AustLit

'The making of the Asian Australian novel is the unmaking of oppressive notions of history, subjectivity and literary form. Locating ethnic representational politics within power structures of race and nation, this chapter contends that Asian Australian identity is a site of hybrid instability realised through nonlinear forms of storytelling. The chapter examines national and diasporic paradigms across historical and contemporary trajectories of this literature: earlier Chinese Australian novels that blur boundaries between fictional and factual claims; Bildungsroman novels that trouble ethnocentric narratives of either assimilation or return; multicultural novels that unveil ongoing racism in liberal-pluralist ideals; and transnational novels that reimagine the Australian relationship with postcolonial and globalising Asian modernity. Reflecting on the limits of a critical humanist agenda, the chapter identifies an alternative paradigm of Asian Australian storytelling that employs speculative tactics to depict the land, species, climate change and Asian–Indigenous connections. This ecocritical paradigm challenges a normative ideal of the modern, autonomous and sovereign individual as one the migrant subject should integrate into, while pointing to an under-explored terrain for Asian Australian writers whose focus on diversity and justice would offer important insights into the shifting human condition.'

Source: Author's summary.

'Sri Lankan-Australian women writers have left their stamp on Australian fiction, from the ground-breaking first novel, A Change of Skies by Yasmine Gooneratne, in 1992, to the narratives of 2014 Miles Franklin Award recipient Michelle de Kretser. Among these novels that address the migrant’s cultural dilemma and accommodation, the novels by Chandani Lokugé demand attention. Lokugé has published three novels. This chapter examines the aspects of water and music flowing through Lokugé’s fiction to transformative new horizons and how these validate the concept of the transnation. Diversity of voices in literature is important in the contemporary public sphere in Australia and the chapter contributes towards addressing an elision in Australian discourse.'

Source: Abstract.