AustLit

'ECHOES is a curious and lyrical collection of personal essays from writer, essayist, critic and poet Shu-Ling Chua which references art and literature, pop culture and nostalgia. It gathers small joys, from a figure-hugging ‘disco dress’ to learning to sing Koo Mei’s ‘Bu Liao Qing’ 不了情 to the swish of washing machines. And asks: what does one unknowingly inherit?

'In the title story, Echoes, inspired by old Chinese pop songs and their modern versions, Shu-Ling unexpectedly discovers past and present colliding despite the limits of language and translation and the gaps that remain there. 'Years later, I had presumed consuming the same cultural products would help me piece together her life. There is however a river—linguistic, cultural, historical—I cannot cross.'

'In (Im)material Inheritances, Shu-Ling considers glamour and the way we dress for the world, delighting in the feminine, while peering at old family photographs searching and longing for the material links with her mother and grandmother. And finally in To Fish for the Moon, Shu-Ling takes us on a watery journey from her share house washing machine to her great-grandparents' laundry business in Malaysia, to red date tea and a bathtub, examining the minute detail of our domestic lives, the habits and rituals, their origins and secrets, sorrows and delights, and shining a light on their place and meaning.' (Publication summary)

'We Are Speaking in Code explores difference and deviance in the everyday through the lenses of mental illness, queerness and migrant identity. Weaving personal anecdotes with reflections on trauma, psychology and contemporary relationships this collection of essays catalogues, reconsiders and unravels ideas of belonging, identity and the way we operate in the world.

Opening with a visit ‘home’ to Moscow where she speaks an alphabet-soup Russian, Vavilova tries to connect with her mother and grandmother. The titular essay starts one of the central conversations of the book; what does it mean to be a migrant whose identity is impossible in the land of their forebears and highly complicated in their home. Vavilova also tackles the millennial preoccupations of finding meaningful paid work, navigating dating in the tech age and the perils of building a living as an artist.

'Bridging social, emotional and geographic distances, Vavilova’s essays look for ways to live on the edges, with grace, humour and lucid rage.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Pete Hay is pre-eminent among the guardians of Tasmania’s island’s spirit, his fierce intelligence and compassionate heart resisting those who would ravage, exploit and appropriate its natural beauty, cultural creativity and fraught history for profit and power. Animals and ancestors, people and plants, the lost and the loved, the humus and the human, the artist and the artefact, the books and the birds, the sadness and the stillness, the past and the possible, the humour and the horror all find voice in 'Forgotten Corners'. ' (Publication summary)