“An ethnic sense of difference in the 1980s” by Dr Jennifer Minter
This page analyses stories from the short-story compilation,Growing Up Asian in Australia edited by Alice Pung. Please click on the relevant links for a more detailed analysis. Otherwise, please scroll down the screen.
- “The Relative Advantages of Learning My Language” by Amy Choi
- “Chinese Lessons” by Ivy Tseng
- “Sticks and Stones and Such-like” by Sunil Badami
- “The Beat of a Different Drum” by Simon Tong
- Pigs from Home, by Hop Dac
- Take Me Away, Please by Lily Chan
- “ABC Supermarket” by Kevin Lai and Matt Huynh
- “Wei-Lei and Me” by Aditi Gouvernel
- “Perfect Chinese Children” by Vanessa Woods
- “Papa Bear” by Chin Shen
- Family Life, by Diem Vo
- “Towards Manhood” by Benjamin Law
- “The courage of Soldiers” by Pauline Nguyen
- “Anzac Day” by James Chong
- “A Call to Arms” by Michelle Law
- “Chinese Dancing, Bendigo Style” by Joo-Inn Chew
- “Five Ways to Disappoint your Vietnamese Mother” by Diana Nguyen
- “The Face in the Mirror” by Blossom Beeby
- “Baked Beans and Burnt Toast” by Jacqui Larkin
- Interviews with Joy Hopwod and Ahn Do.
Stories of identity and difference in “Growing up Asian”, by Dr Jennifer Minter, (English Works Notes, 2014)
“The Relative Advantages of Learning My Language” by Amy Choi
Amy Choi depicts her mean-spirited attitude towards her grandfather, whom she willfully offends and ignores. She does not bother to learn Chinese and fails to connect with her grandfather who loves writing poetry. She cannot see the “point of speaking Chinese. We lived in Australia.” Her poor attitude continues as her grandfather develops signs of memory degeneration and a family member has to accompany him into the city. Amy follows behind; she appears ashamed and quietly mocks him. She draws attention to his “blank, goofy, content expression on his face”.
Amy has a change of heart at her grandfather’s funeral, when she is overcome with feelings of regret. “I’d denied my grandfather the commonest of kindnesses.” This experience become the catalyst for a change in outlook. Amy starts learning Chinese and makes amends for her rudeness. As she notes, she is not trying to discover her roots – just make sure that she can connect and offer help if another elderly relative “wants me to listen to them”.
“Sticks and Stones and Such-like” by Sunil Badami
What’s in a name?
The fact that our parents choose our names can also have a defining influence upon who we are, and our sense of self. For example, Sunil Badami is initially ashamed of his name because it reinforces his difference; he prefers a name that would make him “less black” and hence less different. However, his mother constructs a myth based on Sunil, the embodiment of Shiva, “serene and powerful on his distant peak”. It becomes a symbol of cultural pride, and thereafter, Sunil no longer “winces” but proudly embraces his dual, hyphenated Indian-Australian identity.
Chinese Lessons Ivy Tseng
Ivy Tseng reflects upon the significance of her Taiwanese-Chinese-Australian identity, these “hyphenated, cut-and-past identities”. What do they actually mean?
She realizes that without a knowledge of Mandarin she is not truly able to appreciate her Chinese background and lacks firm and meaningful roots to her past and to her parents.
In other words, language is the passport, the key, to a culture and without knowledge of the language, one cannot truly understand the values, the history, and the culture of another land.
As she matures, Tseng comes to realise what she has lost through her indifference and laziness. She realises she has missed out on a meaningful relationship with her parents and their past. She regrets her indifferent attitude towards the Chinese lessons conducted rigorously and routinely at 11 o’clock every Saturday morning held by her father as he tried to instil in his four children the means to communicate in their ethnic language. As a sign of her personal growth, she comes to appreciate her father’s hard work .
