AustLit

'Desire: A Reckoning, Jessie Cole’s second memoir and fourth book, is a leafy work. Leafy for its setting in the northern New South Wales forest where Cole grew up and still lives, and also for its delicate interleaving. The work’s terrain is desire, which it evokes through connections with place, and how solitude, connection and attachment are woven through our lives and torn by detachment.'(Introduction)   

'Hollywood has a storied history of tapping white actors to play Asian roles, traditionally in yellowface and now by simply “reimagining” them as white. It hides behind the capitalist claim of “marketability” – the notion that people don’t pay to see movies with Asian leads or casts.' (Introduction)   

'When it comes to queer history, it’s easy to assume that gaps in the story equate to absence. But it isn’t so. While patriarchal societies have tried their darnedest to erase the presence of the disparate but overlapping LGBTQIA+ communities, we have always sought out one another in the secret pockets that offer safe harbour.'(Introduction)   

'Del Kathryn Barton knows what it is to be a child spinning into a dissociative state, the terror that takes on a life of its own. “Especially for the child’s mind,” she says. “I’m sure there’s lots of classifications now. I used to go into states and I still don’t even really know what they were. I really felt that I was not in control of my mind or my senses or my capacity to function in any normal way. Hearing voices and auditory hallucinations. It was horrific.”'(Introduction)