Tannic Teeth

For those of us who have grown up under the southern sun with parents who were immigrants will know what I mean when I say culture clash. There is something perturbing and possibly deeply traumatic about upping sticks and settling down in a foreign country. Especially when English is not the spoken language ‘back home’.

Alice Pung’s account of her parents struggle to adapt to Australian way of life from South East Asia is particularly poignant. Well for me anyways as my parents are from that landmass but further east, that is, Burma. It deals with the expectations put upon the generation of children by their parents to become doctors, lawyers and engineers. The auspiciousness and prestige when they can say their child is a doctor, thus increase the auspiciousness and prestige marrying you off. Say nothing of the arts or farming. For they are the realms of the esoteric and serfdom.

It’s a huge theme and complimentary to that, the questioning of what is means to be ‘Australian’. Flag-wavers love to throw around the word ‘UnAustralian’. What does that mean? Do you discard your (Asian or whatever) culture, and assimilate into Australian society? How far can this envelope be pushed before it becomes something it’s not? Before something breaks?  The word assimilate itself has an undercurrent of a forced existence. Force against force negates itself. Cronulla riots of 2005 was case in point.

An interesting read. Funny at times, plyably frustrating at others, and in my view I’d call it  NuAustralian.

Ever have those points in your life where you think that your future dangles tentatively from a tiny filament of chance? Where a singular point can become the turning point for an entirley different life for you and your loved ones. Perhaps it was missing the train only to meet the love of your life, or not running the red light to see a hurtling semi-trailer plow through the intersection.  This is a story about a young boy in a family of 9 living in crushing poverty during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Li Cunxin was that young boy, chosen on a teachers whim to enter in Madame Mao’s Dance Academy. It’s an autobiographical story, Li’s narrative speaks humbly, his language is not verbose or overtly descriptive, it’s simple yet elegant; poignant. It’s a wonderful read with introspective qualities about it; you question how hard your life really is when you complain about trivial matters. From where Li came from, it’s inspirational.