Cirrus@Austlit

'What is the relationship between writing—so often a lonely pursuit—and the nation, that slippery idea that is supposed to contain us all? And isn’t there something missing here, something between writing and the nation?' (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.

'Brian Castro dramatises and even valorises forms of literary and artistic failure throughout his fiction, but his body of work is a raging success by mortal standards. None of his novels disappoint on close inspection. Double-Wolf and Shanghai Dancing are endlessly rewarding; The Swan Book is gorgeously written and deeply moving; After China is conceptually neat, seductive and stylish. Others, such as Drift and The Bath Fugues, appeal to select readers but are dazzlingly rich and structurally brilliant. Even Stepper—which Castro sees as a relatively conventional spy novel—is a satisfying and affecting Nabokovian game. Every novel is stamped by a talent that induces envy as much as gratitude. You want to know what it feels like to write that way.' (Publication abstract)

'In the book H.C. for Life, That Is to Say …, Jacques Derrida implores us to "imagine a reading at the bottom of the elemental sea" (29). Following on from Derrida, this essay shows how such a reading might be possible through an analysis of Brian Castro's novel Shanghai Dancing. To a large extent, the current critical literature on Castro's novel highlights how it resists traditional reading methods and practices but fails to think through how this impacts the way the critic should write about the novel. To do this, I argue that Castro's tropes and metaphors for writing—dancing, doppelgängers, phantom brothers, ghosts, the sea, typhoons, and flowers—are also metaphors and tropes for reading, which in turn demand a figurative response from the critic. The novel demands to be read as if from the bottom of the sea, which emphasizes Harold Bloom's idea that "every good reader properly desires to drown" (Anxiety of Influence, 29).'  (Publication abstract)

'This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation's colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors' often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers. '

Source: Publisher's blurb.