‘Don’t be selfish, okay? Growing up is about taking responsibility and sometimes doing stuff you don’t like …’
So, there I was, drawn to the cover of a book featuring a bin chicken with a bubble tea. Cover art is not usually my thing, but how could I resist? Meet Sylvia Nguyen, the only child of Vietnamese refugee parents, trying to find her own place in the world. Parental expectations are high: they wanted Sylvia to study law and had arranged any amount of tutoring to achieve this. Living in Yagoona (western Sydney) is challenging for Sylvia when she attends her prestigious high school in the city. And it all becomes so much harder when Sylvia decides law is not for her.
Sylvia’s story unfolds in a series of short vignettes covering her life from childhood to early adulthood. And through these vignettes, the reader gains some understanding of the two worlds many refugees (and then their children) inhabit, and the overwhelming desire parents have for their children to achieve while the children themselves often want to fit into a part of the world they can identify as belonging to. And Sylvia, what does she want? Well, while Sylvia works out what she wants and her character develops, the reader experiences quite a bit of not-so-subtle racism as Sylvia describes the world around her. Did I find this uncomfortable? Not really. Although I suspect I am applying a double standard and being politically incorrect. Hmm. Can racism be relative?
‘Funny Ethnics was on at 7 but we got there at 7.15. The room was warm and damp with human breath. It smelled like Australia Day: beer, Chiko rolls and Lynx deodorant.’
I chuckled through some of the descriptions of people and place, of clothing and hairstyle choices. I vaguely remember being a teenager, but my background is excruciatingly monocultural.
Did I enjoy this novel? Yes, in parts. Looking at the world through different eyes is almost always worthwhile.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Tasmanian Bibliophile @Large 
Many of the Vietnamese and Cambodian children I taught in the 1980s had parents with these ambitions. The parents had been professionals before coming here as refugees, with high status and the wealth that went with it. But in Australia, their struggles with language meant that they were renting in a cheap suburb while doing factory work or piecework sewing in the garage. (It wasn’t a matter of their qualifications not being recognised, so much as they could not yet communicate in English. We had to have interpreters to talk with them about their children’s progress.) Their expectations here, were the same as the expectations they had previously had, and could reasonably have expected their children to achieve — with the added impetus that they wanted their children to restore the family status.
In primary school, children understood this and went along with it. Most kids in primary school don’t have a clear idea of what they want to be or whether a career will suit them and their abilities. I think though, that in secondary school, they could see options and alternatives that suited them better, and that was where the intergenerational conflict grew.
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I agree, Lisa.
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