April 9, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Vessel
by Dani Netherclift
Upswell Publishing
Reviewed by ADELE DUMONT
On its opening page, with very little in the way of preamble, Vessel establishes its central
incident:
1993. A Saturday. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius. I don’t know what time it is when I witness my father
and brother drown, minutes – perhaps only seconds – apart (11).
Vessel’s narrator writes that in these moments, time seems to have ‘turned outside itself’ (11).
The gushing water of the irrigation channel, which stems from Victoria’s Waranga Basin, is
‘turning in on itself’ (13). Structurally, Vessel likewise resists a linear, straightforward
progression. Described by author Dani Netherclift as an ‘elegiac lyric essay’, it moves in
spirals and loops, returning, always, to that key moment of witnessing.
Early on, Netherclift makes reference to various documents: coroners’ reports, police witness
statements, newspaper articles, and obituary columns. Vessel might be seen as an attempt to
write beyond the limits of this official record. This is more than a filling in of detail, or an
injection of feeling. Rather, the book’s lyric essay form is one that welcomes ambiguity and
fragmentation. It’s one with ample room for silences and white spaces, and therefore an
apposite form for writing about something as amorphous as grief.
Repeatedly, Vessel’s narrator revisits what she has already established. She questions, for
instance, how much she really ‘witnessed’ (23), given the impossibility of actually seeing her
father’s or brother’s underwater struggle. She also clarifies that at the time, she didn’t realise
what she was witnessing was a drowning per se: ‘It took a long time for that knowledge to
settle’ (20). The coroner’s report, she informs us, described her brother’s body as ‘wedged’
(21) against a pylon, but later on, she wonders whether actually the word used was ‘nestled’
(38). On page 83, she tells us that a Mickey Mouse doll was placed in her brother’s coffin,
but on page 158 reveals that she actually later found this same doll in among a bag of her
brother’s belongings. That Netherclift does not attempt to iron out these inconsistencies and
slippages is one of the book’s strengths. Vessel is not a constructed representation of an event
already wrestled with: it charts the narrator’s ongoing wrestling, and is all the more alive for
it.
Vessel accretes by fragments, gathering meaning through associative logic. A reference to
research on the foetal cells of babies remaining in the mother’s body for decades transitions,
for example, into Netherclift wondering whether her brother’s cellular traces might also
remain in the body of water where he drowned. A vignette of the author’s mother kissing her
great grandmother’s lips a final goodbye is juxtaposed with imagery of roadkill, and of
drowned refugee bodies, in turn shifting to list the various offerings placed in her brother’s
and father’s caskets. In this way, Vessel moves beyond the level of personal bereavement, and
into a richer meditation on loss.
One of Netherclift’s preoccupations is time, its strange elasticity and malleability. The three
days it takes for her brother’s body to be recovered is an ‘in-between place’ (19); the six days
between the accident and funeral ‘suspended time’ (64). The accident has cleaved time in
two: the before, and the after. From one paragraph to the next, Netherclift skips deftly
through decades past, the accident casting various memories in a new light, and lending them
new significance. Netherclift’s personal experience of grief is given especial resonance by
being tied to wider phenomena. She writes, for example, of bodies which are never
recovered, and of the living who as a result are stranded in limbo-time. In that strange,
interim time when some of her family members are yet to learn of the drownings, she
recognises what Anne Carson calls the ‘impending approach of unknown absence’ (67).
Their lives are still ‘intact’ and ‘uninterrupted’ (66).
Netherclift honours the blank spaces in her story. There are, foremost, the stark spaces left
behind by her father and brother. But there’s also the incompleteness, and shakiness of her
memories of each: at times she hardly recognises others’ versions of them. Occasionally, she
leaves several centimetres of blank space on the page, for instance when turning to her loved
ones’ last, ‘unfathomable’ (16) moments. Netherclift never actually sees her father’s or
brother’s body (the funeral director refuses her) and, in accordance with the findings of the
studies she cites, she instead conjures ‘horrible outlines of an unknown shape’ (78).
Netherclift’s own unresolved loss is tied to a more overarching, societal discomfort (in
Western cultures) around dead bodies, and damaged ones especially. Vessel writes its way
into this uncomfortable space.
