After leaving Britain for this wide brown land that held so much promise, our early settlers and their descendants spent much of their time worried about the possibility that the Yellow Peril was going to sweep down and take it from them. Even the Irish were considered worthy of suspicion in those days; while most people today would regard them as not so different from any other ethnic group of the British Isles, the early Irish settlers in Australia were viewed with much the same xenophobia that has greeted migrants from Asia and Africa.

So when the government following WW2 embraced a “populate or perish” outlook and moved to bring in large numbers of migrants from continental Europe, it was hardly surprising that the reaction from Australians of British extraction was not so favourable. Suspicion undoubtedly remained towards some nationalities as a legacy of fighting a war in Europe, but in many cases it was antipathy based on familiar themes: these were people with different languages, appearances and foods, and Australians weren’t quite sure if they were suitably civilised to fit into our society. Today, Italian surnames, culture and food are so ubiquitous in Australia that it’s hard to imagine that these early migrants were bullied and viewed with great apprehension for their strange ways and appearance. But over time, they became more and more accepted, as did the Greeks, Maltese, Croatians, and many others from Europe.

When in the 70s significant numbers of migrants from Asia began to arrive, they too were regarded with some suspicion and had to struggle against racism. Ironically, some of this negative reaction came, and still comes, from those who had struggled against the exact same thing. While it’s certainly true that the European migrants did a lot to pave the way for the Asians that followed them,  in my youth it was common to observe that some of the young men who would happily call Asians “nips” and “gooks” were the same ones who bristled at being called “wogs”.

Of course, those Asians who overcame the racism and xenophobia to become successful immigrants would never go on to be racist and xenophobic themselves, would they?

Attitudes towards asylum seekers in the community and the political sphere have gradually soured, particularly in the post-9/11 era, and Asian-Australians as a group do not appear to be bucking the trend. Labor MP Hong Lim, himself a refugee of Cambodian-Chinese background, has previously complained about the lack of prevailing interest  in the asylum seeker issue from the Chinese and Indo-Chinese communities. The sort of comments I’ve heard from Asian-Australians about some of the newer wave of migrants (from India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and elsewhere) are surprising; surprising in their lack of awareness that the same things were being said about them and their parents a generation ago. I’ve had two Vietnamese- and Chinese-Australians mention to me that they would never rent their property out to Indians, for example.

A common comment that you might hear from old migrants about new migrants is that they have it too easy and don’t work hard like in the good old days. You’ve probably heard it before. “When my family came here, we had nothing, but we worked hard, we didn’t ask for anything from the government. Nowadays all they want is handouts.”

I don’t think that’s a particularly factual point of view. But even if we accept it at face value, and believe for a moment that the immigrants of yesteryear were harder working than today’s, there’s an important factor to bear in mind as well. Society has changed significantly since the first great wave of non-Anglo migrants arrived in the post-WW2 period.

Back then, many European migrants arrived with little English, and with little background in any kind of academia. This was not a problem them, as there was significant demand for labour in the manufacturing industry. The Snowy Mountains Scheme, the largest engineering project ever conducted in Australia, relied on a workforce of which two-thirds were migrants from continental Europe. These sorts of opportunities still persisted in the 70s and 80s as the new wave of immigrants from Indochina arrived here.

Today, manufacturing is in decline, and there are less jobs around that unskilled refugees can easily do. The Australian workforce is becoming increasingly white-collar, and increasingly reliant on technology. This is a disadvantage for someone who struggles with English or is a latecomer to the use of computers. So the Italians and Yugoslavs and Greeks who arrived 60 years ago didn’t necessarily face the same obstacles to success that new arrivals from Myanmar, Afghanistan or Sudan might face today.

This is not to say, of course, that earlier migrants did not do it hard, or did not face obstacles. Countless migrants have found their skills unwanted or unrecognised here. My own uncle was a speech writer for members of parliament in Indonesia, but found himself mostly consigned to factory work after moving to Australia, and similar stories are everywhere. Every trained doctor, engineer or similar-skilled individual who ends up driving a taxi represents a missed opportunity not just for him or her, but for Australia as a whole. But our country also has a long history of migrants starting their own businesses, often because there were few opportunities elsewhere. Most of us have known Greek fish-and-chip-shop owners, Italian fruiterers and Chinese restaurateurs, amongst many others. These people represent the entrepreneurial spirit of many earlier migrants, people who have had a huge positive impact on many aspects of our national culture.

