AustLit

'There is a Turkish saying that one’s home is not where one is born, but where one grows full – doğduğun yer, doyduğun yer. Mixing the personal and political, Eda Gunaydin’s bold and innovative writing explores race, class, gender and violence, and Turkish diaspora – both in Australia and round the world – in her compelling debut.

'Equal parts piercing, tender and funny, this book takes us from an overworked and underpaid café job in Western Sydney, the mother-daughter tradition of sharing a meal in the local kebab shop, a night clubbing with Turkish students, to the legacies of family migration, and intergenerational trauma within a history of violence and political activism.

'For readers of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Durga Chew-Bose, Eda Gunaydin seeks to unsettle neat descriptions of migration and diaspora. How should we address a racist remark on the 2AM night ride bus? What does the Turkish diaspora of Auburn in Western Sydney have in common with Neukölln in Berlin? And how can we look to past suffering to imagine a new future?' (Publication summary)