"I don't want to be a tourist in my own country": An interview with Michelle de Kretser. Issue 4 (4th July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chen, Yang
• Is Part Of: Journal of postcolonial writing. Volume 58:Issue 4(2022)
• Page Start: 568
• Page End: 579
• Publication Date: 2022-07-04
• Subjects: Michelle de Kretser -- migration -- multiculturalism -- Asian Australian -- travel -- diversity -- literary form; English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Postcolonialism in literature -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2022.2063284
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-9855

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this interview conducted via Zoom in Sydney in November 2020, the Sri Lankan-born Australian fiction writer Michelle de Kretser talks about her identity as an immigrant writer. In particular, she discusses her novels in a postcolonial context. De Kretser also talks about the way that women's writing is flourishing in Australia. She sees the contemporary world as characterized by movement and travel, and notes the privilege on which tourism is based. She explores the way in which her work attempts to show the cultural diversity in Australia in order to overthrow the stereotyped, mistaken vision of it as a white country. Finally, de Kretser speaks of her interest in playing with the novel as a literary form and why she adopted a so-called "gimmicky" flip format for her latest novel, Scary Monsters, published in 2021.