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as you walked away from me
Oct. 12th, 2007 08:31 pmI specifically held off on making this post until ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
koalathebear returned, so that she wouldn't accidentally miss it.
I recently had the pleasure of consuming two texts that talk about Chineseness and Australianness in the same text.
The Home Song Stories
The Home Song Stories is about a beautiful Shanghai lady by way of Hong Kong, who marries an Australian sailor in order to move herself and her children to Australia in the late 1960s. Shortly after their arrival in Australia she leaves her husband, and the spend the next seven years shuffling from uncle to uncle, using her only coin - her beauty - to peddle them through a succession of men who support her.
The story is told through the eyes of her son, Tom, who at the time of the movie is eleven years old and has spent most of his life in Australia. Tom is serious and clever but unsure, and I love him, he is adorable. His sister May is fabulously acted, too, as are all the rest of the characters.
The Home Song Stories is about the events that shape us, about being Chinese in Australia and the Chinese diaspora, about family, and about mental illness, and I loved it, though I wept through a bit of it.
I love that the movie is in English and Cantonese and Mandarin, and I love that it's an Australian movie. I don't think I've ever seen an Australian movie in that combination of languages.
Though it is set in Melbourne, an older Chinese gentleman with whom I work tells me the events it is based on actually occurred in Perth, and it would have been filmed here except they couldn't get the funding.
I recommend it quite highly.
The Dark Heavens Trilogy
I have just finished books one and two of this trilogy, White Tiger and Red Phoenix respectively. The Dark Heavens Trilogy is set for the most part in Hong Kong. It's an interesting weaving of Chinese deities and modern day society, and overall I'm enjoying it, though it has its flaws.
The narrator is a Caucasian-Australian woman named Emma, and her escapades in Hong Kong and the way she is learning about Chinese culture form a significant element through the books. She's a bit too perfect for my liking, but I love the way she already knows about some things, and so the author rarely used the "outside Westerner" to explain the elements of Chinese culture that a Western reader might not necessarily know. I really loved that a lot of it was just assumed knowledge, that was really cool. And I liked that for once, being Chinese wasn't being other - in this instance, it was mostly the Western narrator who was the other.
The most significant problem for me was the fact that a non-Chinese narrator was required at all. I loved that this was a book set in Hong Kong, an interweaving of Chinese mythology, and I did love that she was Australian, that was cool too, but that she had to be Caucasian-Australian in order to allow readers someone to follow. I dislike this phenomenon, and I don't mean to detract from what I was hoping would be an enthusiastic pimping post, but it was a significant problem for me.
Okay, the two books that I've read so far were fun. She's a bit too perfect, and spends a bit too long pining, but she talks about Australia (and there are actual chapters set in Australia!) and it's kind of about being Chinese and the Chinese mythology elements have been really cool, and it's a fairly accurate rendering of mostly-Chinese life, and that was so novel for me, I couldn't help but love it. The third is out, I'll probably pick it up from Dymocks on the weekend.
See this movie, read this trilogy. The end.
koalathebear returned, so that she wouldn't accidentally miss it.I recently had the pleasure of consuming two texts that talk about Chineseness and Australianness in the same text.
The Home Song Stories
The Home Song Stories is about a beautiful Shanghai lady by way of Hong Kong, who marries an Australian sailor in order to move herself and her children to Australia in the late 1960s. Shortly after their arrival in Australia she leaves her husband, and the spend the next seven years shuffling from uncle to uncle, using her only coin - her beauty - to peddle them through a succession of men who support her.
The story is told through the eyes of her son, Tom, who at the time of the movie is eleven years old and has spent most of his life in Australia. Tom is serious and clever but unsure, and I love him, he is adorable. His sister May is fabulously acted, too, as are all the rest of the characters.
The Home Song Stories is about the events that shape us, about being Chinese in Australia and the Chinese diaspora, about family, and about mental illness, and I loved it, though I wept through a bit of it.
I love that the movie is in English and Cantonese and Mandarin, and I love that it's an Australian movie. I don't think I've ever seen an Australian movie in that combination of languages.
Though it is set in Melbourne, an older Chinese gentleman with whom I work tells me the events it is based on actually occurred in Perth, and it would have been filmed here except they couldn't get the funding.
I recommend it quite highly.
The Dark Heavens Trilogy
I have just finished books one and two of this trilogy, White Tiger and Red Phoenix respectively. The Dark Heavens Trilogy is set for the most part in Hong Kong. It's an interesting weaving of Chinese deities and modern day society, and overall I'm enjoying it, though it has its flaws.
The narrator is a Caucasian-Australian woman named Emma, and her escapades in Hong Kong and the way she is learning about Chinese culture form a significant element through the books. She's a bit too perfect for my liking, but I love the way she already knows about some things, and so the author rarely used the "outside Westerner" to explain the elements of Chinese culture that a Western reader might not necessarily know. I really loved that a lot of it was just assumed knowledge, that was really cool. And I liked that for once, being Chinese wasn't being other - in this instance, it was mostly the Western narrator who was the other.
The most significant problem for me was the fact that a non-Chinese narrator was required at all. I loved that this was a book set in Hong Kong, an interweaving of Chinese mythology, and I did love that she was Australian, that was cool too, but that she had to be Caucasian-Australian in order to allow readers someone to follow. I dislike this phenomenon, and I don't mean to detract from what I was hoping would be an enthusiastic pimping post, but it was a significant problem for me.
Okay, the two books that I've read so far were fun. She's a bit too perfect, and spends a bit too long pining, but she talks about Australia (and there are actual chapters set in Australia!) and it's kind of about being Chinese and the Chinese mythology elements have been really cool, and it's a fairly accurate rendering of mostly-Chinese life, and that was so novel for me, I couldn't help but love it. The third is out, I'll probably pick it up from Dymocks on the weekend.
See this movie, read this trilogy. The end.
