AustLit

'Second City is a showcase of the diverse literary talents that make Sydney’s Western Suburbs such a fertile region for writers.

'Beginning with Prime Minister’s Award-winning author Felicity Castagna’s warning about the dangers of cultural labelling, this collection of essays takes resistance against conformity and uncritical consensus as one of its central themes. From Aleesha Paz’s call to recognise the revolutionary act of public knitting to Frances An’s ‘counter-revolutionary’ attack on the repressive clichés of ‘women of colour’, Sheila Ngoc Pham on the importance of education in crossing social and ethnic boundaries, and May Ngo’s cosmopolitan take on the significance of the shopping mall, the collection offers complex and humane insights into the dynamic relationships between class, culture, family, and love. Eda Gunaydin’s ‘Second City’, from which this collection takes its title, is both a political autobiography and an elegy for a Parramatta that has been lost to gentrification and redevelopment. Zohra Aly and Raaza Jamshed confront the prejudices which oppose Muslim identity in the suburbs, the one in the building of a mosque, the other in the naming of her child. Rawah Arja writes in a comic vein on the complexity of the Lebanese-Australian family, Martin Reyes on the overlay of experiences as a hike in the Dharawal National Park recalls an earlier trek in Bangkong Kahoy Valley in the Phillipines. Finally, Yumna Kassab’s essay on Jorge Luis Borges reminds us that Western Sydney writing can be represented by no single form, opinion, style, poetics, or state of mind.

'The cultural backgrounds represented here include Cambodian, Pakistani, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Italian, Filipino, South American, Iraqi and Turkish.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Sydney Review of Books was established in January 2013 with the aim of creating an online forum where Australia's critics could write at length about literature and cultural issues. The journal is now into its fifth year of existence, during which time it has published more than five hundred essays on Australian and international literature and culture. These essays have been widely circulated and discussed; several have been anthologised or translated; some of them have been controversial. But this is the first collection of Sydney Review of Books essays to appear in book form, and we offer it as a small but representative sample of the essays we have been proud to publish over the past five years.'  (Introduction)

'The Sydney Review of Books is Australia’s leading space for longform literary criticism. Now celebrating five years online, the SRB has published more than five hundred essays by almost two hundred writers. To mark this occasion, The Australian Face collects some of the best essays published in the SRB on Australian fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The essays in this anthology are contributions to the ongoing argument about the condition and purpose and evolving shape of Australian literature. They reflect the ways in which discussions about the state of the literary culture are constantly reaching beyond themselves to consider wider cultural and political issues.

'The Sydney Review of Books was established in 2013 out of frustration at the diminishing public space for Australian criticism on literature. There’s even less space for literature in our newspapers and broadcast media now. The Sydney Review of Books, however, is thriving, as the essays in The Australian Face show. Here, you’ll read essays on well-known figures such as Christos Tsiolkas, Alexis Wright, Michelle de Kretser and Helen Garner, alongside considerations of the work of writers who less frequently receive mainstream attention, such as Lesbia Harford and Moya Costello.' (Publication summary)

'Congratulations to the shortlisted critics! The applications for the fellowships impressed with their critical acuity, their literary qualities, their curiosity and their diversity. My thanks are due to the fellowship judges, Ben Etherington, Michelle Cahill and Shannon Burns, for reading and appraising the applications with care and diligence.' (Introduction)

'Fret not, lonely hearts, there are plenty more fish in the sea. Are there? This homily is usually rolled out to console the broken-hearted, to persuade them that the tides will soon wash up an acceptable substitute for their lost love. The Plenty of Fish online dating megasite boasts over three million active daily users, which suggests that the line works as a hook for those seeking love, companionship, romance or sex. It’s a figure of speech that might soon become obsolete.' (Introduction)

'On the first page of Julia Leigh’s memoir Avalanche, the author injects herself with artificial hormones: ‘I did this knowing that no matter how hard I hoped, no matter what I tried, chances were I’d never have a child.’ This is a book about hope, effort, and chance. Hope: the possibility of a child ‘conjured out of the ether’; the brittle optimism that sustains Leigh through years of fertility treatments. Effort: the brutal physical, psychological and financial costs of assisted fertility treatments. Chance: the statistics that, when finally in clear view, reveal that hope to have been remote all along.' (Introduction)

'Catriona Menzies-Pike came late to running and early to feminism. One of the least athletic kids in her high school class, she headed off to uni intent on expanding her mind, not improving her physical prowess. Then, at twenty, she lost her parents in a light plane crash. As she struggled with grief and the responsibility of looking after her three younger sisters, Catriona’s life took an unexpected and uncertain path through her twenties. Physically worn out, she decided to train for a marathon.' (Publication summary)

'It's early morning and I’m waiting with ten thousand other people in the four lanes of road that separate Sydney’s Hyde Park from St Mary’s Cathedral. A man is talking to us through a megaphone but it’s hard to hear him against the vigorous dance track bouncing from the sound system. Eventually someone will blast a siren and we’ll all go off and run a half marathon together.' (Publication abstract)