Growing Up Asian in Australia

Publisher's synopsis

Asian-Australians have often been written about by outsiders, as outsiders. In this collection, compiled by award-winning author Alice Pung, they tell their own stories with verve, courage and a large dose of humour.

They tell tales of leaving home, falling in love, coming out and finding one’s feet. A young Cindy Pan vows to win every single category of Nobel Prize. Tony Ayres blows a kiss to a skinhead and lives to tell the tale. Benjamin Law has a close encounter with some angry Australian fauna, and Kylie Kwong makes a moving pilgrimage to her great-grandfather’s Chinese village.

Here are well-known authors and exciting new voices, spanning several generations and drawn from all over Australia. In sharing their stories, they show us what it is really like to grow up Asian, and Australian.

Contributors include Shaun Tan, Jenny Kee, Annette Shun Wah, Anh Do, Khoa Do, John So, Simone Lazaroo, Christopher Cyril, Jason Yat-Sen Li, Sunil Badami, Hoa Pham, Quan Yeomans, Caroline Tran, Tom Cho, Vanessa Woods and many more …

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Alice Pung

Alice Pung is the current Artist in Residence at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her debut novel Laurinda won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her second novel, One Hundred Days, was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Award, and has been optioned for a film. She is the author of children’s books including Millie Mak the Maker and Be Careful, Xiao Xin! (ill. Sher Rill Ng), When Granny Came to Stay (ill. Sally Soweol Han) and the Meet Marly books (ill. Lucia Masciullo). Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.

Photo by Courtney Brown, courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers Australia

A warm, ticklish, heart-wrenching, hilarious and above-all joyful romp through the childhoods of Asian-Australians.

Frankie

Further Details

Author Alice Pung

Publisher Black Inc.

Date of Publication 2008

ISBN 9781863951913

Category Anthology

Pages

288