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A review by msteasam
Growing Up Asian in Australia by Alice Pung
3.0
As a white Australian woman, I'm really glad that I read this book.
Obviously I couldn't really relate to a lot of the stories on a personal level because my experience as an Australian was so different to theirs, but it was great to see what kind of struggles Asian Australians go through, and see Australia from a common, if different perspective to mine.
The thing that I liked most about it was the discussions that it opened up with my friends. My best friend in school was a Fijian-Indian who came to Australia when she was a few months old. She loved this book and her own experiences with racism - even from other children's parents! - could have easily been written into this book. It was good to hear about how her cultural identity was influenced by living in Australia and we probably wouldn't have spoken about it at all if we weren't assigned to read this book.
Obviously I couldn't really relate to a lot of the stories on a personal level because my experience as an Australian was so different to theirs, but it was great to see what kind of struggles Asian Australians go through, and see Australia from a common, if different perspective to mine.
The thing that I liked most about it was the discussions that it opened up with my friends. My best friend in school was a Fijian-Indian who came to Australia when she was a few months old. She loved this book and her own experiences with racism - even from other children's parents! - could have easily been written into this book. It was good to hear about how her cultural identity was influenced by living in Australia and we probably wouldn't have spoken about it at all if we weren't assigned to read this book.