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)

'I’m letting our succulents die. I was the only one keeping them alive. So I’ve forced myself to stop. I read in a book that a vital stage of healing for those who have sustained trauma is letting go of the caretaker roles they find oppressive. I have deleted from my calendar the reminder notification that says ‘water plant’. When I see the pots I force myself to look away, and resist the compulsion to run to their aid.' (Introduction)

'I stopped writing my memoir a year ago. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of understanding, maybe. I shit you not, I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. But why should I tell anyone about it? I stopped because I realised that forcing someone to look at me is no guarantee that I will be seen. How could I write about, say, my experience with a cult that abused and traumatised a loved one, among tens of others, culminating in a court case in which the offender was acquitted, and the complainants victim-blamed publicly, made the butt of jokes? How could I, when I am steeped in a culture which views cults as a joke: something to meme, or dedicate a season of a tween TV show to, or an episode of a podcast to, or to make into merchandise?' (Introduction)     

 (Publication abstract)

'The shoulder bumps from strangers that make me shove back during the day go down easier at night. The power dynamic shifts when you hurry against the CBD’s foot traffic as a group, newly animated with the ability to break up other clusters of bodies with your increased speed and size. On the corner of Sydney’s George and Bathurst I glance up, diverted by some Big Four firm’s logo beaming down—its sedate, civilised, civilising weight. The building’s few lit office windows cut and blaze against the ones that have gone dark. I imagine being one of those floating Friday bodies shifting on an eighth floor, fiddling with my stationery, sipping from my mug of free pod coffee, looking out the window after dusk and realising that I should climb into my car-smelling car, return to my flat-smelling flat and kiss my cat-smelling cat. Then Ahmet falls onto his side.' (Introduction)

 (Publication abstract)