Looking in the mirror, Tseng sees that a “Chinese face looks back at me”, and although the suntan is definitely Australia, the “blood comes from Taiwan and China”. Her “vague” sense of unease and “sense of shame” arise whenever she realizes that language is the key to culture and without Mandarin this “foreign gene pool” which she has inherited is to a large degree inaccessible and incomprehensible. She manages to speak some “Chinglish”, but without a deeper understanding of the language the “4,000 years of history, language and values” appears quite remote. She is left with an unquenched long, “I just want to understand my father”.
“The Beat of a Different Drum” by Simon Tong
The construction of self in language
Simon Tong, a student at the Lasallian Christian Brothers’ School in Geelong (1982), suffers painfully from his difference as an Asian student and these feelings are compounded by his inability to express himself in English. He is victimized and persecuted in the playground to such an extent that he feels emotionally violated and humiliated. These feelings surface in rage and resentment; he becomes confused about who he is because he cannot articulate his feelings. “Read More.”
Pigs from Home, by Hop Dac, p. 53
Hop Dac captures the life-style differences between the younger and older generations among Vietnamese migrants. She depicts the older generation, who live in a past and “old world” that is close to nature and their first-hand experience of the brutality of existence. Whilst many of the customs linger, Hop suggests that the younger generation are now removed from this awareness that often comes with considerable pain and agony.
Living on a farm in Geraldton, Western Australia, Hop describes the lifestyle of a typical Vietnamese family as “self-sustaining”. They grow their own vegetables, have their own animals, and cultivate herbs for medicinal purposes. Hop describes how the various brothers would wheel a barrow full of half-rotten tomatoes and slops up a hill and “up-end the contents of the wheelbarrow” into the animal enclosure. The ducks and the chickens feast harmlessly; however she is always anxious and fearful of the pigs especially as they indulge in their “feeding frenzy”.
On one particularly “extraordinary” occasion, she thought that the animals must have been especially under-fed, because they were over-excited. The sow ran towards the unsuspecting duck and “before the duck knew what was happening the pig had bitten its arse off.” (54) The duck has been dismembered and Hop describes an eery scene in which it “wanders off” trailing its “guts”. Hop uses figurative terms such as the simile to describe the animals: the duck was stunned: and looked like “it had heard an explosion”; the pig is “like an ocean” ; don’t ever turn your back on it”. (Read More.)
Take me away, Please, by Lily Chan
Lily Chan recounts her experiences growing up in her family’s take-away Chinese store, which she suggests was, in the 1980s, becoming a typical feature of Australian towns. The title becomes a pun on her family’s business and captures Lily’s attitude. She longs to escape the monotony of her school, work and family routine.
Lily lived in Mareeba from 1983 until the late 1990s and worked in her father’s store, Peter Chan’s Chinese Take Away. The shop was not large, but was “nestled between” a chiropractor’s shop and a video store. She describes how her working life began at 4.00 pm when she returned from school and becomes the “front of house”.
(Setting as metaphor): Lily describes the lack of separation between their family and their working life in the restaurant, which is reflected metaphorically in her description of their restaurant and home. Lily’s bedroom doubles as a storage room, which is a metaphoric reflection of her lifestyle. Likewise the shop’s restroom was also the family’s bathroom. (65) (Read More.)
“ABC Supermarket” by Kevin Lai and Matt Huynh
Kevin Lai provides a humorous and witty comic strip about the parents’ Asian grocery store in Cabra (Cabramatta in Sydney). At first it is a place of fun; they enjoy trolley rides and eating to their heart’s content. The comics are full of humour and fun graphically depicting the good times. However, the store is soon declared bankrupt during the economic downturn in 1994-95. See full story.
“Wei-Lei and Me” by Aditi Gouvernel
It is 1982, and Aditi Gouvernel paints a picture of painful exclusion and humiliation in the playground at the hands of the Australian bully, Barry West. Both her and Wei-Li are singled out for ridicule; they are mocked and mauled like toys. Wei Li was “hit, spanked and kicked”. Barry becomes the ultimate foe and a symbol of her exclusion. (Read More.)
