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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'It is the cosmic reduced to the simplest terms. Ten-year-old Noland, a mute lantern maker, imagines an angel falling from the sky to the slums where he lives. But it's only an American tourist who is caught in a drive-by shooting of a political journalist. At a busy intersection in Manila, the magical and the seedy collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and child prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global "war on terror".' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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Dedication: For the Nolands and Eugenes of this world. I wish you wings.
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Epigraph: They stretched their willing wings,
and gladly sped from their bright seats above,
to tell the shepherds on the hillside at night,
the marvellous story...
Not with the stammering tongue of him that tells a story in which he has no interest;
nor even with the feigned interest of a man that would move the passions of others,
when he feels no emotion himself; but with joy and gladness, such as angels only can know.
The 'sang' the song out...
The First Christmas Carol, Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)
Affiliation Notes
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Writing Disability in Australia:
Type of disability Mutism. Type of character Primary. Point of view Third person.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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“The Root of All Evil”? Transnational Cosmopolitanism in the Fiction of Dewi Anggraeni, Simone Lazaroo and Merlinda Bobis
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , December vol. 52 no. 5 2016; (p. 595-609) Mediating Literary Borders : Asian Australian Writing 2018; (p. 69-83) This article exposes the contradictions of cosmopolitan citizenship and world peace in novels by three Southeast Asian Australian women authors. Their fiction questions the viability of transnational sisterhood in an age of humanitarian intervention where women and children have become pawns for renewed western imperialist ventures. This article asks in turn whether the incommensurable space opened up by the failures of various forms of what Stuart Hall calls cosmopolitanism “from above” can be reinvested through “reading up the ladder of privilege”, as proposed by Chandra T. Mohanty. Simone Lazaroo’s Sustenance (2010) and Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker (2008) build “grass-roots” forms of cosmopolitanism and touristic hospitality designed to redress the many evils of contemporary postcolonial societies. The Root of all Evil (1987) by Dewi Anggraeni objects to the Spivakian native informant and upwardly mobile migrant woman’s imperious desire to help her homeland’s subaltern female underclass, in light of the latter’s lack of agency and the harm such intervention may cause. (Publication abstract) -
Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker: The Ethics of Traumatic Cross-Cultural Encounters
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 10 2013; 'Merlinda Bobis's second novel is an interesting combination of opposites: of the powerless and the powerful, the holy and the profane, the magical and the seedy, Third-World Asian poverty and white Western affluence. The Solemn Lantern Maker is a traumatized mute 10-year-old boy who lives with his crippled mother in the slums of Manila. One day, when trying to sell his colourful wares, he becomes involved in the life of a grieved American tourist who is caught up in a murder of a controversial journalist. In this post-9/11 climate, this event will soon be wrongly interpreted as a terrorist conspiracy. My paper will rely on some of the most relevant assumptions put forward by ethical criticism and trauma studies to show that Bobis's novel succeeds in illustrating how the powerful world of international politics can inadvertently impinge on the small world of an insignificant Third-World child, and how the love and care that this child offers to an unknown distressed westerner eventually manages to play the miracle of transforming the latter's life, thus making it clear that Bobis's allegory of traumatic cross-cultural encounters testifies to the power of the (un)common to render the invisible visible, and of the unselfish circulation of affect to effect unexpected changes in an apparently indifferent globalized world.' (Author's abstract)
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The Asian Conspiracy : Deploying Voice/Deploying Story
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 25 no. 3 2010; (p. 1-19) 'This essay develops on the premise of imagining, which is the heart of story-making: imagine the physicality of story. Imagine the deployment strategies, the covert 'translations' of difference' that facilitate the entry of the Other story through the gate.
And once inside, imagine how this Otherness is legitimised, packaged and consumed within the Australian nation.' (p. 3) -
'Hush, I Know a Story You Don't Know'
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Wet Ink , Summer no. 13 2008; (p. 10-15) -
'Voice-Niche-Brand' : Marketing Asian-Australianness
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 45 2008;
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Untitled
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , February vol. 87 no. 6 2008; (p. 38)
— Review of The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008 single work novel -
Ambitious Novel of New Century Poor
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 29 March 2008; (p. 13)
— Review of The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008 single work novel -
In Short : Fiction
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 March 2008; (p. 31)
— Review of The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008 single work novel ; Life Training : Short Stories To Be Read on Trains 2008 selected work short story -
Lantern Dazzles Like a Kaleidoscpoe
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 12 April 2008; (p. 30)
— Review of The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008 single work novel -
An Anthropological Turn?
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 192 2008; (p. 88-92)
— Review of On a Wing and a Prayer 2006 single work novel ; The Lost Dog 2007 single work novel ; Musk and Byrne 2008 single work novel ; The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008 single work novel ; The Biographer 2008 single work novel ; The Spare Room 2008 single work novel ; They Called Me the Wildman : The Prison Diary of Henricke Nelson 2008 single work novel ; Many Years a Thief 2007 single work novel ; Jamaica : A Novel 2007 single work novel ; The Good Parents 2008 single work novel ; Black Sheep : A Dystopian Novel 2007 single work novel ; Misconceptions 2008 single work novel -
Author Discovers Novel Hero in Manila Bar
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Illawarra Mercury , 14 March 2008; -
The Bracing View from Shantytown
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10-11 May 2008; (p. 10-11) -
'Voice-Niche-Brand' : Marketing Asian-Australianness
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 45 2008; -
'Hush, I Know a Story You Don't Know'
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Wet Ink , Summer no. 13 2008; (p. 10-15) -
Painting with Words, Writing with the Body : Genre-Hopping with Merlinda Bobis
1992-
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Filipinas 1992-;
Last amended 28 Jul 2021 09:50:45
Settings:
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Manila,
cPhilippines,cSoutheast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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