I would like to tell you a simple story. This story comes to me by way of Robert Bly, the American poet. Writers, he says, need to preserve their frogskins. Frog-skins, not foreskins; though writing can be something of a circumcision when forced into categories — some-thing between public ritual and private pain. To counteract this phallocentrism let me offer you the metaphor of writing as woman, not only as the re-pressed, but as the source. (Introduction)
'The making of the Asian Australian novel is the unmaking of oppressive notions of history, subjectivity and literary form. Locating ethnic representational politics within power structures of race and nation, this chapter contends that Asian Australian identity is a site of hybrid instability realised through nonlinear forms of storytelling. The chapter examines national and diasporic paradigms across historical and contemporary trajectories of this literature: earlier Chinese Australian novels that blur boundaries between fictional and factual claims; Bildungsroman novels that trouble ethnocentric narratives of either assimilation or return; multicultural novels that unveil ongoing racism in liberal-pluralist ideals; and transnational novels that reimagine the Australian relationship with postcolonial and globalising Asian modernity. Reflecting on the limits of a critical humanist agenda, the chapter identifies an alternative paradigm of Asian Australian storytelling that employs speculative tactics to depict the land, species, climate change and Asian–Indigenous connections. This ecocritical paradigm challenges a normative ideal of the modern, autonomous and sovereign individual as one the migrant subject should integrate into, while pointing to an under-explored terrain for Asian Australian writers whose focus on diversity and justice would offer important insights into the shifting human condition.'
Source: Author's summary.
'Since the end of the 20th century, particularly after the Cold War ended, national borderlines have been redrawn many times in the areas of the Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and a wide range of Asia, and people started crossing national borderlines to immigrate to other countries. As a result, the definition of a modern nation with one ethnicity, one language, and one culture collapsed. Under the policy of multiculturalism, Australia accepts immigrants from all over the world, and Australian literature at present is characterized as being ethnically, culturally, and linguistically hybrid. In this paper I look at Australian writers such as Brian Castro and Nam Le and compare them with other writers who are considered post-colonial writers, such as Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro. I focus on how these writers attempt to present their identities along with their subjectivities. I also compare them with a Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, whose literary works are widely read throughout the world, crossing cultural, ethnic, and language barriers, even though he writes in Japanese and has a mono-cultural background. I investigate the reason why Murakami’s works are accepted by many contemporary readers worldwide. I finally explore the meaning of national identity and subjectivity in the globalizing world, and clarify the transformation of modern literature.' (Author's abstract)