“Perfect Chinese Children” by Vanessa Woods (p. 103)
Growing up, and negotiating her identity is a painful and traumatic process for Vanessa Woods because of her relationship with her mother and her sense of foreign-ness. Her mother has high expectations and expects Vanessa to become a doctor, following in the footsteps of her cousin David who gained the perfect score of 99.9. “It is the ultimate aspiration for any Chinese mother to have a child who is a lawyer or a doctor”. “Read More, (p. 103)
Family Life, by Diem Vo, p. 155
Diem Vo’s portrait of “family life” depicts a blended family, which draws upon both characteristics of Vietnamese and Australian lifestyles.
The narrator’s family owns a Vietnamese video shop in the multicultural landscape of Footscray. They are “sandwiched between” the Chinese hairdressers and an Italian takeaway shop, and stand out with their colourful Asian posters.
Diem’s parents are typical migrant workers; they work long and arduous hours. They are running two shops, or two jobs at once, sewing garments in their spare time for 80 cents a piece.
Diem and her sister ends up running the shop, and, as business women, they are proud of the responsibility invested in, and “thrust upon” them by their parents. However, they complain that they, too, are overworked, and “have no life”. They treat themselves by taking coins which they spend on pizzas and cappuccinos.
During that time, typical shows such as the King of Gamblers captured the imagination of their Vietnamese clientele.
In her short story, Diem gives an insight into life in a Vietnamese family. It is a “Vietnamese version of Neighbours” — a large extended family with many cousins and family gatherings. Family get-togethers provide the adults with a chance to “get pissed” and to “gossip”. Indulging in “slabs of beer”, the Vietnamese fathers and uncles are just like any Australian family. However, what sets the family apart … (Read More.)
“Papa Bear” by Chin Shen
When Chin Shen says that he wants to grow up to be “just like his father”, he seems to show his mixed emotions towards him. He satirises his father and makes him look ridiculous, but he also paints an endearing portrait of him.
On the one hand he is cynical towards his father, because his father exhibited nothing but a catalogue of woes. He came to Australia with $200 and could not speak the language, nor were his qualifications as an engineer recognized; he had an accident, ended up with a “gimpy” looking arm, and took a name from the electronics shop, Tandy, because it seemed to embody the “promise and hope of his newly adopted home”.
However, tongue in cheek, he also admires his father’s character and fortitude; he can see the father’s humorous and eccentric side of his personality; he records his snores and is eager to become senile so he can watch Tom and Jerry cartoons every day.
The Courage of Soldiers by Pauline Nguyen
Many migrants of Asian parents suffer from unrealistic expectations; they are aware that their parents have sacrificed a lot to give them opportunities, but they often feel enormous stress and pressure to satisfy their parents. Frequently, the parents’ expectations deny their own individual interests and dreams and this makes many children unhappy and dissatisfied. Pauline felt so oppressed by her father’s draconian expectations and subsequent punishment regime that she constantly felt a failure. The beatings and constant humiliation affected her confidence and self esteem in very damaging ways. She states that it was ironic that her father escaped the oppression of the communist regime in Vietnam and yet in Australia “we in turn have had to escape the tyranny of his rule to find freedom for ourselves”. Likewise, Vanessa Woods refers to her mother’s “emotional terrorism” and the fact that her mother suffered incredible financial hardship to provide better opportunities for her daughter. Vanessa was a constant failure when compared with successful relatives who achieved high professional status and wealth.
Many Asian parents do not understand their children and have no empathy for their struggles and need to find a voice and a new sense of self in the new culture. As Pauline states of her father, “he had never attempted to get to know or understand his children”. To avoid her father’s tyranny, Pauline is forced to leave home for the sake of her own mental health.
“Towards Manhood” by Benjamin Law
Benjamin Law contrasts himself to someone who is “unambiguously male” and despicts his struggle with sexual difference. He compares himself constantly to Andrew, who is aggressively (stereotypically male), and who listens to the right “rape me” songs by Kurt Cobain. Contrastingly, Benjamin sees himself as an “Asian hybrid man child thing” which leads to constant feelings of anxiety. He states, “I’ve tried bashing shit, listening to different music … pretending to like girls, but nothing’s really worked”. Benjamin recalls how he suffered as a target of discrimination and persecution. At school, his peers were “on the hunt” for anyone who showed signs of difference.
