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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Birds of Passage is the powerful and haunting story of Seamus O'Young, an Australian-born Chinese, on a collision course with the past.
'He reconstructs his past through the eyes of Shan, an ancestor who came to Australia in the 1880s. And, just as Shan was driven from the goldfields by depravity, racism and sheer greed; so Seamus finds himself, a century later, fighting for his own life and sanity.'
Source: Goodreads.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Detours and Divagations
2019
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2019; -
y
Reckoning with the Past : Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature
Abingdon
:
Routledge
,
2018
17218286
2018
single work
criticism
'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.
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Pacific Studies : Quo Vadis?
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 13 2014; (p. 23-34)'Looking back to the past this paper discusses why Pacific studies and in particular Australasian studies became an area of interest in tertiary education in Europe. What subject areas initiated these studies, and how do past legacies shape the present? With cutbacks in higher education over the past two decades the future of interdisciplinary studies and the humanities looks bleak. At the same time due to global business and increased political communication across borders there is a vibrant interest in and need for such studies among businesses and students. For most Europeans the literature of settler countries, with their European legacy, makes access to ways of thought and culture easier than studies of countries with other mythological backgrounds. In today’s multicultural environment such studies can provide knowledge for an understanding of other cultures and increase tolerance of the ‘other’. Area studies have relevance to our situation in Europe with increased migrancy, not least as a result of Schengen and EU regulations. ' (Author's abstract)
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Degrees of Transparency in Brian Castro's Birds of Passage and After China
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies , Autumn vol. 35 no. 1 2012; (p. 73-82) 'This essay intends to highlight how Brian Castro's Birds of Passage (1983) and After China (1992) waver between transparency and opacity. It explores some of the techniques employed - among which a blurring of categories and a questioning of narratorial reliability - in order to create what Roland Barthes calls a "text of bliss" - one which challenges the limits of language as a means of communication.' (Author's abstract)
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Literary Transculturations and Modernity : Some Reflections
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 4 no. 1 2011; 'In an increasingly global world literary and cultural critics are constantly searching for ways in which to analyse and debate texts and artefacts. Postcolonial theories and studies have provided useful tools for analyzing, among others, New Literatures in English and other languages, as well as throwing new light on an understanding of older texts. But today, with the increase in diaspora studies in literature and cultural studies, new ways of looking at texts are paramount, given the complexity of contemporary literature. There is, as Bill Ashcroft writes, a 'strange contrapuntal relationship between identity, history, and nation that needs to be unravelled.' With references to Australian literature, this article will present some reflections on transculturation and modernities, the themes of the Nordic Network of Transcultural Literary Studies, which considers transculturation not as a theory but, 'a matrix through which a set of critical tools and vocabularies can be refined for the study of texts from a localized world, but institutionalised globally' and where , ' the engagement of multiple sites and their routes with the progression of "one modernity" in some way or other inform the aesthetics of transcultural literature.' (Author's introduction)
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Travelling Birds
1984
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 60 1984; (p. 17-18)
— Review of Getting Away with It : A Novel 1982 single work novel ; Birds of Passage 1983 single work novel -
Distinguished Fiction
1983
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , December no. 93 1983; (p. 65-66)
— Review of Birds of Passage 1983 single work novel ; Over Here, Harv! 1983 selected work short story ; Hostages 1983 selected work short story ; Headlocks & Other Stories 1983 selected work short story -
Serious and Impressive But Disjointed Novel
1983
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 October 1983; (p. 19)
— Review of Birds of Passage 1983 single work novel -
Winging Towards Elusive Heights
1983
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 20-21 August 1983; (p. 15)
— Review of Birds of Passage 1983 single work novel -
Dead Jumbuck
1984
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age Monthly Review , January 1984; (p. 19-20)
— Review of Birds of Passage 1983 single work novel ; Matilda, My Darling 1983 single work novel -
Looking (North-) West to the East : Some Thoughts on the Asianisation of Australian Literature
1992
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Making of a Pluralist Australia 1950-1990: Selected Papers from the Inaugural EASA Conference 1991 1992; (p. 219-227) -
Wang Guanglin : An Interview with Brian Castro (9/11/2001)
Wang Guanglin
(interviewer),
2004
single work
interview
— Appears in: Being and Becoming : On Cultural Identity of Diasporic Chinese Writers in America and Australia 2004; (p. 324-334) -
Decentring Orientalist and Ocker Masculinities in Birds of Passage
2005
single work
essay
— Appears in: Culture, Identity, Commodity : Diasporic Chinese Literature in English 2005; (p. 183-204) -
Appropriating National Myths : Brian Castro's 'Birds of Passage'
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Fact and Fiction : Readings in Australian Literature 2008; (p. 227-239) -
Writing Chinese Diaspora : After the 'White Australia Policy'
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 263-270) Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 158-172) An overview of Chinese-Australian writing.
Awards
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cChina,cEast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
- 1850s
- 1950s