AustLit

'It’s not easy having a weird name, as many teenagers with foreign or experimental parents can attest – or unusual looks, or a stutter, or being too fat or too skinny, or shy, or any other characteristic that marks a child out from a very narrow mainstream. In a school where Class A bullies rule, the results can be devastating. It’s not inevitable: I never copped it for having a foreign name, though I went to an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon school. In fact, two kids at the top of the social pecking order there carried a Greek and an Italian name. But where bullying does occur, it can potentially leave scars for life.' (Introduction)