“They’re not even like real men, Ava! They’re all hairless under their shirts. Come on! It’s gross!” I remember zipping my lips shut right after my mate yipped that particularly distasteful ‘observation’ at me,..
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Latin American films (‘Amores Perros’ starring Gabriel Garcia Bernal), Israeli films (‘Waltz with Bashir’ by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman), and Asian films (‘Yi Yi’ a film set in Taiwan following the lives of the Jian family from their alternating perspectives) — I revelled in them…
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I still remember it vividly. I was 10 years old, and I had just come home from school. I opened the door to our townhouse and found my mum in a near foetal position on the chair sobbing. This was the first time I’d ever seen my mum in such a state...
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I was afraid that by identifying as a Javanese woman, I would be mistaken for being submissive, accepting and feminine. I would be misunderstood as being passive, when there is power in subtlety, courtesy, initiative, emotional mastery and consciousness...
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"Hi. Where are you going?," a man asked me as he sat across from me at the bus station in Alabama.
We just got off the same bus from Atlanta to some city in Alabama, Birmingham, maybe? I don't know the geography of Alabama at all. I still can't look at maps of Alabama without crying...
The peace and tranquility were the main draw cards of Coolbinia Primary School, but it was also one of its major pitfalls. They bred comfort—the type which people get possessive about…
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Oh, yes, and back in the 1990s your only choices in Japan were condoms and foaming spermicide strips that looked like breath freshener film. It was pretty grim…
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My passports have always been issued from abroad. In the 1980s my passports were changed to blue "Z" instead of the standard blue. I was treated like a second class citizen each time I “returned” to the US and travelling in my 20's through Europe with it in the Cold War was sheer hell on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain...
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