Earlier in 2023, I was offered the privilege of doing a writer’s fellowship at the stunningly, well preserved heritage Varuna Writers House at Katoomba. Thank you to the team there and especially the Dark family, who gifted their splendid house to Australian Writers. I am totally indebted to Eleanor Dark, the great Australian Writer.
I spent a week there working on my book about growing up in the Inner West of Sydney, the then Municipality of Marrickville as I knew it in the 1980s. It’s a story of an impoverished and traumatised refugee family but it’s also a celebration of the place and people, all of my friends and beloved teachers with whom I forged memorable friendships.
It’s a story of survival, adversity, longing, loss of homeland and the Vietnamese language, love of place – Vietnam and Australia, My Marrickville, a place that is constantly changing, a place that was more working class than it is today, one that was much less trendy than it is today. A place of grit, cracked concrete, run down rental properties in which my family lived in. But it’s a place where my “childhood character” – as the French Catholic Saint Therese once dubbed her traumatised upbringing, after she lost her mum at four years old – was formed. The story is also about resilience and transformation;from being a broken child to a teenage lead actor / singer, no less, and singing songs that help me heal! But along the way there are deep losses that I will forever cherish as part of my memory and journey. I credit my parents and family for their love.
See here for my fellowship: https://www.varuna.com.au/news/twsfellowship2023
flying pig 