Why then do some of us have a hard time imagining that newer migrants would not have a similar positive impact?

Everything I’ve said here does not mean it is wrong to believe we should take in less immigrants, or that we might be better off taking more people from country X and less from country Y. Those are relatively understandable opinions even though I might not necessarily agree with them. But I think it’s worth bearing in mind that whatever complaints might arise about the new waves of immigrants, we have probably heard the same ones being made time and time again, about earlier groups to arrive here. And despite the doomsayers, we seem to be doing okay.

Of course even our indigenous people were immigrants at some point, lost back  far in the mists of time. Although in their case, their suspicion of “boat people” in the early days of Australian colonialism has proven to be quite justified.

Candy B (Photograpyh by Sean Young)

Last year when I saw Australian Booty at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, I was left wondering about the narrative flow of her show.  However, this year there were no questions – just awe, respect and admiration at Candy’s bravery and skill at transforming pain and anger into a coherent piece of theatre and comedy. Candy walks onto stage with a figure-hugging hot crimson dress and her material ranges from a story about being bullied at school for being black to a song dedicated to all the curvaceous ladies in a food court.  With fierce pride and candid wit, Candy examines the facets of Australian identity and normalised standards of beauty.  Candy isn’t afraid of saying what she thinks and her comedy slices through a lot of bullshit and double standards, such as the time when golliwogs were taken down from a city toy store because Oprah was on a visit, only to be re-shelved after she left.  Even though Candy deals with dark issues such as racism, sexism, disease and body image, she handles the content with integrity and skilfully entertains her audiences as well.

Accompanied by her equally talented sister Busty Beatz, the duo are a powerful force.  Busty’s musical direction added emotional depth to Candy’s stories, generating a theatrical feel to this cabaret-style comedy show. It was also awesome to see Busty take on a more performative role this time; she opens the show with a rap and track-suit “striptease” (underneath one layer was another). Candy belts out catchy, original tunes (including my all-time favourite – “Yo’ Mama so Phat”, a sassy reclamation of this usually derogatory phrase) which really should have mainstream radio airplay and a music video. I am itching to get my hands on a Candy B and Busty Beatz album one day.

Australian Booty: The Fatty-Boom-Boom Remix is a sophisticated feminist, anti-racist critique of Australian society, as well as a riotous celebration of more encompassing concepts of beauty. Together with Busty Beatz’s musical talent, Candy B’s Australian Booty: The Fatty-Boom-Boom Remix is a memorable show, one that deserves high accolades, and one you won’t easily forget.

Australian Booty: The Fatty-Boom-Boom Remix was at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 11-15 April

Upcoming shows:

Brisbane Powerhouse 30 May – 10 June

For other season dates, check out Candy B’s website – Australian Booty – http://australianbooty.com/

Here’s a peak at Candy’s Australian Booty instructional video.

When I watch Jennifer, I see someone who could easily fit the outward appearance of an accountant, a librarian, a Maths school-teacher – someone whose life doesn’t appear all that adventurous.  Jennifer’s onstage persona also suggests someone very polite, awkward and slightly reserved. However, contrary to this outward appearance is the spirit of a bold and witty comedian with a very eccentric sense of humour.  The show builds on the following premise :“ “A bookish comedian did a First Aid course so that no one around her will ever feel pain or die. This is called delusion.”  When we walk in, Jennifer had just launched into a story about her mother who is choking from a fishbone.  Drawing from Chinese old wives’ tales of swallowing rice if one has something stuck in their throat, Jennifer draws this anecdote out to an absurd end, while also making a Western parallel of drinking Coke as a choking solution.  Cultural comparisons and observations are woven into her routine, and she’s not afraid of transforming awkward situations into comedy skits.  One of my favourite lines is when the nurse at emergency asks Jennifer if her mother can speak English, Jennifer thinks to herself, “Why?  Is there an exam?”.  She explains to the audience that being polite, she doesn’t say this words out loud, but instead answers politely. Another favourite skit for me is her brilliant dramatisation and critical analysis of an Australia Post anti-racism campaign which featured an East Asian woman eating a bowl of noodles while two white people tease her from behind.  Through the dramatisation of the poster scene and the imagined behind-the-scenes process of creating this poster, Jennifer highlights the shortcomings of the campaign despite its good intentions of protecting Australia Post people of colour workers.

