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'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)
Notes
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Epigraph:
I do know what I am talking about! It is you who have lost your way … I laugh, Creon, because I see suddenly what a transparent hypocrite you are. Creon, the family man! Creon, the contented sitter on benches, in the evening, in his garden! Creon, desecrating the dead while he tries to fob me off with platitudes about happiness! I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life – that life must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness – provided a person doesn’t ask too much of life.
–Antigone to Creon in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone
to make all this trouble about fixing tiny little things
xi there is nothing here needs fixing … love lives here though things are tight –
Maxine Beneba Clarke, ‘nothing here needs fixing’ in Carrying the World
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Cordite Poetry Review
- Melbourne, Victoria,
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cPhilippines,cSoutheast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