As well as the two drownings, Netherclift describes various deaths among her extended
family and her ancestors. She weaves in portraits of a US couple who devote their retirement
to searching for long-lost bodies; of free diver Natalia Molchanova, whose body was never
found; of Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself. There is also reference to morgues; to
memento mori; to bodies hit by trains; to Norse bog bodies; to lynchings; and to the
Holocaust. This is undeniably heavy material, and mostly this is leavened by the delicacy of
Netherclift’s language, and the fact she handles her research with a lightness of touch.
Nevertheless, some readers may wish for more moments of reprieve. There are scanned
colour images throughout Vessel (mostly envelopes from letters written by the author’s great-
grandfather to her great-grandmother, from the trenches of WWI) and these do provide small
pockets of readerly pause. But tonally, the prose is earnest and sober, and unrelentingly so.
It’s a tricky thing, when writing about something as unremitting as grief, to know just how
much the reader can sit with. Some may find the experience of reading Vessel occasionally
wearying, while others may find it a source of great solace.
In recent times, psychologists have recognised the therapeutic value of writing in helping
individuals process grief and trauma. Netherclift states that, through the writing of Vessel, she
was able to ‘transform the bodies of [her] father and brother into bodies of text and enact a
sense of closure’ (1 ). In interleaving her own family’s narrative with the writing of others, Vessel
transcends personal elegy, and becomes something more ambitious: writing as testament; as
reclamation; as communion.
Notes
1 Interview in Brightside Story Studio: Dani Netherclift on Writing to resolve grief.
https://brightsidestorystudio.com/2024/10/28/dani-netherclift-on-writing-to-resolve-grief/
ADELE DUMONT is a writer and critic. Her latest book is The Pulling (Scribe Australia & UK).
April 6, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Judith Beveridge is the author of seven previous collections of poetry, most recently Sun Music: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2019 Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry. Many of her books have won or been shortlisted for major prizes, and her poems widely studied in schools and universities. She taught poetry at the University of Sydney from 2003-2018 and was poetry editor of Meanjin 2005-2016. She is a recipient of the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement. Her latest collection is Tintinnabulum (Giramondo, 2024).
Listening to Cicadas
Thousands of soda chargers detonating simultaneously
at the one party
*
The aural equivalent of the smell of cheese fermented
in the stomach of a slaughtered goat
*
The aural equivalent of downing eight glasses
of caffeinated alcohol
*
Temperature: the cicada’s sound-editing software
*
At noon, treefuls of noise: jarring, blurred, magnified—
sound being pixelated
*
The audio equivalent of flash photography and strobe lighting
hitting disco balls and mirror walls
*
The sound of cellophane being crumpled in the hands
of sixteen thousand four-year olds
*
The aural equivalent of platform shoes
*
The aural equivalent of skinny jeans
*
All the accumulated cases of tinnitus suffered
by fans of Motörhead and Pearl Jam
*
Microphone feedback overlaid with the robotic fluctuations
of acid trance music
*
The stultifying equivalent of listening to the full chemical name
for the human protein titin which consists of 189,819 letters
and takes three-and-a-half hours to pronounce
*
The aural equivalent of garish chain jewellery
*
A feeling as if your ear drums had expanded into the percussing surfaces
of fifty-nine metallic wobble boards
*
The aural equivalent of ant juice
*
Days of summer: a sonic treadwheel
Peppertree Bay
It’s lovely to linger here along the dock,
to watch stingrays glide among the pylons,
to linger here and see the slanted ease
of yachts, to hear their keels lisp, to see
wisps of spray swirl up, to linger along
the shore and see rowers round their oars
in strict rapport with calls of a cox,
to watch the light shoal and the wash scroll,
and wade in shallows like a pale-legged
bird, sand churning lightly in the waves,
terns flying above the peridot green
where water deepens, to watch dogs
on sniffing duty scribble their noses over
pee-encoded messages, and see a child
make bucket sandcastles tasselled
with seaweed, a row of fez hats, and
walk near rocks, back to the jetty where
fishermen cast out with a nylon swish,
hoping no line will languish, no hook
snag under rock, to watch jellyfish rise
to the bay’s surface like scuba divers’
bubbles, pylons chunky with oyster shells
where a little bird twitters chincherinchee
chincherinchee from its nest under the slats,
to feel that the hours have the rocking
emptiness of a long canoe, so I can relax
and feel grateful for the confederacies
of luck and circumstance that bring
me here because today I might spy
a seahorse drifting in the seagrass
with the upright stance of a treble clef,
or spot the stately flight of black cockatoos,
their cries like the squeaking hinges
of an oak door closing in a drafty church,
to walk near the celadon pale shallows
again where I’ll feel my thoughts drift
on an undertow into an expanse where
they almost disappear, and give thanks
again to the profluent music of the waves,
and for all the ways that light exalts
the world, for my eyes and brain changing
wavelengths into colour, the pearly
pinks of the shells, the periwinkles’ indigo
and mauve, the sky’s methylene blue.