Finally and with the support of his family, Benjamin realises that he must accept his gender as someone who is in-between male-female status. It is interesting to compare his attitude and acceptance of his homosexuality with Paul Nguyen (“You Can’t Choose Your Memories”) who “never discussed homosexuality”. His mother regards his sexuality as a curse, and an unfortunate disease. She also believe that her son is deliberately “hurting” her because he refuses to change his sexual orientation. It becomes a focus of resentment between them and inhibits their relationship.
“Anzac Day” by James Chong
James Chong is keen to belong to the Australian Anzac tradition. Throughout high school he dresses up in the kilt and learns the bagpipes so that he can lead the school-band as a pipe-major. Proudly, it gives him a sense of belonging. However, he becomes resentful and humiliated when the video footage on Lateline on ABC television in 1992 zooms in on his Asian face and questions his right to participate in this “true blue” Australian tradition.
It confirms James’s “adolescent angst” that often surfaces because of a sense of exclusion owing to the “colour of my skin”. His personal humiliation is painfully poignant. He feels excluded from the Australian myth perpetuated by public figures such as Dr Brendan Nelson who draws attention to John Simpson Kirkpatrick as an emblem of the Australian identity. (“He represents everything at the heart of what it means to be Australian.”
“A Call to Arms” by Michelle Law
Michelle Law feels excessively self-conscious and different because of her hairless arms that invite the mirth of her Australian “friend”, who is the “antithesis” of her. She laughs at the “freakish nature of my body”. She feels painfully different and self-conscious at school because she cannot swim, wears “hand me down togs”, “oversized goggles”. “Everything up to that point in my life seemed so incredibly abnormal compared to everyone else I knew”. Michelle is aware constantly of “not fitting in” because of her difference – her lunch, her presents to the teachers, her herbal drinks that her mother called “coke”.
She realizes how deeply this “stand out from the crowd mentality” was ingrained in her psyche when she returns to Hong Kong. She is able to “disappear” — become anonymous— and her parents’ habits do not incite “automatic embarrassment”. However, she still stands out quirkily because of her Australian background and inability to speak Cantonese.
As she matures, she sees the world from a “less self-centred perspective” and realizes that migrants such as herself can benefit from their in-between status and should take advantage of their opportunities. Although Michelle feels different in both Australia and Hong Kong, she realizes that she has been “incredibly lucky” to have had the influence of both cultures. She accepts her difference – that she will never do a “tumble turn” in the swimming pool as well as her Australian counterparts. However, she is no longer painfully bothered by her inadequacies; rather she accepts her difference.
“Chinese Dancing, Bendigo Style” by Joo-Inn Chew
Joo-Inn Chew comes to accept and celebrate her difference — her in-between status – owing to the fact that as the child of an Asian and Australian parent, they were a “peculiar species” in Bendigo.
The girls play the song entitled “Asian waif” at their concert which captures their sense of homelessness. While performing their piece, Joo-Inn is applauded not for her talent, but for her sense of difference; the audience seems to pity her because she is out of place, nervous, clumsy and awkward, and she bravely realises, it is not pity she wants, but a sense of belonging. “Read More
“Five Ways to Disappoint your Vietnamese Mother” by Diana Nguyen
Diana’s mother seemed intent on sacrificing her daughter’s satisfaction and personal fulfilment so as to maintain “face” or pride. She laments the fact that “all my life I’ve had this mixed idea of who I am and what my role is”. (287)
Initially Diana’s mother was happy to encourage her talent for the performing arts at the young age of 3 years old. It gives her a sense of pride as boasts to her friends. “Read More”.
“The Face in the Mirror” by Blossom Beeby
Blossom Beeby, an adopted Korean child is brought up in a “manufactured” white family and her Asian-ness is suppressed. She identifies herself “inside” as a Caucasian person as a reflection of her surroundings; however when she looks in the mirror she sees a “foreigner”. Read More : The face in the mirror.
