually useful in your in your day in your daily life and they will give you a kind of a kind of that protective armour having that having some of these these these poets and writers alongside you so that would be kind of my kind of like conclusions really around this incredible space about talking about something that I thought was you know and when I first went to it I kind of felt like there was there was so little to say but actually I realised there's so much to say about other things regarding how we can take perspectives as women that we have a women of colour that we have a vantage point that other people don't have so and using that vantage point and using it and making work from it is what I'm interested in thank you Mona and Rhea any last words you'd like to share yes I think I'd like to send a message out to everybody that's on the the spectrum of people that were talked about whether you're on the gender spectrum or the the women of colour spectrum if you identify in any way or you felt that that it's because of your identity that you aren't being spoken to by the self-help industry for whatever reason that is or for whatever aspect of yourself that that is I I want you to remember that that's made you automatically stronger because as Mona says we are not in a neutral space and therefore you are already better than you think you are so as you start on square one of your self-help journey before you even come across the different tools and things that are out that that are available to you to imbibe I want you to remember that from where you stand now because because you have been identified in our current society as other you are already stronger and I and that's something that you need to very much remember as you start along your journey as you look for things you know as you look for for opportunities and you look for things to read that are by people that you identify as or identify with that you are already a step ahead of maybe some of your counterparts that are not on the spectrum that we are on and that took me a long time to learn because I had to run twice as fast and be three times as funny in order to get the same opportunities as for example a white male counterpart because it was much easier and safer at the time for bookers to book a white male comedian than it was to book a woman of colour who also sometimes sang songs that was way too much it meant that in the end I was actually way ahead but it takes a long time to actually stop and realise that about yourself so I would say to everybody out there remember that in order to to live in this non-neutral space you automatically have to be better and I want you to carry that with you before you start on your journey. Thank you Ria, thank you Candy and thank you Mona yeah and and I'd like to add to that as well that there's a lot of talk about looking for ways to be reflected but I'd also like to add that sometimes it isn't possible to find people who will reflect you particularly visually you know sometimes that just won't be possible but that uniqueness as as Ria's suggested is is very much a strength and it is a you and it's a uniqueness and and please run with it because I think we can often be looking for those things that aren't there but actually what we need to do is just feel comfortable within our own space and also appreciate as well that what we've been saying about self-help is it is there it's always been there and it's been amongst us and how can we bring it out a bit more so you've heard from Ria Lina, Mona Arshi, Candy Bowers and myself, Melanie Abrams and I want to thank you for attending and take care of yourselves. We've come to the end of the event thanks to Jonah Albert and the British Library, to Unique Media, to the British Council team particularly Anna Haye, Tom Curtis and also the Renaissance One team especially Sara Dara and Rachelle Saunders. This has been a Renaissance One and British Library event as part of This Is Who We Are within the British Council's UK Australia season and please check out the wider This Is Who We Are programme on the Renaissance One website which includes contributions from Bernardine Everisto, Maya Chowdhury, Athena Kubelainu, Ask Asian Aunty, Naomi Wasambili and much more.