'Roll with Tom Dusevic as he tumbles through childhood and adolescence in this tender and exuberant memoir.
'Born into a Croatian migrant family, Tom spent his childhood roaming the streets of Canterbury/Bankstown in the 1970s, and he vividly describes the experiences of his family as they grow up – and into – a new culture. It’s a tale of discomfort and regeneration, of people not quite settled in their new skin, both the younger and older members; feet in both camps, with hearts and head tugged between the two.' (Publication summary)
'This article focuses on memoirs by three Australian journalists, each of whom was born to European parents from a non-native-English-speaking background: Elisabeth Wynhausen’s Manly Girls (1989), Tom Dusevic’s Whole Wild World (2016) and James Jeffrey’s My Family and Other Animus (2018). I also discuss Jeffrey’s Paprika Paradise (2007), an earlier memoir of travelling in his mother’s homeland of Hungary with his northern English father. The article explores the extent to which these memoirs are examples of transcultural life writing, attuned to questions of language and culture. I argue that at least two of the texts are, while one is more equivocal on these questions. All three authors take care to translate their non-native-English-speaking family members’ cultural and political attitudes into an idiom that makes sense to a contemporary Anglophone Australian readership. At the same time, they often read familiar “Anglo” cultural norms critically, through a transcultural lens.' (Publication abstract)
'This article focuses on memoirs by three Australian journalists, each of whom was born to European parents from a non-native-English-speaking background: Elisabeth Wynhausen’s Manly Girls (1989), Tom Dusevic’s Whole Wild World (2016) and James Jeffrey’s My Family and Other Animus (2018). I also discuss Jeffrey’s Paprika Paradise (2007), an earlier memoir of travelling in his mother’s homeland of Hungary with his northern English father. The article explores the extent to which these memoirs are examples of transcultural life writing, attuned to questions of language and culture. I argue that at least two of the texts are, while one is more equivocal on these questions. All three authors take care to translate their non-native-English-speaking family members’ cultural and political attitudes into an idiom that makes sense to a contemporary Anglophone Australian readership. At the same time, they often read familiar “Anglo” cultural norms critically, through a transcultural lens.' (Publication abstract)
