Encountering the other: multiculturalism in Asian Australian women's fiction

Wilson, J. M. (2014) Encountering the other: multiculturalism in Asian Australian women's fiction. Paper presented to: European Association for Studies on Australia (EASA) Conference: Encountering Australia: Transcultural Conversations, Monash University, Prato, Italy, 2014-09-26.

Information

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Abstract:	In 2003 Tsen Ling Khoo pointed out that a new generation of Asian-Australians would soon be hailed by a body of diasporic texts that would reflect the experience of living in a white society as a minority group (108). What this experience might consist of as white Australia’s attitudes toward race relations have shifted from negative stereotyping to reify racial divisions and propagate a masked racism, a move described as ‘acceptance through difference, inclusion by virtue of otherness’, is both varied and predictable (Ang, 2001 146). In contemporary fiction written by second and third generation migrants contestations of selfhood, origin and identity experienced by hyphenated Asian-Australians, are represented through recurring narrative tropes: incomplete belonging encourages the multiracial protagonist to other the Asian ‘other’ in an attempt to diminish social alienation and difference: but there is also exoticising of such subjects as ’other’ by white Australians; return visits to the original Asian homeland in the hope of redressing the absences and tensions constitutive of migration reinforce the lack of belonging to either place. With reference to novels by authors like Simone Lazaroo, Michelle de Kretser and Alice Pung, read as strategic interventions into identity-based politics, this paper asks how recent Asian-Australian writing maps new cultural coordinates in the national landscape and negotiates interstitial positions between the white Australian present and the Asian heritage.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Australia-Asian writing, Michele de Krester, Hsu Ming Teo, not-at-homeness, diaspora, hyphenated identities, multiculturalism, ambivalence, white Australia
Creators:	Wilson, Janet M
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:	Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date:	26 September 2014
Date Type:	Publication
Journal or Publication Title:	European Association for Studies on Australia (EASA) Conference: Encountering Australia: Transcultural Conversations
Event Title:	European Association for Studies on Australia (EASA) Conference: Encountering Australia: Transcultural Conversations
Event Dates:	2014-09-26
Event Location:	Monash University, Prato, Italy
Event Type:	Other
Language:	English
Status:	Published / Disseminated
Refereed:	No
URI:	http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/11269

Actions (login required)

Edit Item

Altmetric