These poems are published in Tintinnabulum (Giramondo,2024)
April 4, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Aliya Siya is an aspiring writer based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and a master’s student in English at the University of Madras. Their work explores themes of identity, culture and female experience.
Noor
Noor : It is more difficult to write about Muslim women than being a Muslim woman.
It is daunting to write about Muslim women, as it impels me to confront my
fragmented beliefs. The more I resisted seeking a definite solution to my despair, the
deeper I was thrown into the abyss of existential crisis that I kept fighting so hard to
escape. The religion I’m born into, which is meant to unburden me becomes a
looming apparition of my shallow existence. It’s not easy to strip away an identity
that I never chose for myself. Yet, ultimately, it defines who I am, the devious
paradox of organised religion.
When I put on the veil—a symbol of modesty and faith in Islam— it wilts into a
facade masking my ingenuity towards the religion. How I wish it sanctified me like
the Muslim women who are exalted to the utmost state of devotion and
transcendence, the Muslim women whose scaffolds protected me. The Muslim
woman who I will never be.
I have learned to be content with my selfhood of in-betweenness, it may look absurd
to everyone but me; however, it works, for the most part. Though I sometimes feel
like a cheat for not being able to entirely sever my ties from my religion,
concomitantly, I have to bear the brunt of not living the life I was taught to live ever
since I was a child. This cognitive dissonance sometimes plunges me into the fathoms
of overwhelming vulnerability, the hijab does help to hide this feeling as I smile at
the good samaritans of the religion, but I’m also engulfed by the judgements they
may have on me if they knew what I really am, a mujirim—dishonourable. Thus, my
hijab strips me naked as I try to blend in with a culture that has become alien to me,
one that was once the vortex of my existence.
****
My life made of lies is honest enough for me but never in the presence of my
grandmother. Her faith embedded with utmost veneration leaves me in awe and
slightly envious if I’m being honest, not a day passes by without me wanting to be
like her, she is perfect and I’m way beyond repair.
Noor means light in Arabic and it is my grandmother’s name. No one could be so
aptly named than her, she is the light of my life and I’m hers. I grew up under her
shadow, her faith became my safety, her chants resonate in my mind as I try to write
about her. It stings because I will never be like her—full of grace and warmth— even
though she would remind me to pray not just for my wellbeing but for everyone
under the sky, I know that her prayers are selflessly for me, everything even herself
comes second. To put oneself last is something expected of a woman : her husband,
children, grandchildren and her siblings.
My grandmother is the fourth of seven siblings and my Ummacha ( great-
grandmother) who was a widow struggled to make ends meet, to keep her children
fed at least twice a day was a burden, and the only thing she could hold on to was her
faith and it became her guiding light, her Noor. My grandmother’s sister once told me
that my grandmother never complained about her hardships growing up, she kept it
all to herself. While her siblings were more vocal about their condition, she always
stood by Ummacha, she was the most understanding of her mother’s plight.
When my grandmother was admitted to a government college to study architecture in
the neighbouring district—her only chance to put herself first— her older brother
refused to allow as it was not accepted of unmarried Muslim women to stay away
from home. She didn’t revolt instead accepted her fate because the oldest man in the
family said no. I asked her if she’d have married my grandfather if she had become
an architect, she laughed it off. He had spent twenty-five years in Saudi Arabia as a
taxi driver, while she was left alone with their children to take care of, just like her
mother before her. However, my mother broke the cycle became a government
employee, only woman in her family to do it.