Unfortunately, there were moments in Jennifer’s routine that left me questioning.  Some of her skits would follow a line of thought to its absurd conclusions, with vaguely interesting observations, but weren’t particularly poignant or especially funny.  However, as the new kid on the comedy block, Jennifer is someone to watch out for.  I left with an admiration for this new and aspiring comedian’s first solo show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  Even though Jennifer’s persona is outwardly bookish and polite, deep down she’s got big guns, which she just needs more practice shots with.

Jennifer Wong’s performance dates:

Melbourne International Comedy Festival until April 22nd

Sydney Comedy Festival May 3rd and 5th

Perth International Comedy Festival May 16th-19th

For news on Jennifer check out her website – http://jenniferwong.com.au/

Nevertheless, it remains one of the only mainstream movies I can think of that features a central romance¹ between a black woman (Aaliyah) and an Asian man (Jet Li) — two groups that arguably suffer the most from gendered racial stereotypes and how they play into norms of attractiveness.

Models outside Abercrombie and Fitch store in Singapore. A&F is notorious for racist employment practices, all-white advertising, and offensive t-shirt slogans.

The politics of sex is one of my top interests, along with anti-racism, so sexual racism is a topic that always catches my attention. Last week Good Weekend published an article on race-based attraction by Benjamin Law, in which he talks about prejudice against Asian men, especially among gay men. He mentions that Australian gay magazine DNA has had no identifiably Asian cover model in its 146 issue history, which for me is a no-brainer instance of racism.

Law also talks about profiles on Grindr (a smartphone hook-up app) stating “No Asians”. Sometimes I think racism no longer surprises me, but actually it regularly does. It surprises me that people will blatantly state “no Asians” not because I don’t expect people to have these attitudes but because I expect them to delude themselves into thinking it’s a coincidence. Or at the very least, I expect that they’d conceal their bigotry in case it turns off people they would like to fuck. Then again, as a sex-focused app, Grindr profiles tend to be fairly anonymous — headless torsos and minimal information. Douchebags of Grindr documents the racism, fatphobia, femmephobia, materialism and general arrogance common on the site.

Dating website OK Cupid shows a far greater disparity between stated attitudes to race,  and actual behaviour in rates of reply to correspondents of different racial identities: while only 6 per cent of heterosexual users believed interracial marriage was a bad idea, 38 per cent stated that they would strongly prefer to date someone of their own skin colour or racial background, and men of all racial backgrounds replied to black women about 25 per cent less than they did to other women of a similar compatibility score. Notably, more than twice as many white users of all sexual orientations stated that they would strongly prefer to date someone of their own skin colour or racial background compared to non-white users.

But it is necessarily racist to have racialised preferences when it comes to sex and dating? Heather Corinna of sex ed website Scarleteen thinks not, and compares race to gender:

Whether we are attracted to men, women or both isn’t something we can really control. Who we’re attracted to is largely hardwired and often pretty random and individual.

The same goes with race, hair color, eye color, shoe size, height, weight, how a person dresses, what music they like, how long someone’s neck is, what their voice sounds like, how they move, who they vote for, what books they like … the whole kit and kaboodle. Who we find sexually attractive varies a whole lot between people, and while we get to choose who we date and who we are sexually active with, we don’t get to choose who we want to date and who we find attractive.

Sure, to some extent our preferences might be unfathomable, inexplicable and beyond our control. And to be honest, as an unsympathetic (or perhaps just unimaginative) pansexual I have to admit I don’t really understand gendered orientation either. But I’m unconvinced by the claim that if it’s not sexist to prefer (or rather, require) a particular gender, then it’s not racist to have racial preferences either. I’m pretty sure gender is a poor parallel for race in many situations, but especially when it comes to sex.

Gender aside, anyone can see that there’s a difference between having a thing for long necks or thick eyebrows and having “no fats, no fems, no Asians” as a kind of door policy. If your personal preferences are exactly in line with your (sub)culture’s dominant paradigm of beauty, desirability and disgust, you probably need to interrogate your desires. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (editor of Nobody Passes) says as much in Alex Rowlson’s article for fab magazine, “Not just a preference“.

