AustLit

'‘I have the best job in the world,’ said the man who hanged himself in a hotel in Northeastern France on 8 June.

'It is 2014. Two years since I swore off Australian poetry: a couple of years earlier, I’d wandered into an erotic poetry reading in Brunswick, where an older white man patted himself on the back for fucking a local sex worker in Bali. I was the only Asian-background person in the room. I walked out thinking Australian poetry was unsexy at best, creepy and racist at worst.' (Introduction)

'Filipino-ness is a weight I did not choose to be born with, but I carry on my back every day. As an immigrant to Australia, I am expected to uncritically wave the flag and do my birth country proud with my achievements; be the smiling migrant who hangs out at Australia Day parades, tags oneself on Facebook selfies beneath the Melbourne Central shot tower, lands a full-time office job, acquires property and authentic Louis Vuitton handbags, wears the trappings of aspirational middle-classness with the serenity of one who has ‘made it.’ To be a Filipino whose worth is tied up with her ability to demonstrate her gratitude and usefulness to society and to the narrative of a welcoming white Australia. Because to just be is never enough.' (Introduction)