Identity and Friendship in Hsu-Ming Teo´s Behind the Moon (2000)

In her second novel, Behind the Moon (2000), Hsu-Ming Teo explores the identity construction of three teenage friends and how they defy the notion of the „ideal‟ Australian as a heterosexual, Protestant, white, English-speaking, Australian-born of British ancestry young adult person. Set in the western suburbs of Sydney in the 1990s, the three friends are an example of the multicultural society of the time: Justin Cheong, the son of a Chinese-Singaporean family who arrived in Australia with the Business Migration Programme; Tien Ho, a refugee girl of Chinese-Vietnamese and Afro-CajunCreole-American ancestry; and Nigel „Gibbo‟ Gibson, the son of an Anglo-Australian father and an English mother. The novel tackles different relations among these characters and their families during their teenage years and especially as young adults. This paper seeks to analyse the evolution of the identities of Justin, Tien and „Gibbo‟ through the notions of belonging, gender construction and sexuality. In order to do so, the main theories applied will be the insights on homosexuality and on masculinities of Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli (1995) and Raewyn W. Connell (1995) and Manuel Castellsʼ (2010) identity construction theor

Language and Bilingualism in Antigone Kefala’s Alexia (1995) and The Island (2002)

Migrants modify the spaces around them: not only by leaving one territory but also by occupying another one. In fact, their physical appearance, their behaviour, their clothing, their preferences and/or their language may be factors used both by locals to pinpoint them and by immigrants themselves as identity markers. Greek-Australian Antigone Kefala explores the significance and uses of language in her tale Alexia: A Tale for Advanced Children (1995) and in her novella The Island (2002). In these texts, Alexia and Melina –the main characters, respectively- use language as a central tool in their struggle to make sense of the world they live in. Being migrants and bilingual, Alexia and Melina have a relation with language that is not understood by many, mainly locals. Kefala uses language as a marker of difference, but, as shown by Jane Warren (1999), this difference can also be a sign of ethnic pride. Consequently, this article not only explores the relation between language and the main characters in Alexia and in The Island but it also introduces other strategies migrants may use to approach languages. The questions to be answered are the following: “What is the relation of migrant characters with their mother tongue? And with the new language, culture, territory and space?” and “Are there alternative strategies?” The expected conclusions are that language can be understood as the ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ (Kefala 1995: 104) which can both empower and disempower migrants, but which relates them to the space and people around them. Given the fact that language is a live entity, the strategies may be numerous and may vary in time

Language and Bilingualism in Antigone Kefala’s Alexia (1995) and The Island (2002)

Migrants modify the spaces around them: not only by leaving one territory but also by occupying another one. In fact, their physical appearance, their behaviour, their clothing, their preferences and/or their language may be factors used both by locals to pinpoint them and by immigrants themselves as identity markers. Greek-Australian Antigone Kefala explores the significance and uses of language in her tale Alexia: A Tale for Advanced Children (1995) and in her novella The Island (2002). In these texts, Alexia and Melina –the main characters, respectively- use language as a central tool in their struggle to make sense of the world they live in. Being migrants and bilingual, Alexia and Melina have a relation with language that is not understood by many, mainly locals. Kefala uses language as a marker of difference, but, as shown by Jane Warren (1999), this difference can also be a sign of ethnic pride. Consequently, this article not only explores the relation between language and the main characters in Alexia and in The Island but it also introduces other strategies migrants may use to approach languages. The questions to be answered are the following: “What is the relation of migrant characters with their mother tongue? And with the new language, culture, territory and space?” and “Are there alternative strategies?” The expected conclusions are that language can be understood as the ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ (Kefala 1995: 104) which can both empower and disempower migrants, but which relates them to the space and people around them. Given the fact that language is a live entity, the strategies may be numerous and may vary in time

Did it really happen? Memory, history and myth in Eugenia Tsoulis´ Between the ceiling and the sky

World War II, the Nazi occupation and several dictatorships forced many Greek men and women into migration. In 1952 Greece signed an agreement on assisted migration to Australia and more than “250 000 Greek and Cypriot migrants from Greece (1952-74), Rumania (1952-8), Egypt and the Middle East (1952-2) [sic], Cyprus (1974-84) and other politically turbulent countries of Eastern Europe and Latin America” moved to Australia (Tamis, Anastasios M. The Greeks in Australia, 2005: 47). The lives of those migrants changed radically as they left home behind. Some of them, or their children, wrote fictional texts explaining some of their experiences. An example of this is Eugenia Tsoulis´ Behind the Ceiling and the Sky (1998), where the main characters live their lives between present and past and between memories and myths, on the one hand, and facts and the lifeworld that surround them, on the other. This paper will analyse this novel and the sometimes blurred boundaries between memory, history and myth

Editorial: After the Water has been Shed

Editorial Introductio