 If we were living in a culture where everything was the same, it wouldn’t be a problem. But when sexual preference reinforces dominant systems of power in an unquestioning way, that’s when it becomes problematic.

Rowlson discusses a number of possible responses to exclusionary desires: Michael J Faris thinks they can be phrased in more specific or positive ways – for example, “I like hairy men” instead of “no Asians” if that’s the physical basis of the racial preference. ML Sugie argues that such a preference is no more valid, saying that “aesthetic reasons” are code for “unjustifiable hierarchies that I don’t want to explain”. Sycamore suggests confronting the bigots, and Raymond Miller proposes naming, shaming and boycotting them. Sugie says that the path to liberation is paved with “indiscriminate promiscuity” that ignores all the traits which are supposed to define the boundaries of our desires. Sluthood will in fact save the world.

But if finding an entire group of people unattractive usually comes from a place of hate, chasing isn’t any better. When my friends and I started flagging opinicus rampant, our blog reconsidering (gay male) hanky code from a pangender and feminist perspective, the first hankies we removed were the racial and fat fetish ones.  While desiring a role or dynamic (such as seeking a top or a pony) is valid and hot, I’m uncomfortable with limiting the body such a role inhabits. Maybe that’s the difference between orientation and attraction.

That said, it’s worth noting that a preference for any minority or marginalised group is considered a fetish, while preferences for the dominant ideal usually go unstated and unchecked. What can you do when you don’t know if a rejection is based on dodgy “preferences”? I think consent means you always have to accept rejections graciously:

[R]ejection can be based on prejudice. It can be cissexist or racist or fatphobic or biphobic or ageist or ableist or anti-virgin or whatever else. And if someone voices those sentiments, you’re right to call them up on it. But nobody owes you an explanation on why they don’t want to fuck you or date you.

And what do you do if you have dodgy preferences, racial or otherwise? I think we need to be honest with ourselves. Don’t pretend to be into someone if you’re not, no one wants to be thrown a pity fuck when they could be doing something hotter. Like masturbating. But we also need to think about what forms our desires. Consider if your “type” is a received image or an inclination to repetition. Imagine what it would be like to be attracted to someone you might have ruled out for whatever reason. Seriously analyse and deconstruct what you find attractive. And be open to surprise.

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1. Well, maybe more courtship than romance because they never even kiss. A quick search also brings up John Cho and Gabrielle Union on a tv show I’ve never heard of called Flash Forward, which from what I can gather might be a bit more satisfying if you’re looking for on-screen action.

Last week my hair was shoulder length, straight, black, with a red streak to the left (something like my political orientation, then). I wanted to cut it short, partly for one of the acts I’m performing this weekend as part of Shanghai Club at the Spiegeltent. Last time I performed the act, I had a shaved head, and I felt some of the dramatic effect was lost by having long hair. But I thought I’d also miss having sleek swishy locks and the possibility of braids, buns and beehives. It felt like having “straight girl hair” was some kind of visual testament to finally feeling secure and self-assured in my queer identity without worrying about whether I was visible to others.

KNIFE AND FORK

While we tend to think of this as a traditional European way of eating, it apparently did not become commonplace until several hundred years ago. Before that, it was common to use a combination of fingers, knife and spoon, depending on the dish being served. It is now seen as the “proper” Western way of eating most meals. Still, eating Asian cuisine this way is highly problematic. Those of you who eat rice with a fork are either stupid to persist with such a thing, or are way more awesome than I am to be able to pull it off.

WHO USES THEM: Europeans (particularly Northern and Western Europeans) and their North American and Australian cousins.

PROS: When your meal requires some serious slicing – steak, or quiche, for example – then this is your obvious choice.

CONS: Near-useless for trying to eat anything that can’t be stabbed, such as soupy stewy things. Difficult to eat rice with, particularly the less sticky varieties like basmati. Chasing peas around a plate with a fork is so frustrating that it might make you want to stab yourself with the fork instead.

“THE ZIG-ZAG METHOD”
This an American oddity which is still common but in many cases has given way to “Continental Style” (knife in right hand for cutting, fork in left hand for holding, piercing and transferring food to mouth) which Australians and Europeans are more familiar with. The “zig-zag” style is very right-hand-biased, in that the fork (held in the left hand) is used only to hold food in place while it is being cut. Then the diner puts down the knife, transfers the fork to the right hand, and then brings it to the mouth.
At the risk of sounding culturally insensitive… the zig-zag is perhaps the weirdest and most inefficient of all the ways of putting food into one’s mouth I’ve detailed here.

