This lyrical essay examines the disorienting experience of an immigrant navigating identity amid pressures to assimilate.
Essay
5 Aussie Reads
“Visitors … could be forgiven for wondering why we are so pre-occupied with questions of identity - speech made by Prime Minister Paul Keating at the 1990 Australian Book Publishers Awards. Australian culture has never been particularly well looked after...
The Glamorous, Immortal Nostalgia of Miss PiggyÂ
Dedicated to Frank Oz and Eric Jacobson. “It’s because I’m a pig isn’t it? … I did not get the nomination for best actress … can you honestly say I am not Oscar material? … In this male chauvinist, non pig world, did you ever think I even stood a...
Mary Oliver’s ‘Her Grave’ and the Bittersweet Joy of DogsÂ
Grief, in these days where the sun is low and white, hits like the snow tires of a heavy Ford pickup. It rolls over me slowly and waits for the weight to break, leaving again with the crunch of gravel and sleet. There are many things to love and cherish, and it is...
What I Learned From Seven Weeks Without My Headphones
I’ve always been the type of person to have a constant lull of music, always playing from something, somewhere. Music has found itself in every corner of my life, central and humming from the radios, the walls, the grasses. Navy blue nights covered in Johnny Cash,...
The Forest of Ink & Skin
This essay addresses ideas around eco-storytelling & neurodiversity, while reflecting upon an immersive performance the author co-created in Tartu, Estonia in 2024, and tells the tale of a woman who must absolve her sins by tattooing the trunks of every tree in a forest.
Vulnerability in the Time of Indifference
The kids are afraid of feeling. They, for whatever reason, have an aversion to showing any sign of caring, frustration, sadness, the like. In the minds of young people everywhere there is a block that has been developing and solidifying against the vulnerabilities of...
In Defense of Wendy Cope, Gary Soto, Roisin Kelly, etc.
Writers are dearly in love with oranges. They’ve found metaphors in bits and peels, even in stems that grow increasingly along the sides of trees that hang low to the reader, easily pickable. What I’ve seen, and continue to see, is that there’s something about oranges...
I Walked Through the Midnight Library and Saw the TV Glow
I was pretty active on Letterboxd last year. If you’re unfamiliar, Letterboxd is a social networking platform that allows people to rate, review, and catalog films. It pretty much functions exactly like Goodreads with a laughably bad search function to match....
Luck is a Funny Thing
Caitlin Taylor So retells the stories her grandpa told her about the Vietnam War, from her perspective as his granddaughter. Reflecting on what these stories mean to her, she connects them to her annual Lunar New Year wishes to her grandparents. She grapples with how it is possible to give back to your elders when they have given you everything.
Boy, Descending
N.H. Van Der Haar wrote this work because he was deeply interested in their Gay Sauna, how it occupies a space in pre-legality homosexual life and how delicate its position can feel in the wider culture of Pride and Melbourne culture.
Kipo: Biraciality and Blackness
A look at how Kipo functions as a multiracial, Black and Asian character in Netflix Original Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts.
What Was Barbie Made For?Â
Where does the film, and by extension, the doll, fit into our discussions of feminism, capitalism, and nostalgia?
Why Do Movie Audiences Love Suicide Bombing?
There’s something strange about the way Hollywood celebrates explosive martyrdom.
Life of Pi and Bubble Tea
Life of Pi is a book written by a White Canadian man about a Pondicherry Indian boy which somehow became a Taiwanese icon in 2012.
Breaking The English Haiku Beyond Syllables
Haikus can be so much more meaningful when they are unbound from their syllabic structure
Queen Of The Pulps
Pulp fiction magazines have always teetered between the line of low and high art, and as such are considered fairly niche when it comes to art historical scholarship.
Rubik’s Cube Therapy
There are 43 quintillion possible configurations on a Rubik’s Cube, and only one of those is correct. The cube functions as a distraction from the messiness of the world.
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