“Where are you from?”

“Bathurst” (a country town in New South Wales).

“What do you do?”

“I teach at the university.”

“IT? Accounting?”

“No, journalism.”

“Oh.”

COMMENT | That’s a common exchange at social gatherings. Genuine curiosity, maybe. Stereotyping? Definitely. How else could the locals see an Asian ‘migrant’ but to unthinkingly place me on the cultural fringe?

The media have consistently framed Asians as outliers since the first wave of “boat people” arrived in Darwin in 1976 after the Vietnam War. Media differentiation of the mainstream and “ethnic migrants” was as common as stories of Asian migrant success were as rare.

Reports of verbal abuse and physical attacks on Asian students during the coronavirus pandemic and enduring negative media depictions of Asian peoples are unsurprising, but racist nonetheless.

Which brings me to this book...