AustLit

'Lachlan Brown's account of a writing workshop for young refugees in the western suburbs of Sydney, sponsored by the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation in 2009, is a vivid example of Rubin's axiom that texts both produce networks of sociality and are produced by them. The pieces by refugee writers also confirm her argument that sociability is heterogeneous and unstable, embracing both engagement with and subtle resistance to or difference from dominating forms of identity, including narratives of national belonging. Brown notes a distinct and recurring ambivalence about 'Australia' that unsettles the writing by refugees: Tamil, Afghan or Iraqi identities are withheld and 'in play', always ready to 'overshadow any sense of Australian nationality or citizenship, and those sets of 'values' that are required or promoted by the government.' (Kirkpatrick, Peter and Dixon, Robert: Introduction xviii-xix)