****
I left home for college to a place where I wouldn’t have been able to go if not for my
grandmother standing up for me and my dreams, she made sure that I get to do the
things she was barred from pursuing.
When I visited her on my last semester break, I woke up to a sight of my
grandmother on her prayer mat reciting Ayatul Kursi in a state of liminality where it
is just her and her God ; as her face gleamed in the morning sunlight, for the first
time, I noticed how much she resembles Ummacha. Perhaps she had always looked
like her mother, or maybe I was simply not ready to acknowledge the truth that she is
growing old. I forever want her to be the Noor of my life, my sanctuary, her love, not
her faith.
****
April 2, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Alison J Barton is a Wiradjuri poet based in Melbourne. Themes of race relations, Aboriginal-Australian history, colonisation, gender and psychoanalytic theory are central to her poetry. She was the inaugural winner of the Cambridge University First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship and received a Varuna Mascara Residency. Her debut collection, Not Telling is published by Puncher and Wattmann. www.alisonjbarton.com / Instagram @alison_j_barton
Mirror
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my mother was a bear that couldn’t walk itself |
| her reside a sulking weight I trailed |
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grief hauled from under the volume of her |
| my reflection, an infancy of sound-gathering |
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like an instrument archiving its vibrations |
| I stored language for both of us |
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tooled it to fill her gaps |
| we bore the cacophony as one |
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she arranged its tenors |
| woefully concrete, stalkingly anchored |
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the shape of me lined with benevolent deceit |
| her indebted angel-monster |
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at the door she would cant, hoping it might open |
| night would plummet and I would flinch |
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breathe in what had been committed |
| abandoning her in the light |
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words formed and stuck to the back of my throat |
| when I measured her |
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I got an elliptical question that reinforced our wounds |
| petrified its answerer |
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steeped into the matter of things |
| staining the passage |
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some are lost learning to speak |
| some have voices that shake walls |
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fill quiet rooms |
| but the reprise, the inverted translation |
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desecrated us together |
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| we needed to finish like this |
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with an aching acid chest |
| marched to an absolute |
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now I am emptying my mother |
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February 26, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Empathy
By Hoa Pham
MIT Press
ISBN 9781913380618
Reviewed by JUDITHH HUANG
In Empathy, a speculative fiction novel that blends some of the most potent concerns in our post-pandemic world, Hoa Pham has created a dystopia in which unethical medical
experiments involving human cloning and mass pharmaceutical control are not just
practiced but accepted as a given. In this paranoia-soaked novel, we follow two young
women, Vuong in Vietnam and My in Germany, in interlacing narratives centred around
their experience of Empathy, the latest psychotropic drug permeating the party scene in the
nightclubs of Berlin.
Vuong is one of five clones (termed “multiples” in the novel’s parlance) brought up by the
shadowy Department in Vietnam. One of two multiples living in Vietnam, she is also
employed by the Department as a psychology researcher. When we first meet her, she is
meeting the other Vietnam-based multiple, Lien, who has been kept in far more deprived
circumstances and who has just murdered her foster father for killing and eating pigs. With
this bang of an opening we are plunged into a world of clandestine government operatives,
Hui circles that may have ties to Cold War spy agencies, and international conspiracies
involving mood-altering drugs.
Meanwhile, My meets Truong in Berlin, a bad boy complete with ponytail and dragon
tattoo, and predictably falls for him when he gives her Empathy at a nightclub. These two
narratives are intriguing enough to propel the reader through the book to uncover the
conspiracy behind Empathy, the secret of its origins and the purpose for its distribution.
To this reader, one of the most compelling themes of the book was the authenticity of
emotion. Hoa Pham depicts the delicate line between real and synthetic emotion in her
characters’ minds with a deft hand. This is especially resonant to me, as my experience with
taking psychiatric drugs has meant a constant questioning of the authenticity of my
emotions. In the book, emotional responses are affected by Empathy the drug as well as the
“organic” Empathy that courses through the veins of the five multiples, leading to an
ecstatic sense of connection as well as discomfort at the blurred lines of consent. The line
between mental health and illness under the influence of Empathy, and the question of
whether My’s paranoia is justified, is also a thread that runs through the book.