CHOPSTICKS

Personally, I’m sure these were invented by Chinese for no other reason to prove how superior they were over the barbarian races. As a member of one of the barbarian races myself, I will admit that I didn’t learn how to use chopsticks until I was about 20. I was at Vietnamese girl’s party, everyone was eating steamboat and everyone – white guys included – could use chopsticks except me who had to ask for cutlery. Being out-Asianed by non-Asians is quite a comeuppance and the next night I ordered Chinese take-away with the sole objective of mastering the chopstick arts.

There are lots of interesting theories about the history of chopsticks. It is quite likely that their use was an essential element in the evolution of Chinese cuisine, giving rise to a style of preparation which necessitated food being cut into bite-sized pieces. Alternatively, the cutting of food into smaller chunks could have arisen as a way of hastening cooking time and thus saving fuel; in which case this may have made chopstick use a viable option. Given that noodles are a very ancient food in China, it is possible that chopsticks too are very ancient, since it’s hard to imagine what the Chinese were eating noodles with if not chopsticks. The oldest known chopsticks are dated at over 3000 years old.

WHO USES THEM: East Asia, from Japan to Vietnam.

PROS: There is arguably no better way of eating noodles. Also confers precision while trying to pick up a single item off the communal plate, which is harder to do with other eating implements.

CONS: Hard to master. Much slower than other eating styles, unless you are an absolute gun. No real way to cut food up into smaller portions, so this is normally done before serving. Some things are just really difficult to pick up with chopsticks, particularly rounded slippery things like straw mushrooms, my personal nemesis.

SPOON AND FORK

There’s reason to believe that this is a fairly recent development in dining. It’s commonplace in many regions where it is traditional to eat with your fingers, such as Thailand, where now it’s really only the rural people and the northern Thais who use their fingers. In Indonesia, both spoon-and-fork and bare hands are common. The spoon-and-fork combination is also very handy for eating spaghetti.
WHO USES THEM: Southeast Asians, some Southern Europeans and Latin Americans, Middle Easterners.

PROS: With such a potent combination, you can pretty much do anything. The spoon enables you to eat both solid and liquid foods, and the fork gives precision stabbing abilities, as well as superior noodle- and pasta-eating capabilities.

CONS: While the edge of the spoon can cut things, it’s not really so suited to things that need serious carving on the plate, like a thick steak. Also lacks the precision of knife-cutting.

FINGERS (USUALLY OF THE RIGHT HAND)

Old skool, yo. At least one-third of the world uses this as their primary method of eating. The rest of the world tends to consider it slightly backward, although that goes out the window where certain kinds of foods are concerned; no one’s going to eat a pizza with chopsticks, or a sandwich with knife and fork. But eating rice and curry in Sri Lanka – or beans and cornmeal in Kenya, or seven-vegetable couscous in Morocco – with one’s fingers is a bit more confronting to the genteel Westerner. Yet this was an accepted way of eating in Europe for a very long time.
Devotees of this method tend to claim that food “tastes better” when eaten this way. That sounds nice but let’s be honest, the only way that’s true is if your fingers have funky flavours of their own which add to the food, which is a bit disturbing if you think about it.
Despite being the most rudimentary of eating styles, that doesn’t mean it is easy. Tearing a chapatti in two in order to scoop up a curry seems easy until you realise that you’re not meant to use your left hand. Eating rice and soupy sambar lentils off a banana leaf in the South Indian style without any of it running down your forearms requires a little skill. In many countries, the diner really only uses the thumb and two or three fingers of his right hand.
Why only the right hand? The left is used for cleaning your butt, that’s why. Although not at the same time as you are eating, of course.

WHO USES THEM: Arabs, Africans, South Asians and many Southeast Asians.

PROS: Get “up close and personal” with your food, which helps negotiate tricky things like bones and gristle. Save on washing up. Gain cred points with SWPL types by showing you reject the stifling traditional bourgeois Western notions of table etiquette in favour of more “authentic” developing world ways.

