AustLit

'My family is one of workers. Over the years, Mum has told me countless stories of her own childhood: crouching in the dirt to feed worms to the family ducks, sweeping the floor of the family grocery store in search of a glint of loose change, helping my Po Po peel enough vegetables to feed her family of seven.' (Introduction)

'On a plane from Brisbane to Sydney, I read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth to convince myself getting Botox was a stupid idea. Mostly, I wanted to understand my self-critical thought patterns and compulsive behaviours surrounding “beauty labour”. There are several physical features I dislike about myself that I consistently work hard to improve or manage: body, skin, hair, just to name a few. Was the amount of time and money I poured into beauty regimes going to increase as I got older?' (Introduction)

'Hard work is etched in my bones. I see it in my mother’s restless hands, the way she jiggles her knees or bites her fingernails when she sits down to rest. I saw it in the spotlessness of both my grandmothers’ houses – in the way that they never sat down until everything around them was pristine. As much as I long for the order of these houses, I have learned to sit in the chaos of my home and look only at the screen or book in front of me. But the restlessness has stayed with me. I check work emails both earlier and later than I should. I work early in the morning and later in the evening. Before I had a child, my ideal working hours would have been roughly 8am to 7pm. I’ve been forced to truncate my hours into more or less 9 to 5ish, squeezing in extra hours when I can.' (Introduction)

'Lately, I’ve been sending work to a friend of mine. A new friend, a poet whose feedback I trust. After a while she said to me, ‘How come you keep using words ‘little’, ‘quiet’, ‘small’?’ I said I didn’t know why, that I had started and it stuck.' (Introduction)