'There is a Turkish saying that one’s home is not where one is born, but where one grows full – doğduğun yer, doyduğun yer. Mixing the personal and political, Eda Gunaydin’s bold and innovative writing explores race, class, gender and violence, and Turkish diaspora – both in Australia and round the world – in her compelling debut.
'Equal parts piercing, tender and funny, this book takes us from an overworked and underpaid café job in Western Sydney, the mother-daughter tradition of sharing a meal in the local kebab shop, a night clubbing with Turkish students, to the legacies of family migration, and intergenerational trauma within a history of violence and political activism.
'For readers of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Durga Chew-Bose, Eda Gunaydin seeks to unsettle neat descriptions of migration and diaspora. How should we address a racist remark on the 2AM night ride bus? What does the Turkish diaspora of Auburn in Western Sydney have in common with Neukölln in Berlin? And how can we look to past suffering to imagine a new future?' (Publication summary)
'Twelve essays explore inheritance, family, identity and place through the lens of Turkish-Australian culture.'
'What could be more humiliating than to write and be read, to be thought about and perceived by strangers? And then the worst: to be dissected, publicly and openly, for all the things we dedicated ourselves as teenagers to hiding? Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth.' (Introduction)
'In every piece of writing, I am always looking for that moment that forces me to put the words down, close my eyes and take a deep breath. A single moment of reflection that allows me to appreciate what the author is saying, but also why they are saying it. In Eda Gunaydin's 'Root and Branch', I found that moment in the essay titled 'Kalitsal'.' (Introduction)
'Eda Gunaydin’s collection of essays, Root & Branch, centres on migration, class, guilt, and legacy. It joins the surge of memoir-as-début by millennial writers, who interrogate the personal via the political. Gunaydin, whose family immigrated to Australia from Turkey, grew up in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney – home to a historically migrant and working-class demographic. We learn that her father, a bricklayer, has been the household’s sole income provider as the health of her mother, Besra, meant that she ‘never had a job in this country except cleaning’. Gunaydin meanwhile accepted off-the-books employment in hospitality and retail until she was able to ‘crack into a white-collar position’ at the university where she is completing her PhD. This left her hyper-conscious of intergenerational mobility and class disparity. She worries about what it means ‘to instantly unlock an easier life … while others continu[e] to struggle’. Those others being, namely, her family, whose Blacktown postcode means limited access to adequately funded essential services, reliable public transport, and affordable housing. It is a concern driving much of the book – how to reconcile gratitude with guilt, particularly when Gunaydin cannot divorce the opportunities available to her in life from her family’s sacrifices.' (Introduction)
'What could be more humiliating than to write and be read, to be thought about and perceived by strangers? And then the worst: to be dissected, publicly and openly, for all the things we dedicated ourselves as teenagers to hiding? Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth.' (Introduction)
'In every piece of writing, I am always looking for that moment that forces me to put the words down, close my eyes and take a deep breath. A single moment of reflection that allows me to appreciate what the author is saying, but also why they are saying it. In Eda Gunaydin's 'Root and Branch', I found that moment in the essay titled 'Kalitsal'.' (Introduction)
