“I guess I hope that comics don’t only prosper online, but that cartoonists continue to get together to make small presses, collaborate creatively, and talk in-person about how best to be artists (and support our larger communities) in this actually quite terrifying political landscape.”
Read More“Be hypervigilant of popular discourse, seductive ‘progressive’ language, seemingly neutral and ‘inclusive’ policies, and other co-optation measures that blunt our consciousness, silence us into obedience, seduce us into cooperation, and conscript us to keep the racial machinery going. ”
Read More“Art that conforms to cultures of repression is not neutral. It becomes a tool for reinforcing the status quo, an instrument and extension of state power.”
Read More“I believe that if you’re going to take the past seriously as a setting for fictional work, you have to try your best to bracket out the present and let the story play out in its own terms.”
Read More“I often say that music is my mirror. In the beginning, it reflected all the intensity of my emotions—the sadness, the longing—but over time, it has shifted and become more flexible, helping me find a sense of belonging.”
Read More“Certain words carried reverence, certain scenes needed to be dealt with in the spirit of sacredness, and for those I let the Arabic stand, because of the power I perceive in it. I wanted the English text to bear that haunting, [for it] to be ghosted by other languages, allowing their turns of phrase to slip in with all their awkwardness. At some point you ask yourself: what do we write for, if not to say, this is how it felt to me—can you see it?”
Read More“If we’re trying to reflect the truth and question of how we live now in our art, the urgent thing right now for me is for us to sense in an embodied way how our attention and viewing of ‘others’ are being captured, distracted and gamified.”
Read More“It took me so long to finish this project, that I ended up working on it through some major life events, like getting married and becoming pregnant. I brought every side and season of myself to this work, and I think that shows.”
Read More“I’ve tried to write things in a way that I perceive would be popular or more ‘publishable’, but have determined that fostering and embracing my natural voice is actually what works best.”
Read More“I think there is a shortage of works by first-generation adult migrants in the cultural scene of Australia, considering second- and third-generation migrants have produced an abundance of excellent works. “
Read More“I don’t think it’s worth making something beautiful at the expense of people’s wellbeing, and therefore building the team meant I was looking for people who possess certain morals over their level of experience.”
Read More“Towards the end of drafting, I had a note to myself that I looked at almost every day: Write like a daredevil. It’s earnest and slightly manic—but in the end, it was the only way to do it.”
Read More“Writing criticism, editing and composing poetry are all different variations of playing with words, but each one flexes a different muscle. I am a better editor and critic because I am a poet and vice versa. “
Read More“We don’t have to excel by being the best for our voices and stories to be validated. I find it much more interesting seeing what I can create by a more compassionate and open approach. That doesn’t stop me from giving it my all when I can.”
Read More“I imagine my published stories and essays having their own lives in the world, and their own encounters with discerning and generous readers that enable them to grow and take on new meanings. This is the beauty of art—it’s a living, breathing, growing thing.”
Read More“‘Chineseness’ as object of derision—and relatedly, source of mirth—still has currency [today]. When slurs and dehumanising stories are repeated, they sustain an undertow that keeps both speaker and target moored to their histories.”
Read More“I am not quite the children of migrants, so my time is always fleetingly in the present. I generally want to document the shift in this experience, one that is not working towards a legacy, or an external archive, but a document that only connects temporarily.”
Read More“Narrative work is resistance—we know that words and stories matter because even now, these stories are being suppressed. […] What more proof do we need that the last defence of a powerful but crumbling hegemony is censorship?”
Read More“It’s important to me to show that even if you come from a certain cultural background that you are not all expected to act the same. We are not all one big monolith. We are as diverse as any Australian mainstream community. “
Read More“Legacy matters, if only for the simple reason that, when I was coming up, there were no Asian women artists in my world. Part of my legacy is to show that it is possible, because at the time, the idea was considered absurd. Legacy is important but it is not about the legacy of my ego, but an example of a path that people may choose to follow.”
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