Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 An Introvert’s Guide To Surviving An Arab Family of Extroverts
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'I lie on the lush cold grass. It’s familiar and safe, a sensation I have found difficult to retrieve in my adult years. The afternoon rays of light break through the grove of trees as the sound of birds sipping softly on hanging fruit creates a soothing hum. The grass is long enough for me to fade away to watch my own private slideshow of morphing clouds. I feel the damp earth beneath me, breathe in the fresh air that flows freely into my lungs. Nostalgia for a simpler time of making up storylines, of dancing bears and fire-breathing dragons high up in the sky. What I yearn for is a place of uninterrupted peace. Somehow this is more than memory, it is home.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sydney Review of Books September 2020 20128404 2020 periodical issue 2020
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Second City : Essays from Western Sydney Catriona Menzies-Pike (editor), Luke Carman (editor), Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2021 21162291 2021 anthology essay

    'Second City is a showcase of the diverse literary talents that make Sydney’s Western Suburbs such a fertile region for writers.

    'Beginning with Prime Minister’s Award-winning author Felicity Castagna’s warning about the dangers of cultural labelling, this collection of essays takes resistance against conformity and uncritical consensus as one of its central themes. From Aleesha Paz’s call to recognise the revolutionary act of public knitting to Frances An’s ‘counter-revolutionary’ attack on the repressive clichés of ‘women of colour’, Sheila Ngoc Pham on the importance of education in crossing social and ethnic boundaries, and May Ngo’s cosmopolitan take on the significance of the shopping mall, the collection offers complex and humane insights into the dynamic relationships between class, culture, family, and love. Eda Gunaydin’s ‘Second City’, from which this collection takes its title, is both a political autobiography and an elegy for a Parramatta that has been lost to gentrification and redevelopment. Zohra Aly and Raaza Jamshed confront the prejudices which oppose Muslim identity in the suburbs, the one in the building of a mosque, the other in the naming of her child. Rawah Arja writes in a comic vein on the complexity of the Lebanese-Australian family, Martin Reyes on the overlay of experiences as a hike in the Dharawal National Park recalls an earlier trek in Bangkong Kahoy Valley in the Phillipines. Finally, Yumna Kassab’s essay on Jorge Luis Borges reminds us that Western Sydney writing can be represented by no single form, opinion, style, poetics, or state of mind.

    'The cultural backgrounds represented here include Cambodian, Pakistani, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Italian, Filipino, South American, Iraqi and Turkish.'

    Source : publisher's blurb

    Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2021
Last amended 20 Dec 2023 11:21:40
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