Cirrus@Austlit

'Theorising about identity has become fashionable. During 1999 alone several conferences and seminars were dedicated to identities in Australia: "Alter/Asians: Exploring Asian/Australian Identities, Cultures and Politics in an Age of Crisis" held in Sydney in February, the one-day conference "Cultural Passports" on the concept and representations of "home" held at the University of Sydney in June, and "Asian-Australian Identities: The Asian Diaspora in Australia" at the Australian National University in September. To me as a Chinese who had his childhood and education in New Zealand this concern with identity is not exceptional: I remain a keen reader of New Zealand fiction and poetry in which Pakeha New Zealanders have agonised and problematised their search for identity as an island people living among an aggressive indigenous population and in an insecure dependent economy. New Zealand identity has always been problematised as has Chinese identity: what does it mean to be Chinese?l Now Asian identity has become the current issue: "We're not Asians" was the title of the paper by Lily Kong on identity among Singaporean students in Australia.2 White Australians appear much more content and complacent with their identity and do not indulge as much in navel gazing. And yet it may be that it is the "Australian identity" that needs to be challenged and contested so that it becomes less an exclusively WASP-ish male mateship and more inclusive of women, Aborigines and Asians.' (Introduction)

'Romantic Broome - the pearling centre of the North West ... the locale of exciting novels! White-sailed luggers skimming across azure seas in the early dawn. Colowful Asiatics jostling in Sheba Lane - the famous street 0' Pearls. And languorous tropical nights beneath the glittering southern Cross.' (Extract) 

'Carole Ferrier has spent twenty years with Jean Devanny. In that time she has produced editions of Devanny's literary texts, and has published critical writing on Devanny's 'really proletarian' novels. In addition, there has been careful editing of Devanny's autobiographical writing, published as Point of Departure in 1986, and the selection of Devanny's correspondence included in As good as a yarn with you (Cambridge, 1992).' (Introduction)