Sep
2011 21
2011 21
Care and Feeding: Comfort Food for Chinese-Australian Vegans
When I have a cold my mother recommends super spicy curries with lots of chillies and often lemongrass, and when she made them for me, this usually ended up being chicken kapitan. When I am feeling down, I desperately crave chicken noodle soup, with yellow mee and soft chicken, simmered for hours in a stock ...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Footscray Whitewash
Down Nicholson Street Mall, past the pho and noodle shops, Cheap n' Chic is closing down. A FOR LEASE sign has been plastered across its windows. The walls, once crammed with goods, are now bared white. Only a few bags hang off the hooks. ...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Skin Routes – The Racialised Contours of Filipino Flesh
As a Filipina, I was brought up with stories about the ‘fatherland’. The myth of this superior fatherland was articulated in many ways: in how my family emphasised the beauty of my grandmothers’ Spanish heritage (her father was Castilian Spanish), and the tendency to promote Spanish colonialism simply as a ‘good’ thing for Filipinos...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Salman, you send me
Have you ever met an Indian God or his living incarnation? I have. So close an approximation in the flesh I could have never imagined, until that night in Mumbai...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Fissures and friendships: how I became a woman of colour
What affinity do I have with someone I might identify as a woman of colour? What does it mean for me, a non-Aboriginal Melburnian, to identify the struggle of Indigenous women in the Northern Territory against sexual violence and state intervention as a women of colour issue? Does that show solidarity, or does it just allude to a shared...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Stuff Brown People Like
This is a mathematical approach to highlight stuff brown people like in the style of Christian Lander’s blog http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/. The brown people mentioned in this piece are usually of a South Asian background and have been observed in various parts of the world by the author – mostly an observation of her family and friends....
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
An Evening With Ai Haruna. (Sort Of.)
Captivated, I became a queer celebrity hound. I wanted to meet them, talk to them, and ask them about what confused me the most: why did Japanese television seem so gay, when Japanese society seemed so conservative and ultra-straight? I sent emails to publicists, agents and television stations, requesting interviews with their most prominent drag...
Jan
2011 5
2011 5
Caught up in expectations: A comment on substantive representation and Penny Wong
What are the chances for social, cultural and economic inclusion in a nation where elected office is dominated by white Australians...
Jun
2010 20
2010 20
The Impossible Princess
To win Thailand’s biggest transsexual beauty pageant, you need a number of near-impossible things on your side. It helps if you’re tall, although big hands and feet are a minus. You’ll be told you need to look “natural”, even though organisers and judges have been known to pull contestants aside, and encourage them to undertake ...
Nov
2009 27
2009 27
Teh Halia
Going to the beach when I was a kid was an elaborate event. Mum hated it because she had to wake up before dawn to prepare the Indian picnic for dad. While we begged for sandwiches and Tang juice, dad demanded the full Indian treatment – puli soru, a tamarind flavoured rice dish and thairu ...
