‘If something is repeated often enough, then it crystallises itself as truth in the cultural consciousness. It took me a long time to unlearn and discard the mythic images that the old country was trying to sell to me. I’m sure there are still residual traces. See how I dare not invoke its name.’
'An exploration of identity across global and digital territories, Cher Tan’s essays of bend and break boundaries to resist easy categorisation.
'Peripathetic contains work that is self-reflexive, wry, intelligent and restless. It includes a lyric essay on the tropes surrounding the cultural signifiers of ‘normal’ vs ‘weird’; an extended critique on the tensions the term ‘authenticity’ presents; a meditation on the artist as influencer; the existential tensions that are connected to ‘performance’ in everyday life; and an autofictive essay on Tan’s 20-year history of ‘unskilled’ labour that prises apart contemporary ideas of class and capital.
'The collection is as non-linear as Tan’s work and life: traversing subjects from technology to late capitalism, interrogating power, borders and capital while considering the ever-evolving facets of identity, self, and culture in a hyper-real world. In Peripathetic, Tan has created a collection of essays that blends cultural criticism, experimental writing, autotheory, (inter)net writing and literary memoir, bringing us new ways of viewing familiar artistic territory.' (Publication summary)
'A debut collection of essays that track unbelonging and displacement.'
'In her debut essay collection, Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging, Cher Tan turns her maverick attention to the possibility and power of resistance. Tan’s essays rise out of a defiant, DIY sensibility and sustain a dissident energy. They examine how meaning, purpose and change can be wrought within – and in opposition to – our digitally networked, late-capitalist world.' (Introduction)
'Debut Spotlight: Cher Tan’s essay collection Peripathetic resists the clichés of internet writing by leaning into the propulsive and boundary-crossing nature of the digital, the literary and IRL.' (Introduction)
'Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For May that debut is Peripathetic by Cher Tan (NewSouth Books), a collection of luminous and inventive essays that look beyond the performance of everyday life, seeking answers that continually elude. Paying homage to the many outsider artists, punks, drop-outs and rogue philosophers who came before, this book is about the resistance of orthodoxies—even when it feels impossible.' (Introduction)
'In her debut essay collection, Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging, Cher Tan turns her maverick attention to the possibility and power of resistance. Tan’s essays rise out of a defiant, DIY sensibility and sustain a dissident energy. They examine how meaning, purpose and change can be wrought within – and in opposition to – our digitally networked, late-capitalist world.' (Introduction)
'A debut collection of essays that track unbelonging and displacement.'
'Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For May that debut is Peripathetic by Cher Tan (NewSouth Books), a collection of luminous and inventive essays that look beyond the performance of everyday life, seeking answers that continually elude. Paying homage to the many outsider artists, punks, drop-outs and rogue philosophers who came before, this book is about the resistance of orthodoxies—even when it feels impossible.' (Introduction)
'Debut Spotlight: Cher Tan’s essay collection Peripathetic resists the clichés of internet writing by leaning into the propulsive and boundary-crossing nature of the digital, the literary and IRL.' (Introduction)
