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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week, we choose three pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Oskredington

and on the podcast this week. Cindy Yu on Britain's Invisible East Asians. Lea McClaren on the

truth about single motherhood and Hannah Toomes reads her notes on eating alone. Up first, Cindy Yu.

This week, Michelle Yeo became the first Asian to win best actress at the Oscars,

and not by playing a wise mentor, a martial arts fighter or an exotic villain, those classic Asian

pigeonholes. No, the 60-year-old played a struggling immigrant mum in the mind-bending film

Everything Everywhere All At Once, which also won Best Picture and Best Original

Screenplay. Yo, who is Chinese Malaysian, dedicated her acceptance speech to all the little

boys and girls who look like me. You don't need to be little to appreciate the moment, though.

For much of my life, Asians have been firmly out of the spotlight. But in the past few years, there's been a noticeable change in Hollywood, with far more films portraying East Asians made by talented East Asian directors.

I've watched these films keenly, their stories helping me come to terms with my own identity and the difficulties of being a first-generation immigrant.

Here in the UK, East Asians don't get so much of screen time.

After my family left China for London when I was nine, I seldom saw faces like mine on the telly. Over time, representation of other minorities has got better, but it seems that

East Asians are still largely missing from public life. How many British East Asian politicians or newsreaders can you think of?

Or actresses or novelists?

There are more than half a million of us in the UK,

but you can probably count the number of public figures of this heritage on two hands.

There's Alexa Chun and Gemma Chan, a couple of TV chefs and one or two MPs,

...