CONS: Is possibly a health risk if you don’t wash your hands. Difficult to eat things that are too hot or cold, and is almost impossible to eat soupy dishes unless you have something carby to sop it up with. Also tends to result in your hand smelling like curry (or whatever) for the rest of the day. Tricky if you suddenly have to do something different during the meal, such as answer your phone. Also, people outside your culture may one day ask you why you don’t use your left hand for eating, which means you have to come up with a tactful way of saying that you use it to clean your ass.

HYBRID CUTLERY

Is this the way of the future? The twentieth century saw the invention of implements that were combinations of the spoon, fork and/or knife. Will they someday supersede other cutlery? Stranger things have happened.
You’ve heard of the spork and perhaps the splayd – also known as a sporf – but there are also such things as a spife and a knork. They certainly sound like they were invented by aliens, which makes it seem very futuristic.

WHO USES THEM: People purchasing things from food courts, and people on camping trips.

PROS: Since they are a combination of spoon and fork (and possibly knife too), they can in theory accomplish a wide variety of eating functions.

CONS: They are in reality very poor at performing many of those eating functions, and not just because they are mostly plastic. You can eat rice with it but not anything very liquid, and it’s not really good for noodles. Also, using a spork just doesn’t seem very classy at the moment, even with the nice metal ones. But perhaps their time will come.

I read a version of this last week for Queer Nerd, a Midsumma event curated by Lisa-Skye. There’s a lot more I could say about how East Asians are feminised (while other people of colour are masculinised) but maybe I’ll continue that rant later.

I think when I was a kid, I thought my gender was nerd. Of course that’s not all there is to it – I was a girl too. And I think it’s pretty silly when cissexual people like me deny their privilege just because we’re not all quarterbacks and cheerleaders. Besides, I don’t believe that it’s the soldiers and sportspeople who have the most male privilege; I think it’s often the scientists and statesmen, the judges, the economists – the nerds. But if boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls, I was the nerd with five library cards who wanted to read just one more chapter before dinner. Most of my early childhood memories are of reading or masturbating, sometimes both at the same time. That hasn’t changed but I think my technique has improved.

In my teens I became interested in clothes, and over the last few years my style has become more feminine while simultaneously the queer scenes that I’m part of have become increasingly smitten with butch/femme dynamics. I celebrate that, but I worry that sometimes it also means reinscribing gender on everything, albeit supposedly chosen, intentional gender. Whether it’s biology, socialisation or intent, binary gender still operates as an essentialising force, a kind of confinement. It erases the complexities of my past when people associate all these different parts of me with femme though that’s not really it, or not all there is to the story. Often the things that people think are femme are actually nerdy – or just Chinese.

I was never a tomboy. I’d never lived in a house with a yard until I moved out of home at eighteen, so the outdoors weren’t really a big feature in my life. My parents thought of “the bush” as a great curiosity so sometimes we’d drive out and point at sheep and talk about how the trees were all funny coloured in this country but we never went camping or anything like that. We had picnics occasionally, but coming from a country where you don’t ever eat vegetables raw, fruit unpeeled, or drink water from the tap, it took my parents a while to take to the idea of sitting on the ground eating sandwiches with your hands. These things might make me seem like a princess but then I’m not grossed out by eating chicken feet or fish eyes.

I was never a jock. My parents taught me to ride a bike and tried (but failed) to teach me to swim but other than that they never tried to push sport on me. Actually as far as the stereotype of Asian parents goes, they didn’t really push much on me at all – they didn’t make me learn piano or violin or Chinese and as an only child, with both of them working full time, I was mostly left to my own devices – hence all the reading and jacking off. At the end of primary school there was a bit of pressure around the exams for scholarships and selective entry schools, but that eased off once I won a scholarship to a prestigious private school.

The Anglican girls’ school I attended was a minefield of fascinating socialisation practices and I got a crash course in Western cultural capital that is still paying off everyday. But because it was a single-sex school it also meant your academic, musical and sporting activities weren’t immediately gendered. There was nothing especially masculine about soccer or feminine about theatre. Apart from one season of hockey, which I figured would suit me because I’m at least close to the ground, I mostly did drama and debating – and then increasingly politics. In Under Milkwood I played Butcher Beynon and in Aristophanes’ the Birds I played a bird. In Year 9 my best friend and I started a lunchtime poetry reading club. In Year 11 I helped organise an interschool literary festival and got Dorothy Porter to come read in our library. In Year 12 I started an Amnesty Club and gave heartfelt but probably inappropriately distressing speeches about violence against women at school assemblies.