Closely related to this is the push and pull between individualism and group identity,
perhaps best understood in the multiples. Separated at age five, Vuong and Lien in Vietnam,
Geraldine in Australia and Khanh and Giang in Aotearoa/New Zealand have an insatiable
longing for each other, a longing which eclipses their various romantic partnerships. Khanh
and Giang were raised as a pair, and share an extraordinary bond. When the question
becomes whether the distilled essence of this bond, the drug Empathy, can lead to world
peace through the sublimation of individual identity, even the multiples, who have been
raised their whole lives as laboratory experiment subjects, seem to favour the use of
Empathy to control the population.
The multiples themselves present an interesting “quintuplet study” of what happens when
identical clones are raised in laboratory conditions in Asia versus the West, with two of
them brought up in Asia while the other three were brought up in Australia and
Aotearoa/New Zealand. Geraldine, the Australian multiple, and Khanh and Giang, the
“twins” brought up in Aotearoa, move with greater privilege and self-assurance than the
Vietnamese multiples, being assured of the rights of their citizenships even though they are
still clearly highly manipulated test subjects. The implications that unethical experiments are
“outsourced” to poorer countries with fewer legal safeguards, and that democracies
enshrine certain individual rights better, are clear.
But even Vuong notes that, when all five are linked through their natural Empathy, “the
majority would get their way” (p 163) because of how overwhelming their influence is with
the heightened connection – perhaps in itself a critique of majority rule in a democracy.
Where the novel succeeds most is in conveying the paranoia, control and surveillance that
test subjects in a government program live under. Human clones raised as lab rats for life in
a developing country where not too much scrutiny is paid seems eerily plausible in our
world. Hoa Pham creates an atmosphere of oppressive control in details like Vuong being
shocked at Lien’s statement,
“We don’t talk about the past here. We talk about the future, what we’re going to
become.”
The Department mantra coming from Lien’s mouth without a hint of irony frightened
me.
(p8)
This atmosphere is again present in the jokes that are more than jokes, which reveal
anxieties about rumoured horrors: the “running joke that they did interrogations on the
higher levels. At least, we thought it was a joke.” (p32) These small details of hearing
government slogans parroted back even by the Department’s victims, and the gallows-
humour jokes that are a coping mechanism in the face of unscrupulous authorities, are
familiar to me as someone who grew up in another tightly-controlled Southeast Asian
country, Singapore, and deeply relatable.
The double-edged sword of Empathy in the novel (and empathy in our world) is revealed in
the fact that too much empathy leads to the murder of the foster father in the first chapter,
as Lien thinks of the pigs raised in that household as “we” as well – i.e. she identifies with
them as much as with her fellow multiples. “You can’t show the same empathy to animals
as humans and survive. Not in Viet Nam, anyway.” (p11) Can too much empathy become a
problem? Does it lead to weakness, or even violence? And if it can lead to world peace, is
that at too great a cost to individual liberty and autonomy? These are the questions that
Hoa Pham presents us with. But does she succeed in exploring them?
Empathy has a page-turning quality, but perhaps suffers from its fast pacing. Certain
revelations can feel rushed, without enough development to make them feel real. In
particular, My’s motivation is a little lacking and her decision to undertake certain drastic
actions in aid of Truong’s drug ring was not believable, given that she is not pressed for
money and doesn’t trust Truong.
A later plot twist that relies on My being an unreliable narrator is also both too telegraphed
and unconvincing, and the final chapter, which brings Vuong’s entire narrative and the
reality of more than half the cast into question, is also disappointing in relying on the trope
of mental illness leading to delusions, and undermines the compelling themes that Hoa
Pham built in the world of the book.
The Department, the main antagonist of the book, also seems ubiquitous without ever
feeling like a real threat, as the main characters manage to undertake many actions without
significant barriers. The Department’s omniscient and omnipresent nature is certainly
unsettling, and feeds into the paranoid atmosphere, but it never actually rises to the level of
an existential threat.
