Archive for April, 2009

I’m currently reading Trinh T Minh-Ha for my doctorate. She writes lyrically about the tensions of being a woman writer of colour, and how one is read and burdened with guilt about the community one comes from. There is a burden of representation that is projected onto writers of colour which is something I wish to speak against, we are many voiced. I’m also inspired by the idea of a “minor literature” proposed by Kafka which is political writing in a dominant tongue- ie writing in English from a politicised position within the mainstream.  Nowadays this is the position that I am writing from. Interrogating my own position as a Vietnamese-Australian university educated woman I find interesting. When I wrote “Vixen” I was naive about what would be projected onto me as a result. These literary thinkers liberate me from the representation trap, and politicise my public responses.