Book Review: Sidesplitter: How To Be From Two Worlds at Once by Phil Wang (Malaysia)

I have an Audible subscription and often struggle to choose my monthly book as I find so many narrators really irritating (mea culpa). Having enjoyed this audio book, written and narrated by British/Malaysian comic Phil Wang, I’m thinking work by comedians might be the way to go.

The book ticked a few boxes for me in terms of subject matter. Wang has a British mother and Chinese-Malaysian father, and although born in the UK he moved to Malaysia within weeks of his birth and was brought up and educated in Sabah, Borneo, only moving to the UK in his late teens.

I love a culture-shock story, and I’m hugely interested in the stories of those who are multi-lingual or who have been compelled to adapt to a new society, whether willingly as a traveller or student (eg Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton), or through less fortunate circumstances, perhaps as a refugee (eg the classic kids book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr).

Wang pokes fun at the idiosyncracies of both British and Malaysian culture. Malaysian cuisine sounds amazing (except the deserts), and made we want to seek out a restaurant pronto. British food is always an easy target (although has improved immeasurably), but he makes some funny observations about the national aversion to flavour – unless it’s English mustard or Marmite – and the strange way that, considering the UK is an island nation, so many people are squeamish about eating fish.

One chapter covers language. Wang speaks English, Malay (“relatively easy to learn and mercifully hard to forget”) and (some) Mandarin (easy to forget, as if it was an “extremely long password” or “designed specifically to punish those who would dare to leave China and curse them with muteness if they ever returned”). He gives a hilarious account of attempting to film in China with a more-limited-than-remembered vocabulary. Most Malaysians know both Malay and English, and many know more, and being multi-lingual is very much the norm. In the UK, of course, some people seem to almost take pride in not knowing another language: where’s the motivation?

This book covers some serious topics and is informative amid the humour. Wang discusses the inconsistencies of colonialism, Malaysia’s route to independence, the difficulties of having a dual identity, the irrationalities of cancel culture (“culture is appropriation”) and his experiences of casual racism in the UK.

But the book also made me laugh out loud at frequent intervals, while Phil Wang’s delivery lifted the content, and I suspect made it more immediately engaging than it would be on paper.