I was never a geek. I taught myself html but only so I could make my Livejournal prettier. In the great battle of art versus science, I always went for art. But being an Asian scholarship kid, everyone assumed I was studying Physics, Chemistry and “the hard maths”. I must have had a faint inkling that Western culture masculinises the sciences and feminises the arts, but my grandmothers were doctors and botanists and I grew up associating arts with freedom and science with doing what my parents wanted. My father warned me against trying to be a writer, arguing alternately that Chinese people aren’t creative, or that white Australian racism would be easier to deal with in hard sciences where you can prove your skills more objectively. I wasn’t sure how I’d get away with enrolling to do a BA but luckily I got a scholarship which made it sound fancier.

My nerd identity started to fall away after high school. Most of my new friends at uni had the same interests as me. Obsessing about politics, reading theory for fun, gossiping about Virginia Woolf’s love affairs – these things stopped being nerdy and became kind of normal. Some of the things I’m into, like 18^th century serif fonts, even became cool – I guess hipsters are just nerds whose interests have become trendy. And ever since I representedSouth Africa at a mock UN youth conference in 2004, and hooked up with the representative forArgentina, being a nerd hasn’t had to mean getting no love. Maybe my nerdiness is just better integrated with other parts of me now – like when my friends and I try to develop hanky code into a complete language, a conlang to rival Esperanto. Theorising sex just extends it, like fanfic extends a beloved but cancelled tv show. I think nerdiness is a pretty good companion for queerness. Nerds are people who love what they love without shame, with all their heart (that’s “kun tute mia koro” in Esperanto).

For the record, my Dad is white Australian (some mix of English, Irish and Scottish back in the day), and my Mum is Indonesian (Javanese). Most Eurasian people can be identified as Eurasian, but not me. It’s probably because Indonesians typically look a little different from the stereotypical look folks associate with being Asian. So here are some of the things I’ve heard people say to or about me over the years…

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Some Sri Lankan dude in a club: “Hey, are you Sri Lankan?”

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On other occasions, there have been people talking about Asians around me in a way that they surely wouldn’t if I looked “properly” Asian.

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The pinnacle of this nonsense is the woman who emailed me alleging that not only was I not Eurasian, but I was some kind of black person, and my focusing on racism on my blog was part of my secret agenda to drive a wedge between white people and Asians. You can read that wonderful piece of craziness here.

At least I know who I am. I think.

Nonetheless, I did manage to read a lot of things in this year just gone. Some brilliant, some less so. Here are 5 things I read (3 books and 2 web articles) which might be relevant to readers of this magazine, and had a profound effect on me. I can’t verify the truth of the content of these these pieces of writing, and neither do I necessarily agree with all of them. But for me, great writing does not merely exist to tell us things that we agree with, but to stimulate, elevate and challenge our ways of thinking. I hope these things can have that effect on you in the way that they did for me.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

Harvard law professor Amy Chua became a polarising figure based on this memoir of her journey in “Chinese Parenting”, coining the phrase “Tiger Mother” in the process. When the Wall Street Journal published a selectively edited excerpt of the book, suddenly everyone had an opinion. Was she really accusing Western parents of being selfish, taking the easy way out and not wanting the best for their children? Did she really once call her daughter “garbage” for not taking violin practice seriously?

“Battle Hymn” is actually a very enjoyable book to read, but it is essential not to treat it as some kind of how-to manual for parenting. It’s a memoir of Chua’s experience in parenting, with its associated highs and lows, and like any good journey, she is not the exact same person by the end as she was at the beginning. Read it in this way and you can appreciate it for what it is. The mistake a lot of people made was to merely assume that Chua was cheering on her domineering methods and advocating everyone else adopt them; an approach somewhat understandable given the skewed context in which the Wall Street Journal presented it. But read it as a memoir, and make your own judgements. There’s plenty not to like about Chua’s ideas of Chinese parenting, but plenty of food for thought as well.

Paper Tigers

by Wesley Yang. Originally published at New York Magazine.

