writer & thinker
“I’m choosing my words carefully. You know why. You understand what a blank sheet of A4 paper says. If you know, you know. And if you don’t, there’s a cost to explaining it to you.”
My first in-person theatre review since 2020 and it’s a show you really need to see for yourself: Made in China 2.0 at Malthouse Theatre.
I reviewed Kaya Wilson’s memoir, As Beautiful As Any Other for The Saturday Paper. Really appreciated having the space to think deeply about this book and the transition memoir as a growing genre.
‘Trans people are under immense pressure to present a coherent and palatable origin story that helps cis people make sense of us – even when we are not seeking medical treatment, we are treated by laypeople as if presenting to them for diagnosis. We are supposed to be intelligent, untroubled, sympathetic and reassuring.’
I grew up thinking there were seven fundamental flavours: suān, tián, kǔ, là, xián, xiān, má. The first five translate easily – sour, sweet, bitter, hot, salty – but the other two don’t own a home on the English tongue. It was a shock to realise that something as material as flavour could be coloured and even erased by language. But eating has many dimensions beyond what happens in your mouth, as Sam van Zweden chronicles in this thoughtful debut, Eating with My Mouth Open.
– Eating with My Mouth Open | The Saturday Paper
‘[Evading censorship] felt a lot like a game, actually – a futile yet addictive game that made your heart race as you tried to jump from story to story, ducking and weaving, squeezing as much as you could through an ever-shrinking space.’
For The Saturday Paper’s culture section, I wrote about reliving the anxiety and adrenaline of working as a journalist in China while playing the dystopian newsroom simulation game Not for Broadcast. Read it here.
My first profile for The Saturday Paper is on musical theatre icon Nancye Hayes – aka ‘Nancye with an E’ – who will soon celebrate six decades in show business.
I reviewed the new audio play of Loaded, Christos Tsiolkas’s debut novel that shot through my veins two decades ago as a queer migrant teenager living in North Richmond.
‘The novel toys with the frame of a feminist revenge fantasy but Yannie makes an atypical heroine. Her rage is not sexy or witty or glamorous. It’s curdled resentment, sour and hard, obsessive and cracked.’
Read the rest of my review of SL Lim’s Revenge in The Saturday Paper today.
I’m delighted that my first piece for The Saturday Paper is a poem: this poem, which was originally commissioned as part of Assembly For The Future.
Jinghua Qian 