The best thing about doing the MA is that I’ve really exorcised a lot of identity issues I had…In the same way I can’t pick up an English language memoir about the cultural revolution because I read every single memoir that came out in the 90s and early 00s, I can’t go near migrant or refugee stories.
I’ve overdosed.
I’m reading the same story.
People are telling me the same story. I’m telling the same friggin’ story.
I’ve become desensitized and cynical.
Do I really have anything original to say? No.
Demidenko performing Ukranian folk dance is no different to me pretending to know more about Chinese culture than I do. That non-Chinese guy Pai Kit Fai who wrote Catherine Lim’esque novel “Red Lotus”. Good on him. But really, he should have given himself a pin-yin translation of his Chinese name. That may have sucked me in.
Of course, it is human nature to categorize according to looks. Ted Chiang’s short story explores this idea.
In the Night Garden…a surrealist children’s TV show is also about Othering. Why does Makka Pakka have to give his stones to the bourgeois Upsy Daisy. Why does he have to sit alone and clean everything in the Night Garden?
Maybe I’ll do a PhD on In the Night Garden…
Red the latest Ben Elton book. I wish I could write like Ben Elton. I love the black humour. It was really nice to read for pleasure.
I’m learning Chinese again.
