Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Sexing the Banana : Michele Lee’s Banana Girl
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Underlying the desirability and fetishization of Asian women are the objectified representation of Asian femininity and colonial fantasies of power. Represented in polarizing archetypes—the subservient China doll, the ferocious dragon lady, the ingénue schoolgirl—Asian women are marked as either hypersexualized or devoid of sexuality, none of which takes account of the agency of Asian women. Born into a Hmong refugee family, Michele Lee is a Melbourne-based writer, playwright, and emerging theater artist. In her exploration of the Hmong identity, Lee juxtaposes her sexual adventures as a young and modern artist with her recognition of her ethnic and cultural background as a way of understanding her dual identities. Michele Lee’s Banana Girl provides a narrative that does not conform to the sexualized stereotypes or deploy white, mainstream feminist models. Instead, the author transgresses Western stereotypes attributed to Asian women and subverts hierarchical and racialized dichotomy, at the same time rebelling against patriarchal authority and Asian family values, breaking the taboo of writing about her own sexual adventures, questioning the blatant double standard regarding sexual morality, and creating her own narrative of a second-generation Asian Australian woman who seeks to find how interconnections of race, sexuality, and culture have contributed in the constructions of her identity.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Antipodes Articulating Southeast Asia and the Antipodes vol. 33 no. 2 2019 21208476 2019 periodical issue 'This issue goes to press ten months into the year of living with COVID-19, which is nearly a full year after the date on the volume’s cover. Part of me wanted to be coy about this delay, simply elide the disjunction between the published date and the actual publication. But to tell the truth, it seems more important to acknowledge where we are and how we are. Antipodes has been running behind schedule for the past few issues, and the patience of our contributors and subscribers has been much appreciated. The delays have yielded some fortuitous timing, such as the publication of Soren Tae Smith’s thoughtful piece on the mosque bombing in Christchurch in the June 2019 issue, apparently just a few months later than the event (although actually a year delayed). “This Is a Difficult Piece to Write” was both a timely and an atemporal reflection on the literal and figurative tragedy of a world that seems increasingly divided at the same time that it finds unity in disasters, naturally and humanly induced. So perhaps it is fitting that Antipodes lags behind time, for now, offering an opportunity to reflect on the present in the past' (Brenda Machosky, Editorial introduction) 2019 pg. 332-346
Last amended 1 Sep 2021 10:59:28
332-346 Sexing the Banana : Michele Lee’s Banana Girlsmall AustLit logo Antipodes
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