Asian-Australian Writers: Bridging the Gap

Artikel ini membahas tentang wawancara (dengan), tulisan, dan karya sastra oleh para penulis wanita migran di Australia yang berasal dari negara-negara di Asia Tenggara. Tulisan ini meneliti kehidupan para penulis ketika tinggal di Australia, yang memiliki perbedaan budaya, sosial dan politik dengan negara asli mereka. Menggunakan gagasan cultural identity and diaspora dari Stuart Hall dan conditional hospitality dari Jaques Derrida, artikel ini mengungkap peran penting penulis migran dalam menjembatani perbedaan antara budaya timur dan barat. Analisis artikel menunjukkan bahwa identitas budaya mereka berubah untuk memperkecil jarak perbedaan dan proses Perubahan ini terwujud dalam tulisan mereka.

VOLUME 12, NOMOR 1, Juni 2015: 69-86 Jurnal ILMU KOMUNIKASI who has been nurtured by one culture is placed in juxtaposition with another, his [or her] reaction may be anger, frustration, fright, curiosity, entrancement, repulsion, confusion" (1986, p. vii). Thus, the cultural gap is constructed when the un¿ lled space of awareness of oneself as a cultural being is not available. According to Valdes, people must gain acceptance that they are "products of their own cultures" in order to reach a greater willingness to put aside their native cultural ties (1986, p. vii). These acceptance and willingness become the bridge to the cultural gap in entering into another culture. This paper focuses on examining particular Asian-Australian women writers' work and interviews. The analysis looks at the experiences of Asian-Australian women writers who migrated from Southeast-Asian countries and how these experiences are able to bridge the gaps between Asian and Australian cultures. Their experiences of cultural gap relate to their identities as a woman and as an individual instilled by Eastern (Asian) culture. An identity of an Asian woman itself has its own complexity as these women are de¿ ned in a patriarchal society as "hyperfeminine: passive, weak, quiet, excessively submissive, slavishly dutiful, sexually exotic" (Pyke & Johnson, 2003, p. 36). Meanwhile, they enter into Australian society where white femininity, such as "assertiveness, self-possession, con¿ dence, and independence", is recognised, experienced and learned (Pyke & Johnson, 2003, p. 42). These differences among Asian and Australian women are being contested when the Asian women interact with wider Australian society, i.e. Australian men.
In assessing the writers' published work and interview, I employ Stuart Hall's notion of cultural identity (1990) and Jacques Derrida's idea of conditional hospitality (2000b). Here, both Hall and Derrida propose notions, which relate to migration experiences and challenges of becoming migrants. In his essay "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" (1990), Hall analyses the (Afro-) Caribbean identities, which include his own to construct the idea of cultural identity. He concludes that the Caribbean identity is diaspora identity in the way that this identity is a mixture of the African, European and American identity.
Derrida discusses the term of 'conditional hospitality' in his book, Of Hospitality (2000b). His term relates to how migrants are received by the host society in various ways. Cultural differences play a big role in this issue of hospitality.
Hall's context of cultural identity is applicable to the analysis of migrants' writing. Migrant writers often deal with questions of cultural identity when living between the 'old' culture and the 'new'.
In his essay, Hall discusses the notion of identity that can be contested in the context of cultural negotiations. Such interactions between two cultures are constantly altering, and Hall argues that the notion of cultural identity "is never complete, always in process" (Hall, 1990, p. 222). In this way, cultural identity is in À ux between the past, the present and the future. It is able to transcend "place, time, history and culture" and it undergoes "constant transformation" (Hall, 1990, p. 225). In this paper, the writers' understanding of their cultural identity enables them to create a platform, which connects between their 'old' and 'new' culture.
Both de¿ nitions of cultural identity by Hall are applicable in the analysis of the writers' migrant identities as represented in their essays, work and interviews. He de¿ nes cultural identity as a state of "being" as well as of "becoming" (p. 225). The ¿ rst offers a sense of unity and commonality in "being", an "oneness underlying all the other, more super¿ cial differences" (Hall, 1990, p. 223 In examining encounters in migration contexts, I use Jacques Derrida's notion of "conditional hospitality" which throws light on the always-ambivalent relationship between migrants and their host society (Derrida, 2000b, p. 25). He addresses an explicit example that the 'host' is "he who receives, who is master in his house, in his house-hold, in his state, in his nation, in his city, in his town, who remains master in his house -who de¿ nes the conditions of hospitality or welcome; where consequently there can be no unconditional welcome, no unconditional passage through the door" (Derrida, 2000a, p. 4). As Derrida suggests, the 'other' is "the welcomed guest" who is a stranger/foreigner treated as a friend by the 'self/host' who continues to hold "the law of his [or her] household, the law of a place" (2000a, p. 4). The 'guest', or migrant, becomes the 'other' because s/he is continually viewed as "a stranger" and "a foreigner" by the 'host' who "owns" the dominant culture (Derrida, 2000b, p. 21 This relationship normally includes interactions between the 'self' and the 'other'. He also suggests the impossibility of unconditional hospitality, referring, instead, to 'hospitality', the innate hostility and possessiveness of the 'host' even in the act of welcoming a guest (Derrida, 2000a).