“What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?” asks writer Wesley Yang in a NY Magazine feature entitled “Paper Tigers”. While on a smaller scale to Chua, Yang also stirred up his share of vitriol with his article, which swings between being a wake-up-call for Asian America and an indulgent rant about Yang’s own self-loathing issues. Yang focuses on the Bamboo Ceiling – the invisible barrier that exists at the very top of the corporate world, where Asians are markedly under-represented despite what you’d expect from academic performances. But rather than placing the blame at the feet of the the white-dominated system, Yang turns the mirror on Asian-American culture, positing that the “keep your head down and work real hard” values instilled into so many Asian youngsters can only take them so far in life. He argues that too many Asian-American males are not learning the social skills and alpha behaviours that are so valuable for success, not just in a career but also in love.

Yang lets his piece down somewhat by dwelling too much on his own rebellion against his upbringing and identity, and there are enough sweeping statements about Asians to raise plenty of hackles. But part of what makes it an uncomfortable read is the truth behind it; the individuals whose stories Yang tells are all too familiar to most of us.

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

by Ha-Joon Chang.

Big government actually makes people open to change. The internet is overrated as an agent of global change. The free market is not actually free.

Surprised? Cambridge Economics professor Ha-Joon Chang’s latest book is full of these statements, and is a glorious exercise in demolishing the sacred cows of the free market. It is probably a reflection of how much neo-liberal economists have captured our present political narrative that I found myself immediately suspicious of Chang’s take on what is wrong with the world’s finances. It can’t really be that simple, can it? Reading 23 Things… makes me realise how much of what we just assume to be true about the global economy is simply a result of what corporate raiders and US Republican senators have been parroting for the last few decades. The book is full of anecdotes from all over the world detailing how economic policies affect actual human behaviour, and this helps to engage the layperson who knows little about economics without dumbing the subject down, which is a not inconsiderable skill. It’s the sort of book that would probably get branded “socialist” in the US, but rather, Ha-Joon Chang’s aim is for a fairer, kinder and gentler form of capitalism. It’s possible he is fighting a lost cause, yet this book should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in politics or the corporate world.

Thai Street Food

by David Thompson

I admit I’ve been critical before of the infatuation, in some segments of society, with white chefs who are experts on Asian food. Sydney-born David Thompson in some ways exemplifies the problems with this; he stirred controversy a few years back with a New York Times interview in which he claimed that Thai food was in decline and he wanted to save it, and many Thai foodsters were unsurprisingly less than impressed. But despite this, few would question that Thompson has the sort of fanatical obsession with Thailand and its cuisine that even his detractors would have to grudgingly respect. It is this devotion that makes his books, Thai Food and Thai Street Food, worth the substantial outlay of funds it takes to acquire them. His most recent weighty tome, Thai Street Food, is laden with as many beautifully-shot images of street vendors in action as it is of the food itself, and most of the recipes are accompanied by notes on the dish’s history and the context in which it is consumed; a reminder that Thompson is almost as much a culinary anthropologist as he is a Michelin-starred chef.

As someone who is deadly serious about his art, you get a sense that Thompson writes for those with a similarly fundamentalist mindset. There is no attempt to dumb down Thai food for the masses, and he strives to encourage authenticity in techniques and ingredients as much as possible. As such, this is primarily a book for all the Asian-food geeks and hardcore home chefs out there. If when making Thai food you even consider opening a tin of prepared curry paste, Thompson is probably not your man. If however you are like me – and get a kick from things like finding out that Pad Thai was invented sometime in the 30s as part of a government campaign to encourage nationalism and popularize noodle consumption – then you’ll probably like this book.

Tiny Martyr for Chinese Freedom

By Martin Bendeler, originally published at ABC’s The Drum.

China, and indeed much of the world, was shocked at footage in October of a two year-old girl, Wang Yueyue, who had wandered onto a road, being run over by a truck, then another. Neither vehicle stopped, and 18 other pedestrians saw her but kept on their way.

Bendeler (an aid consultant and former Australian government advisor on Asian foreign policy) looks at this horrifying incident and analyses what it says about China’s soul. More than half a century of disastrous Communist Party policies, he contends, have given birth to a China where trust and sense of community are in short supply.  It’s a saddening look at the social disaster that lurks behind the spectacular economic success of the Chinese juggernaut.