Hoa Pham’s prose is workmanlike, functioning like Orwell’s window-pane, but occasionally
veers into the lyrical, especially when describing the experience of being inside a multiple’s
head and thinking as “we”. However, sometimes when plot developments are introduced in
the default matter-of-fact voice, the tone and abruptness blunts their impact. As a result,
this is an action-packed novel, very rapidly paced and lacking in description or space to
digest the implications of certain plot points.
The book also touches on the proliferation of conspiracy theories and vaccine paranoia in
the wake of the pandemic, particularly when the multiples seek to go public with their
existence only to have the only channels open to their story be conspiracy sites. However,
while this is touched on, not much is made of the point. Thus Empathy is a post-pandemic
novel that acknowledges the rifts in culture since the culture wars over conspiracy theories,
anti-vaxxers, and fake news without really endorsing any side.
Hoa Pham also centres the Vietnamese diaspora experience in the book, with parents’ Hui
circles as networks, My dating a fellow Vietnamese-German Truong but being questioned by
her mother if his family was from the North or the South, and a particularly poignant
mother-daughter relationship where My wishes for Empathy-like closeness with a mother
who barely communicates about her life and is hardly seen between her shifts at work. My’s
bisexuality is also introduced in a matter-of-fact way, although her romances are, again, a
bit rushed. This queer representation without any angst or fanfare is much appreciated.
Upon closing the book, this reader is left with a deep sense of unease. A lot of emotions are
attributed to Empathy, whether in the veins of the multiples or induced through the heart-
shaped drugs. But in empathizing with these characters, some of whom may or may not be
entirely imaginary, what settles in is a sense of helplessness in the face of the shadowy
powers that be. Perhaps that is the prevailing sentiment in the world after the ravages of
the pandemic, with its lockdowns, near-mandatory vaccines and dystopian slogans. If so,
then Empathy has distilled that sense of helplessness into a pill. Would you take it?
JUDITH HUANG is an Australian-based Singaporean author, poet, literary and science fiction translator, composer, musician, serial-arts-collective-founder, Web 1.0 entrepreneur and VR creator @ www.judithhuang.com. Her first novel, Sofia and the Utopia Machine, was shortlisted for the EBFP 2017 and Singapore Book Awards 2019. A three-time winner of the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award, Judith graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in English and American Literature and Language and taught creative and academic writing at the Harvard Writing Center and Yale-NUS College. She has published original work in Prairie Schooner, Asia Literary Review, Portside Review, Creatrix, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao, QLRS and Cha as well as being a founding member of the Spittoon Collective and magazine in China, which currently has branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an, Dali, Tucson (AZ, USA) and Gothenburg (Sweden).
February 3, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Me, Her, Us
by Yen Rong Wong
UQP
ISBN 9780702266201
Reviewed by ZHI YI SAW
Me, Her, Us, by award-winning non-fiction writer and art critic Yen-Rong Wong, is her debut collection of memoir-essays that centres around her investigation and views of various relationships: Her own with sex (Me), her relationship with her mother (Her), and the wider relationship between Asian women and sex (Us). Much of Wong’s previous works also tackled similar subject matters of race, gender, and family from the perspective of a Chinese-presenting woman, like “Things Left Unsaid,” winner of the 2022 Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer. Through a myriad of statistics, media critique, and personal anecdotes; she offers an unfiltered look at Australian society and the Chinese diaspora on their treatment and internalised expectations set on Asian women.
Many expectations in Chinese culture are implied, inherently known. Parents aren’t expected
to have “the talk” with their children nor are there any loud communal sermons in immigrant
Chinese communities that promote, instruct on, or lambast the act. Only silent judgement. It’s
simultaneously an issue that belongs to the private and the collective. To be kept to yourself,
yet family and culture are supposed to be taken into consideration. Breaking through this
lens, Yen-Rong Wong de-stigmatises the taboo of sex by humorously detailing her path of
sexual exploration, from masturbating in her childhood home to being suspended by rope
nude above fellow partygoers in a Melbourne warehouse.
Wong aims to normalise the concept of female pleasure during sex, typically seen as of lesser
importance to the male orgasm if not an outright myth. She recalls deliberately not making
noise during sex, curbing her bodily functions, because she was afraid of inconveniencing
other people, as Chinese women were raised to be “quiet and obedient” (31). Instead, she
could only truly express herself in her lonesome, through masturbation. The ability to control
every aspect of sex was a revolutionary, if accidental, discovery for her.