“Baked Beans and Burnt Toast” by Jacqui Larkin
Jacqui Larkin draws attention to the consequences for individuals when people jump to conclusions and make assumptions about their identity based on appearances. In her case, the teacher, Peter Nugent, the airport staff, and the waiter all make assumptions based on her ethnicity.
When Jacqui returns home to Hong Kong – at the airport she feels conspicuous and embarrassed because she does not speak Cantonese and is humiliated by the airport staff. It reminds her of kindergarten.
Her feelings recall her first day at kindergarten and even more embarrassed when the teacher calls her Jacqui 500 (instead of Jacqui Soo). The teacher seems to mock her “origin” of birth, which is Chatswood and presumes she cannot speak English.
At school, Peter Nugent, the “stray dog”, taunts her and becomes the “ugly face of all those Aussies who’ve enquired” about her origins – as if she could not possibly be born in Australia. She is constantly aware of her difference.
However, during their coincidental meeting in Hong Kong, Peter Nugent excuses his meanness on the grounds that he admired her “exotic” and beautiful nature, which he could not name, nor pigeonhole. “Like most emotionally retarded eight-year-old boys, the only way I could communicate with her was by calling her names”. Name-calling once again becomes a painful marker of one’s inability to label the “exotic”. He draws attention to his own alienation— “I knew that I was an egg”— and Jacqui realizes, and accepts, that she is the banana. Peter states, “if you’re a banana then I’m an egg – white on the outside but yellow in the middle.” To ease her nausea, he brings her a plate of baked beans and burnt toast – the nicknames that Peter gave to her and her friend Jo-ann at school.
Interview with Joy Hopwood
Joy Hopwood was the first regular Asian-Australian presenter on Playschool and now runs her own production company.
Joy’s mother was persecuted by the students when she worked in the school canteen because of her difference and her poor language skills. Joy recalls her difficulties withstanding peer pressure because she was young and vulnerable. Rather than defend her mother, she disowns her and distances herself from her mother.
As she matures, Joy realises that racist taunts should not be experienced personally but are more of a reflection of the perpetrator. The comments from Jan Edmund, a mentor figure, give her strength and enable her to see her conflict from another perspective. Ms Edmunds states that “racist remarks .. reveal the racist’s ignorance and lack of intelligence and by no means is it a reflection of the receiver”. Although this gives her confidence as she grows up, she lacked the insight and maturity to cope with the discrimination at an early age. She comes to appreciate her mother’s pain and her strength of character.
Interview with Ahn Do
The Australian-born Vietnamese comedian, Anh Do reflects upon the most difficult act he ever did which he believes was character building. He had to perform at the RSL at a function for war veterans that was commemorating the fallen brothers in World War Two, in Korea and Vietnam. Because of their war experiences, they were prejudiced against Asians. He performed a five minute comedy gig to complete and utter deafening silence.
A member of the crowd pretended to shoot him with an imaginary finger. To break the ice, he proves that he is just an “Aussie kid”. He tells footy, kiwi and farming jokes. Gradually he breaks the ice. Eventually the audience of war veterans could say that “this Vietnamese kid was just an Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood.” Anh recalls Dave Grant’s comment that “hard gigs were an opportunity to test your mettle: Learn from them Anh, treat them like a rare gift”. He rates this experience as one of the most rewarding moments of his career because of its degree of difficulty. “You’re funny for a slope” is the ultimate compliment.
Later, when Anh returns on a family visit to Vietnam as a young married man, he realises that had his parents not taken the perilous boat trip in the late 1970s he would have had an entirely different life in Vietnam. He recalls that he saw a skinner version of himself selling postcards at a temple. “In that moment I had a flash of realisation. That could’ve been me. Indeed if my family hadn’t embarked on that trip years ago, I could’ve easily ended up selling trinkets at a temple for fifty cents.”
- Paragraph and essay plans: Growing Up Asian in Australia
- Click here to see an Essay based on Growing Up Asian written by a student with my assistance.
Dr Jennifer Minter: Identity and Difference, English Works