Derrida's notion of "hospitality" refers to "an interruption of the self" that generates a tension because when welcoming the 'guest/visitor' who enters one's house, the 'host' who owns the place is interrupted (Derrida, 1999, p. 51  Ng's second novel, Swallowing Clouds (1997), provides a very different text as it generated controversy due to its overt sexuality, which was related in particular to her own identity as an Asian woman writer.
It has on its front cover the following teaser: 'an elegant and erotic tale of a most unusual love affair', and in order to be accepted for sale in bookshops in Singapore the word "erotic" had to be omitted.

Dewi Anggraeni
Dewi Anggraeni was born in Indonesia in 1945, moved to Australia in 1970 and now resides in Melbourne with her Australian husband. As a novelist and a journalist, she has published four English-language novels, two collections of short stories, and three non-¿ ction books. Married to an Australian, Anggraeni seems to have an ongoing concern with intermarriage, which reÀ ects her own experiences, in her novels. This recurs in The Root of All Evil ( in respective countries, which is more at peace with myself" (Anggraeni, 2002, p. 195

188). Lazaroo shares her concern about
Western readers who were "misinformed" by British writers about the Eurasian culture of postcolonial Singapore (cited in Giffard-Foret, 2008, p. 1), something she is seeking to redress in her novels. Teo specializes in Asian-Australian ¿ ction to give Australian readers "another take on [Australian] society" (cited in Broinowski, 2009, p. 195). The relationship between the writers and their English-speaking readers "becomes dialogic when the master-tongue is appropriated" (Ashcroft, 2001, p. 107  She speci¿ cally asserts the importance for Australians of developing an understanding and active engagement with Asia's rise: as she states, "It calls on all of us to play our part in becoming a more Asia-literate and Asia-capable nation" (Gillard, 2012, p. iii).
In this matter, it is axiomatic that Australia should celebrate its multiculturalism, especially the contribution of its Asian-Australian women writers. Gillard further remarks that the Asian region has undergone a "transformation" (p. ii). Here "the tendency nowadays is still to label non-Anglo-Celtic writers as 'ethnic' and their writing as "fringe literature" (1992a, p. 190). To put it more generally, for Brian Castro, a Spanish-Portuguese-English-Chinese-Australian writer, Australia is not the place for Asian writers in general as they are not "main cultural player[s] in the region" (cited in Yu, 2001, p. 79). In addition, Shirley Tucker remarks that "the '¿ eld' of Asian-Australian women's writing is relatively small", and that of Southeast-Asian Australian women's writing even smaller (Tucker, 2001, p. 125). Thus, this group of writers is aware of their position and is concerned with the development of this genre.
Evidence of this marginalisation is indicated through the challenges these writers have experienced in publishing their work. This circumstance, Anggraeni believes, is due to the nature of most Australians who are "conservative readers" who prefer to read and publish 'real' (Anglo) Australians' stories, rather than the unfamiliar experiences of migrants (1992a, p. 188). Exclusion from the mainstream is also indicated in the common term used for these migrant writings, which is "the marginal/minority writings" whereby their writings are characterised as "offering the authority and authenticity of the marginal experience" (Gunew, 1994, p. 53). In most of whose novels involve moves VOLUME 12, NOMOR 1, Juni 2015: 69-86 Jurnal ILMU KOMUNIKASI from Asian to Australian cities, has stated that her intention in writing the novels is to change Australian readers' impression of Eurasian culture. However, as she migrated to Australia in 1964 at the age of three, the term 'Asian-Australian' could be seen as an "insubstantial identi¿ cation" on her part (Lazaroo, 2008, p. 1). For Lazaroo, while this term reduces diverse cultures and customs to "one apparently homogenous grouping", it is also closely connected with "the issues of marketing" which categorises a particular ¿ ction into, as Gunew suggested, "just yet another example of 'ethnic minority' or 'migrant' writing" and one that ignores its signi¿ cant contribution to other issues (2008, p. 1).
