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Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Sustenance single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Sustenance
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In a small hotel on an island renowned for its hospitality and beauty, the Balinese staff and their Western guests are unexpectedly taken hostage. During the overnight siege, the hotel's cook is compelled by the crisis to provide spiritual and physical sustenance as best she can to the guests, staff and their poorly nourished captors. Reflecting on individuals' struggles to find meaning and love in the face of death, Sustenance is a compelling novel that reveals surprising ways in which people redeem themselves through fear and grief. -- From the publisher's media release.

Notes

  • Epigraph:

    We keep coming back and coming back

    [...] to the hotel instead of the hymns

    That fall upon it out of the wind.

    Wallace Stevens

    When you see people who are thin from lack of

    food, beg them to accept your help;

    remember that you may need their friendship in

    times to come.

    Rig Veda

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crawley, Inner Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: UWA Publishing , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 118052607594258732.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 304p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 1st July 2010
      ISBN: 9781742580715

Works about this Work

The Making of the Asian Australian Novel Emily Yu Zong , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;

'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.

“A Taste of Elsewhere” : Consuming the Exotic in Simone Lazaroo’s Sustenance Astrid Marie Schwegler Castañer , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 54 no. 4 2018; (p. 469-483)

'Simone Lazaroo’s novel Sustenance (2010) explores Australian identity and its positioning of the Asian other, using the touristic setting of Bali to evidence the process of othering that takes place in Australian society, where acceptance of the other remains superficial and alterity is maintained. Through a close reading of Sustenance’s culinary extracts, this article argues that consumptive practices and the layering of stereotypes are used by Lazaroo to critically portray Australia’s neocolonial relation to Asia as well as to evidence the downsides of the consumptive celebration of difference which blinds people to the realities of racism and intolerance. It explores how world views are transmitted through foodways, and how this feature of food is used in conflicting ways: by the local population and the tourists to generate interactions that rely on the mutual essentialization of cultural differences, and by the main character to underscore commonalities and to facilitate cross-cultural understanding.'  (Publication abstract)

“The Root of All Evil”? Transnational Cosmopolitanism in the Fiction of Dewi Anggraeni, Simone Lazaroo and Merlinda Bobis Paul Giffard-Foret , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , December vol. 52 no. 5 2016; (p. 595-609) Mediating Literary Borders : Asian Australian Writing 2018; (p. 69-83)
This article exposes the contradictions of cosmopolitan citizenship and world peace in novels by three Southeast Asian Australian women authors. Their fiction questions the viability of transnational sisterhood in an age of humanitarian intervention where women and children have become pawns for renewed western imperialist ventures. This article asks in turn whether the incommensurable space opened up by the failures of various forms of what Stuart Hall calls cosmopolitanism “from above” can be reinvested through “reading up the ladder of privilege”, as proposed by Chandra T. Mohanty. Simone Lazaroo’s Sustenance (2010) and Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker (2008) build “grass-roots” forms of cosmopolitanism and touristic hospitality designed to redress the many evils of contemporary postcolonial societies. The Root of all Evil (1987) by Dewi Anggraeni objects to the Spivakian native informant and upwardly mobile migrant woman’s imperious desire to help her homeland’s subaltern female underclass, in light of the latter’s lack of agency and the harm such intervention may cause. (Publication abstract)
Untitled Samela Harris , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 28 August 2010; (p. 26)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
Elsewhere Thuy On , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 324 2010; (p. 42)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
Off the Shelf : Fiction Lorien Kaye , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 17 July 2010; (p. 30)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
Mixed Menu of Suspense Peter Pierce , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 24 July 2010; (p. 24)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
Pick of the Week Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 August 2010; (p. 34)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
Off the Shelf William Yeoman , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 31 August 2010; (p. 6)

— Review of Dead Man's Gold Michael Torres , 2010 single work children's fiction ; The Fremantle Doctor Frank Aquino , 2007 single work novel ; Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel ; Traitor Stephen Daisley , 2010 single work novel ; The West : Australian Poems 1989-2009 John Mateer , 2010 selected work poetry ; Takeshita Demons Cristy Burne , 2010 single work children's fiction
Elsewhere Thuy On , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 324 2010; (p. 42)

— Review of Sustenance Simone Lazaroo , 2010 single work novel
“The Root of All Evil”? Transnational Cosmopolitanism in the Fiction of Dewi Anggraeni, Simone Lazaroo and Merlinda Bobis Paul Giffard-Foret , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , December vol. 52 no. 5 2016; (p. 595-609) Mediating Literary Borders : Asian Australian Writing 2018; (p. 69-83)
This article exposes the contradictions of cosmopolitan citizenship and world peace in novels by three Southeast Asian Australian women authors. Their fiction questions the viability of transnational sisterhood in an age of humanitarian intervention where women and children have become pawns for renewed western imperialist ventures. This article asks in turn whether the incommensurable space opened up by the failures of various forms of what Stuart Hall calls cosmopolitanism “from above” can be reinvested through “reading up the ladder of privilege”, as proposed by Chandra T. Mohanty. Simone Lazaroo’s Sustenance (2010) and Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker (2008) build “grass-roots” forms of cosmopolitanism and touristic hospitality designed to redress the many evils of contemporary postcolonial societies. The Root of all Evil (1987) by Dewi Anggraeni objects to the Spivakian native informant and upwardly mobile migrant woman’s imperious desire to help her homeland’s subaltern female underclass, in light of the latter’s lack of agency and the harm such intervention may cause. (Publication abstract)
“A Taste of Elsewhere” : Consuming the Exotic in Simone Lazaroo’s Sustenance Astrid Marie Schwegler Castañer , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 54 no. 4 2018; (p. 469-483)

'Simone Lazaroo’s novel Sustenance (2010) explores Australian identity and its positioning of the Asian other, using the touristic setting of Bali to evidence the process of othering that takes place in Australian society, where acceptance of the other remains superficial and alterity is maintained. Through a close reading of Sustenance’s culinary extracts, this article argues that consumptive practices and the layering of stereotypes are used by Lazaroo to critically portray Australia’s neocolonial relation to Asia as well as to evidence the downsides of the consumptive celebration of difference which blinds people to the realities of racism and intolerance. It explores how world views are transmitted through foodways, and how this feature of food is used in conflicting ways: by the local population and the tourists to generate interactions that rely on the mutual essentialization of cultural differences, and by the main character to underscore commonalities and to facilitate cross-cultural understanding.'  (Publication abstract)

The Making of the Asian Australian Novel Emily Yu Zong , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;

'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.

Last amended 29 Jan 2021 04:30:14
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    Southeast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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