Progressive culture since 1954
Asians can – and must – also engage in more radical forms of anti-racism. Otherwise, they risk signaling that they are happy to remain a model minority, complicit and silent in the face of continuing racial injustice so long as it’s not directed toward us.
These are men who were brought here from Manus and Nauru prison for medical treatment almost two years ago. They have received little medical treatment, and their physical pain has been compounded by two more years of stolen time and literal torture.
Percival Everett’s career-defining novel Erasure turns twenty this year. Revisited in 2021, its hyper self-consciousness and metafictional acrobatics have a special resonance, chiming with a historical moment where hysteria and manipulation run rampant.
In 2016, the Economist’s Global Liveability Index ranked Melbourne the world’s ‘Most Liveable City’ for the sixth year in a row. That same year, I spent my first two semesters of tertiary education at Melbourne’s premier university, living in a cramped twenty-four person share-house in the inner-city.
When walking, things somehow have a way of getting organised. Like Tetris. The oddly shaped blocks that are your thoughts, falling down from the sky. Fitting them into the right space, then ping, the lines form. The more lines you form, the better you feel. Ping ping ping. Soon, the blocks start to fall even faster. Ping ping ping. Lines and lines disappearing before you fully get to grasp them.