The categorisations used in the marketing appear in the use of the word 'exotic' in reviews and on book jackets of Asian-Australian ¿ ction. According to Lazaroo, this is intended to emphasise "a book's foreignness or exoticness" as "a deliberate marketing strategy" (2008, p. 2). Lazaroo contends that migrant writers' narrative explorations of universal themes deserve to be acknowledged. She is also concerned that Australians who learn about Indonesia from the media might get an inaccurate picture of the country because opinions formed from this reports are "often unfair and based on inadequate knowledge" (Anggraeni, 1986, p. 69).
Likewise, apart from learning more about her Eurasian origin through her writing, Lazaroo intends to promote her work for "reaching a so-called Western, Australian mainstream audience". In particular, she believes that "people [are] misinformed about Eurasian culture" (cited in Giffard-Foret, 2008, p. 1). Teo considers that "¿ ction reveals a deeper culture than politics" and she suggests that writers like her are able to "present Australians with an alternative story located within a larger international story about the struggle for human rights, for instance" (cited in Broinowski, 2009, p. 195). These  (Uchida, 1998, p. 170). Amyrta's conversation with an Anglo-Australian, Maureen, shows how stereotypes are used to exclude migrants from a sense of belonging. For example, when Maureen hears Amyrta's mother's name, Claudine Dubois, she comments, "That sounds French. Do they use French names in the Philippines?" (Anggraeni, 1988, p. 102). Maureen immediately assumes that Amyrta is, through her mother's identity, a Filipina, rather than French-Indonesian, categorising her as a "mail-order bride", a social issue in Australia that was prominent in the 1980s, the time when Parallel Forces is set (Robinson, 1996). She jumps to this conclusion when she sees an Asian-looking woman with an Australian man.
Anggraeni portrays the conversation between Maureen and Amyrta as a VOLUME  (Anggraeni, 1988, p. 102). After Amyrta tells Maureen that her mother is French, not a Filipina, Maureen's doubting response leads her to ask yet another question, "You mean you're French?" (Anggraeni, 1988, p. 102). At this moment, Amyrta is gradually aware she is being excluded, as "something else" (Anggraeni, 1988, p. 102 Thus, when Justin becomes aware of his own sexuality, he suffers from "regrets" for his own identity as it is in opposition to these conservative norms and is considered "unclean" by his family and friends (Teo, 2005, p. 8). Justin's conservative parents manipulate the way he sees himself and his sexual identity, playing on his feelings of guilt and contamination so that he is even more confused about his sexuality.
Justin continues to be pursued by this double marginalisation and discrimination, as an Asian-Australian gay. Teo shows the verbal racial abuse escalating to become physical abuse towards the end of the novel. Ironically, the bashing releases Justin from his own attachments to his con¿ ning cultural and sexual identities, and even encourages in him an assertion of agency.
Teo highlights the irony of the incident as, during the beating, Justin is liberated from this marked identity in an assertion of his individuality, when he replies, instead of the men's imposed phrase, the words, "I am me" (Teo, 2005, p. 333). He is aware of the liberation, as he recounts: "He no longer needed the external markers of identity, the ¿ rst thing people saw or learned about him and judged him by. He was not reducible to his ethnicity or his sexuality or his occupation or geographical location or even to his family" (Teo, 2005, p. 334). In light of this, Justin emancipates himself from his own cultural and sexual con¿ nement based on the outward markers of both his ethnic and sexual identity.
The idea of con¿ nement within particular gendered and cultural, sexual identities is also explored in Ng's Swallowing Clouds (1997). Here, Sydney becomes a site for Syn's transformation into a sexually independent Chinese woman despite her initial con¿ nement in the city. Syn is a Chinese student who is stranded in Sydney because of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Due to the loss of her of¿ cial identity, she becomes the mistress of a Chinese-Australian butcher, Zhu Zhiyee. Before her departure to Australia, a soothsayer tells her that she is a reincarnation of the drowned (adulterous) woman and that her next role in the mortal world is to wreak revenge on men because VOLUME 12, NOMOR 1, Juni 2015: 69-86 Jurnal ILMU KOMUNIKASI she was the one who was punished and the man was free. The prophecy's idea of a victimised woman and her revenge is reiterated in Syn's relationship with Zhu.
Syn's revenge is ful¿ lled as she succeeds in taking his money and gaining her own ¿ nancial and sexual independence.
In these two novels, both Asian cultures (Singaporean and Chinese) are