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'There is a Turkish saying that one’s home is not where one is born, but where one grows full – doğduğun yer, doyduğun yer. Mixing the personal and political, Eda Gunaydin’s bold and innovative writing explores race, class, gender and violence, and Turkish diaspora – both in Australia and round the world – in her compelling debut.
'Equal parts piercing, tender and funny, this book takes us from an overworked and underpaid café job in Western Sydney, the mother-daughter tradition of sharing a meal in the local kebab shop, a night clubbing with Turkish students, to the legacies of family migration, and intergenerational trauma within a history of violence and political activism.
'For readers of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Durga Chew-Bose, Eda Gunaydin seeks to unsettle neat descriptions of migration and diaspora. How should we address a racist remark on the 2AM night ride bus? What does the Turkish diaspora of Auburn in Western Sydney have in common with Neukölln in Berlin? And how can we look to past suffering to imagine a new future?' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Best of 2022 in Australian Reading
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;
— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat 2022 single work novel -
Gurbet Çekmek : Being Diaspora Is a Wound
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay -
Against Memoir
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2022;
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay'What could be more humiliating than to write and be read, to be thought about and perceived by strangers? And then the worst: to be dissected, publicly and openly, for all the things we dedicated ourselves as teenagers to hiding? Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth.' (Introduction)
-
An Interview Eda Gunaydin
LinLi Wan
(interviewer),
2022
single work
interview
— Appears in: Voiceworks , July no. 127 2022; (p. 68-79)'In every piece of writing, I am always looking for that moment that forces me to put the words down, close my eyes and take a deep breath. A single moment of reflection that allows me to appreciate what the author is saying, but also why they are saying it. In Eda Gunaydin's 'Root and Branch', I found that moment in the essay titled 'Kalitsal'.' (Introduction)
-
No Stranger to Sacrifice Eda Gunaydin’s Début Essay Collection
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 444 2022; (p. 33-34)
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay'Eda Gunaydin’s collection of essays, Root & Branch, centres on migration, class, guilt, and legacy. It joins the surge of memoir-as-début by millennial writers, who interrogate the personal via the political. Gunaydin, whose family immigrated to Australia from Turkey, grew up in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney – home to a historically migrant and working-class demographic. We learn that her father, a bricklayer, has been the household’s sole income provider as the health of her mother, Besra, meant that she ‘never had a job in this country except cleaning’. Gunaydin meanwhile accepted off-the-books employment in hospitality and retail until she was able to ‘crack into a white-collar position’ at the university where she is completing her PhD. This left her hyper-conscious of intergenerational mobility and class disparity. She worries about what it means ‘to instantly unlock an easier life … while others continu[e] to struggle’. Those others being, namely, her family, whose Blacktown postcode means limited access to adequately funded essential services, reliable public transport, and affordable housing. It is a concern driving much of the book – how to reconcile gratitude with guilt, particularly when Gunaydin cannot divorce the opportunities available to her in life from her family’s sacrifices.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , May 2022;
— Review of How to Be Between 2022 single work autobiography ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; Daisy and Woolf 2022 single work novel ; Abomination 2022 single work novel -
No Stranger to Sacrifice Eda Gunaydin’s Début Essay Collection
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 444 2022; (p. 33-34)
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay'Eda Gunaydin’s collection of essays, Root & Branch, centres on migration, class, guilt, and legacy. It joins the surge of memoir-as-début by millennial writers, who interrogate the personal via the political. Gunaydin, whose family immigrated to Australia from Turkey, grew up in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney – home to a historically migrant and working-class demographic. We learn that her father, a bricklayer, has been the household’s sole income provider as the health of her mother, Besra, meant that she ‘never had a job in this country except cleaning’. Gunaydin meanwhile accepted off-the-books employment in hospitality and retail until she was able to ‘crack into a white-collar position’ at the university where she is completing her PhD. This left her hyper-conscious of intergenerational mobility and class disparity. She worries about what it means ‘to instantly unlock an easier life … while others continu[e] to struggle’. Those others being, namely, her family, whose Blacktown postcode means limited access to adequately funded essential services, reliable public transport, and affordable housing. It is a concern driving much of the book – how to reconcile gratitude with guilt, particularly when Gunaydin cannot divorce the opportunities available to her in life from her family’s sacrifices.' (Introduction)
-
Against Memoir
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2022;
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay'What could be more humiliating than to write and be read, to be thought about and perceived by strangers? And then the worst: to be dissected, publicly and openly, for all the things we dedicated ourselves as teenagers to hiding? Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth.' (Introduction)
-
Best of 2022 in Australian Reading
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;
— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat 2022 single work novel -
Gurbet Çekmek : Being Diaspora Is a Wound
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay -
An Interview Eda Gunaydin
LinLi Wan
(interviewer),
2022
single work
interview
— Appears in: Voiceworks , July no. 127 2022; (p. 68-79)'In every piece of writing, I am always looking for that moment that forces me to put the words down, close my eyes and take a deep breath. A single moment of reflection that allows me to appreciate what the author is saying, but also why they are saying it. In Eda Gunaydin's 'Root and Branch', I found that moment in the essay titled 'Kalitsal'.' (Introduction)
Awards
- Western Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,