image of person or book cover 1090262719360542769.jpg
Image sourced from Peril : Asian - Australian Arts and Culture: 16/17
y separately published work icon Banana Girl single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Banana Girl
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Michele Lee describes herself as the ‘fence-sitting’ middle child in a large Hmong-Australian family. Banana Girl is the explosive and poignant memoir of her rites of passage. Sexy, irreverent and nuanced, Lee isn’t afraid to lay herself and her relationships bare. Intimacy in an on-line world, sexual adventures and Gen Y yearnings, turning thirty as an Asian-Australian woman in inner city Melbourne, and the travails of becoming an artist, all capture Lee’s riveting gaze. The result is a book that is erotic, witty and revealing, a gutsy true story of self-acceptance that takes hold and won’t let go.' (Publisher's blurb)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Yarraville, Footscray - Maribyrnong area, Melbourne - West, Melbourne, Victoria,: Transit Lounge , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 1090262719360542769.jpg
      Image sourced from Peril : Asian - Australian Arts and Culture: 16/17
      Extent: 256 p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published November 2013
      ISBN: 9781921924552 (pbk)

Works about this Work

Sexing the Banana : Michele Lee’s Banana Girl Zhuoling Tian , Wenche Ommundsen , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 33 no. 2 2019; (p. 332-346)

'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)

Bold Walks in the Inner North : Melbourne Women’s Memoir after Jill Meagher Amy Mead , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: M/C Journal , vol. 20 no. 6 2017;

The author investigates 'how texts written by women writers based in Melbourne’s inner north can latently serve as counter narratives to this discourse, demonstrating how urban public space can be benign, even joyful, rather than foreboding for women. Cultural narratives that promote the vulnerability of women oppress urban freedoms; this paper will use these narratives solely as a catalyst to explore literary texts by women that enact contrary narratives that map a city not by vicarious trauma, but instead by the rich complexity of women’s lives in their twenties and thirties.'

The paper examines 'two memoirs set primarily in Melbourne’s inner north: Michele Lee’s Banana Girl (2013) and Lorelai Vashti’s Dress, Memory: A memoir of my twenties in dresses (2014). In these texts, the inner north serves as ‘true north’, a magnetic destination for this stage of life, an opening into an experiential, exciting adult world, rather than a place haunted. Indeed, while Lee and Vashti occupy the same geographical space that Meagher did, these texts do not speak to the crime.'

Source: Author's introduction.

Them Spitting Eels Shu-Ling Chua , 2016 single work prose
— Appears in: Peril : An Asian-Australian Journal , June no. 24 2016;
Two Identities, One Story Hamish Boland-Rudder , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 February 2014; (p. 10)

— Review of Banana Girl Michele Lee , 2013 single work autobiography
Book Review : ‘Banana Girl’ by Michele Lee Thuy Linh Nguyen , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Peril : Asian-Australian Arts and Culture , no. 16-17 2013;

— Review of Banana Girl Michele Lee , 2013 single work autobiography
Review : Banana Girl Sara Savage , 2013 single work
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December 2013 - January 2014 no. 357 2013-2014; (p. 68)

— Review of Banana Girl Michele Lee , 2013 single work autobiography
Book Review : ‘Banana Girl’ by Michele Lee Thuy Linh Nguyen , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Peril : Asian-Australian Arts and Culture , no. 16-17 2013;

— Review of Banana Girl Michele Lee , 2013 single work autobiography
Two Identities, One Story Hamish Boland-Rudder , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 February 2014; (p. 10)

— Review of Banana Girl Michele Lee , 2013 single work autobiography
Them Spitting Eels Shu-Ling Chua , 2016 single work prose
— Appears in: Peril : An Asian-Australian Journal , June no. 24 2016;
Bold Walks in the Inner North : Melbourne Women’s Memoir after Jill Meagher Amy Mead , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: M/C Journal , vol. 20 no. 6 2017;

The author investigates 'how texts written by women writers based in Melbourne’s inner north can latently serve as counter narratives to this discourse, demonstrating how urban public space can be benign, even joyful, rather than foreboding for women. Cultural narratives that promote the vulnerability of women oppress urban freedoms; this paper will use these narratives solely as a catalyst to explore literary texts by women that enact contrary narratives that map a city not by vicarious trauma, but instead by the rich complexity of women’s lives in their twenties and thirties.'

The paper examines 'two memoirs set primarily in Melbourne’s inner north: Michele Lee’s Banana Girl (2013) and Lorelai Vashti’s Dress, Memory: A memoir of my twenties in dresses (2014). In these texts, the inner north serves as ‘true north’, a magnetic destination for this stage of life, an opening into an experiential, exciting adult world, rather than a place haunted. Indeed, while Lee and Vashti occupy the same geographical space that Meagher did, these texts do not speak to the crime.'

Source: Author's introduction.

Sexing the Banana : Michele Lee’s Banana Girl Zhuoling Tian , Wenche Ommundsen , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 33 no. 2 2019; (p. 332-346)

'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)

Last amended 4 Feb 2014 13:51:10
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