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'For the first time in my life, I saw my mother in relation to her family, and I didn't recognise her any more . . . These Singaporean roots of hers, this side of her—and possibly of me too—were unacceptable. I was determined not to belong, not to fit in, because I was Australian, and Mum ought to be Australian too. The tug of her roots, the blurring of her role from wife and mother to sister and aunt, angered me.
'On the eve of her mother's wake, Grace Tay flies to Singapore to join her father and brother and her mother's family. Here she explores her family history, looking for the answers to her mother's death. This beautiful and moving novel steps between Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia, evoking the life, traditions, and tastes of a forceful Chinese family as well as the hardship, cruelty, and pain. Written in a fresh, contemporary voice tinged with biting humor, this is a story about resilience and a story about migration, but in many ways it is a story about parents' expectations for their children.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Neoliberal Subjectivity and the Agony of Choice in Teo Hsu-Ming’s Love and Vertigo
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 33 no. 2 2019; (p. 364-377)'Teo Hsu-Ming’s Love and Vertigo (2000) follows multiple generations of a family through Singapore and Sydney, as they are racialized in these neoliberal contexts. It also repeatedly explores the dynamics of decision-making, presenting its characters with impossible choices and lose-lose scenarios. This article investigates the relation between choice, neoliberalism, and migrancy in Singapore and Sydney, the main settings of Teo’s novel. It argues that the idea of choice is mobilized here to illustrate structural limitations to decision-making in the context of neoliberalism’s regimes of racialization. By exploring the way choices are circumscribed and then made, the dynamics of neoliberalism and racialization in Sydney and Singapore are examined afresh. In so doing, this article interrogates the degree to which choice is liberating and celebrates the ways in which “decision and domination” (following Jane Elliott) can be resisted.' (Publication abstract)
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‘Hours of Morbid Entertainment’ : Self-Irony and Replayed Clichés in Hsu-Ming Teo’s Fiction
Australia’s Asia, Past and Present : Southeast Asian Backgrounds in Hsu-Ming Teo’s Fiction
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 2 2012; This article examines the representation of Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian immigrants in popular Australian fiction. In a close analysis of Hsu-Ming Teo's first novel Love and Vertigo (2000), it draws attention both to the potential and the problems of self-irony in what have chiefly been read as autobiographically inspired texts. Parodic elements may constructively rupture common readerly expectations of an 'Asian past' and hence demand a larger rethinking of prevailing conceptuali-sations of diaspora and diasporic writing. Yet the use of parody has also got its limitations and is symptomatically often edited out in the texts' reception. [Author's abstract] -
Re-Siting the Yellow Lady : Simone Lazaroo and Hsu-Ming Teo
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Post-Colonial Cultures and Societies , vol. 2 no. 3 2011; (p. 35-57) 'Simone Lazaroo's The Australian Fiancé and Hsu-Ming Teo's Love and Vertigo intercede in a complex discursive field of race and gender particularly in its present-day postcolonial Asian and Australian manifestation. By taking on the power to name their own subjects/characters, both these authors produce narratives that induce hitherto unknown identifications from their readers. This article shows that Love and Vertigo and The Australian Fiancé provide multiple possibilities for critical engagement. When this engagement occurs in the qualified binary of postcolonial globalisation and its literary representations, these texts provide the opportunity to interrogate the absences and complexities that are subsumed and simplified within that term' (57). -
Two Approaches to Constructing 'Chinese' Cultural Identity : Australia's Authors with Chinese Ancestry
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 296-313) -
Transitions : Rites of Passage as Border Crossings in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women's Writing 2010; (p. 207-223) The novels examined in this criticism focus on Asian-Australian women in contemporary Australia. Examples of the difficulties and identity-threatening tranisitions the characters undergo in their efforts to move across the borders of two cultures are given particular attention. Both authors share a dynamic engagement with notions of female subjectivity which provide insight into ways of belonging in Australia and the world.
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Exceptional First Novel
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;
— Review of Love and Vertigo 2000 single work novel -
Intimate Encounters
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 8 August vol. 118 no. 6236 2000; (p. 95)
— Review of Lucia's Measure 2000 single work novel ; Love and Vertigo 2000 single work novel -
Untitled
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , July vol. 5 no. 6 2000; (p. 24)
— Review of Love and Vertigo 2000 single work novel -
Three Generations of Pain
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 22-23 July 2000; (p. 13)
— Review of Love and Vertigo 2000 single work novel -
Journeys of Love and Loss
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 6 August 2000; (p. 11)
— Review of Love and Vertigo 2000 single work novel ; Under the Same Sun 2000 single work novel ; The Australian Fiance 2000 single work novel -
The Insuperable Longing to Forget: 'Love and Vertigo' and 'The Australian Fiance'
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Island , Autumn no. 92 2003; (p. 25-30) -
Re-Thinking Marginality : Class, Identity and Desire in Contemporary Australian Writing
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 1 no. 1 2004; (p. 45-68) -
Contemporary Asian-Australian Identities : Hsu-Ming Teo's Love and Vertige
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Global Fragments : (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order 2007; (p. 3-12) -
Phantom Limbs and Cultural Ventriloquism : Communicating Cultural Difference as a Novelist
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 32 no. 4 2008; (p. 521-529) 'This essay considers the "phantom presences" that shadow attempts by novelists in contemporary Australia to communicate within and across cultures. Cross-cultural communication is haunted by "phantom limbs" in all sorts of ways: the phantom limb of the revenant white nation, the phantom limbs of various cultures migrants left behind, and the phantom limb of "home" - of "landscapes [which] ache in all places of departures". The essay explores technical issues of cultural representation - a process which ultimately cannot avoid problematic constructions of self-orientalising ethnicity. I explain the personal context through which my novels Love and Vertigo (2000) and Behind the Monn (2005) were produced and the historical context of the novels' publication. I then consider the content of multicultural/ethnic Australian fiction within the broader context of Australian history, looking at how this legacy - a legacy of phantom presences - shapes cross-cultural writing as well as responses to this genre of fiction.' (521) -
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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cAustralia,c
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cSingapore,cSoutheast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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cMalaysia,cSoutheast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
- 1940s
- 1990s