AustLit

'In the first chapter of The Factory (2005) the Australian protagonist Hilda, writing from a Japanese prison, says,

I remember someone saying to me when I first came to this country, "You may speak perfect Japanese. You may live like the Japanese, sound like the Japanese, believe what the Japanese believe. But you will never be Japanese:" (2).

'This statement provides the spur for the novel's sustained engagement with the nature of national, cultural, and racial identity. This essay highlights the way the novel both problematizes and reproduces the borders that govern who is Japanese and who is Australian and, by extension, who is not Japanese and who is not Australian. The above extract presents Japanese identity as incommensurable with Australian identity, and in turn sees Australia as distinct from Asia:

The label "Australian" [. . .] separates Australia from its place in the Asia-Pacific region and from the plethora of its connections with and interests in other parts of the world; one of the effects of this is to assimilate it to a model of white and settled Australianness that does little justice to its internal heterogeneity. (Frow 60)

'Suvendrini Pemra characterizes the imaginary bottlers between Australia and Asia as not simply territorial or national but defined by racial identities as well: "the geographical differentiation of the island-body, Australia, from the islands of Asia is paralleled by a process of racial differentiation' (3). (Introduction)

'In this sentence "hill" refers to an actual but unimportant phenomenon: a large mound of dirt or rock. Though focus word/s "hill" is word/s conferring Truth value (5% score increase), focus word/s "dawn" has problematic or negative Beauty value (see Notes Section). BGT Stats Sheet reading of 2016-2026 trend indicates rapid decrease in "dawn" to the value [sic] of defunct cliché, inhibiting Beauty score reaching threshold value for heritage listing consideration. DWMs are an endangered species, I know it.' (Introduction)

'[...]he'd been battling drug and alcohol problems and when Social Security and CES forced him to go on a "sales training course" he did so because (a) he had no choice and (b) he had to do something . . . something else. [...]she'd said that to him just after discovering he'd pawned her earrings and silver bracelets to buy a couple of sticks of mull. Two of the zealots were engaged in eager conversation-a young man and a young woman, white shirt and white blouse, black trousers and black knee-length skirt, each waving whiteboard markers around as if they were wands. Desk sets: plastic molded desk sets with two pens in plastic swivel holders, a tubular well for pencils and other pens, a flat square well for paperclips and bits 'n' pieces, and a peculiar little globe of the world that could be turned and looked as if the map would peel off in quartered orange-peel-like segments.' (Introduction)

'When we encounter a superb poet for the first time, we relearn how to listen, how to read. In T. S. Eliot’s words, it is “a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate / With shabby equipment always deteriorating” (189).

'We were in Oregon, driving north on Highway 101, and my wife was telling me about Kevin Hart, a poet and scholar whom she had known in Australia and whom we had just met briefly at a conference in Pennsylvania. She opened her iPad as I drove, located some Hart poems online, and began to read: “There is a silence words can’t touch.”' (Introduction)

'After a few weeks, one young woman's husband arced up and Mike had to tell both blokes to pull up on their drinking or they'd be off the roster. En Sviveldash, if yoo are serving za customer en za customer vonts yor top layer, or za peece rite at za frunt, make shore yoo rest vun finger on za scales ven yoo veigh for price.' (Introduction)

'Joan Wise made her fiction debut in the pages of Australia's Bulletin magazine in 1950. A poem of hers had earlier appeared in the same publication, but her arrival as a writer of prose was announced by a series of linked tales, "The Conquest of Emmie" (January), "Poison in the Furrow" (May), and "A Fence for Emma" (August). The stories are a subtly comic triptych about gender politics and hardscrabble bush-farming life in the remote Central Highlands district of Tasmania.' (Introduction)