Cirrus@Austlit

'Performing Identities brings together essays by scholars, artists and activists engaged in understanding and conserving rapidly disappearing local knowledge forms of indigenous communities across continents. It depicts the imaginative transactions evident in the interface of identity and cultural transformation, raising the issue of cultural rights of these otherwise marginalized communities.' (Publication summary)

'The Bangladeshi-Australian writer Adib Khan's fourth novel Homecoming (2003) marked a significant change of direction in the author's work. No longer concerned to give fictional representation to the diasporic experience which had preoccupied him since his own migration to Australia in 1973, he now embarked on a work which addresses one of the most controversial issues of his new country's recent history, its involvement in the Vietnam War and the traumatic consequences for those who fought in it. As an Asian-Australian writer engaging with the legacy of the war, Khan offers an alternative view from a new perspective. His novel presents a compelling psychological study of a veteran's struggle to confront his experience and reconstitute his identity. This article seeks to locate the novel within the wider tradition of Australian war literature, to examine Khan's representation of the war and its aftermath for Australians and Vietnamese alike, and to identify the particular contribution this Asian-Australian novelist has to make to central concerns of his adopted country.'  (Introduction)

'Human memory, it would seem, can prove seriously deficient when it comes to remembering the contribution made by Indigenous peoples to white men’s wars. In Australia, as the authors of this volume argue, much has been forgotten: Indigenous participation in World War I has become ‘a forgotten memory’ (9), Korea has become the ‘Forgotten War’ (26), while the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans of the Vietnam War, ignored altogether during the campaign for Aboriginal rights, have likewise subsequently been ‘forgotten by the majority of Australians’ (92). Through painstaking archival research and revealing personal testimony, this book goes a long way towards bringing this neglected aspect of Australian Indigenous history to our attention.' (Introduction)