Homecoming: The Enigma of Returning

BACKGROUND: 'Homecoming: The Enigma of Returning' is a creative writing piece that was published in the Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) 2012 journal Asian Ethnicity, published by Routledge. The work contributes to a longstanding theme of enquiry on migration to Australia from Asia. The work presents an alternative story of migrant resettlement in Australia from a region of southeast Asia often overlooked in popular and scholarly engagements on migration (Borneo). Authors, such as Raimond Gaita, Kristina Olssen and Mammad Aidani have also adopted a similar 'memoirist' approach to narrating these kinds of social histories. In the same vein, my work acts as a cultural artefact, a first-person narrative, that provides an assault to ongoing media fixations on the other that can emerge as monolithic symbols of violence and victimhood. It thus speaks back to gendered and racialised stereotypes of the migrant. CONTRIBUTION: The work asks complex questions about whether migration is really about escape or going somewhere. It asks: What forms of engagements about migration can help to foreground migrant diversity and the diasporic nature of displacement? As such, the work contributes to new knowledge on the different kinds of experiences that instigate migration, beyond the dominant narratives of trauma and suffering. SIGNIFICANCE: The significance of this research is that it is formative in describing new generations of migrants in Australia in the post-Vietnam War period. Told from a first-person perspective, the work was positively reviewed as 'a very courageous piece to write, as the author reveals much about herself, her thoughts, and her anxieties about her identity and her sense of home. She writes beautifully, expressing shades of feeling as well as theoretical concepts in a nuanced manner.' Renowned Australian novellist, Fiona McGregor reviewed the work as 'very bittersweet, it rarely flags, it's very fresh. It's clear... and gallops along'.