My masturbatory adventures in that big empty house gave me my first taste of
freedom – of being in control of my body and my sexual pleasure. I was able
to be as loud as I wanted while I did whatever I wanted, a concept that was
foreign to me at the time. (27)
Despite her newfound independence, lack of sexual education nearly leads to serious injury
from experimentation with various household items. From this experience, Wong emphasises
the need for the increased prominence of female sexual education as well as reliable support
groups that can provide clearance and safety. As Wong grew away from her parents, she
would enter more open and accepting social circles, allowing her more freedom to explore
her sexuality. Through attending numerous sex parties, she would discover an unusual sense
of emancipation, ironically, in bondage. Specifically, a feeling of powerlessness in an
environment where she knows her consent and wellbeing are respected. Wong details the
enchanting freedom felt in her rope-bound flight over a BDSM scene:
“I feel something approximating relief; I feel more myself than I can ever imagine being when I’m on the
ground.” (74).
As Wong engages in self-discovery as an individual in Australia, her connection with her
Chinese roots and parents wanes. Part of this comes from the author’s loss of her language,
resulting in a “loss of identity they [children of immigrants] can’t ever really get back” (113).
The disappearance of her language doesn’t just entail forgetting the words but also the correct
contexts and tones for their intended meanings.
Throughout the text, sentences and paragraphs are made up of Chinese characters, dialogue
from Wong’s parents and passages from literary works. When presupposing a hypothetical
conversation with her mother where she suggests being more open on the subject of sex like
westerners, her mother replies, “那昃外國人的想法我們華人不會講這的話” (34) or “We
Chinese won’t talk about what foreigners think”. With few exceptions, closure from
accompanying translation isn’t provided. Though the meaning can sometimes be inferred
through context, parts of this book will remain a mystery to much of its English-speaking
readers. This feeling of loss and missing out that Wong feels in losing her language, identity,
and means of communication with her parents is thus creatively thrust onto the reader.
Beyond the linguistic gap is her mother’s emotional guardedness, her desire to maintain the
persona of the domineering authority figure over her daughter. In childhood, Wong’s mother
would cane her for speaking out of line. In adulthood, their “clashes were never loud but they
were still venomous, barbs traded through glances, a roll of the eyes, or malicious
compliance” (83).
Wong laments the experiences she will never have with her mother due to the language
barriers and emotional restriction. She longs for the emotional outpour and clear
understanding, like the western mothers and daughters on her TV have. What she couldn’t
express in the complexities of person, Wong has tried through text.
I’m just glad to have this opportunity to talk back to my mother, to say all the
things I wasn’t able to say when I was younger, and all the things I don’t think
I’ll be ever able to say to her in person. This is my way of being heard; by
getting it all down on paper, I’m releasing all these things that have been left
unsaid, allowing myself to name then on my own terms, to make them real.
(136)
Despite the personal catharsis felt, Wong also contemplates the ethical dilemma of writing
out her personal experiences with her Chinese family. Part of this stems from being raised
under a two-millennia-old regiment of filial piety focused on “face” and family reputation,
many times at the cost of emotional repression. With the advent of globalisation and being
part of an immigrant family in the Brisbane suburbs, a whole new dimension arises that
agonisingly plagues any critical lens on Asian home life. Was she contributing to
orientalisation? Through her incidental portrayal of her mother as a strict overachieving
matriarch, was she lending credence to the “tiger mom” stereotype?
Wong delicately explores the complexities of presenting Asian subjectivity to the Australian
mainstream, careful to avoid advocacy for either cultural relativism or civilising missions. As
she points out the issues with many Asian cultures’ treatment of women, she remains wary of
the historical use of perceived backwardness by colonial states to justify their subjugation and
dehumanisation of subjects, so often populations in the Global South.
Wong contextualises the place of Asians in western society and their relation to whiteness.
Many Asians see it as both an aspiration and something to avoid to protect their culture.
Asian women are called “race traitors” for dating white men, Asian men will seek white
women as status symbols to counter their own perceived emasculation, and Asian
communities historically attacked other racial minorities to become the “model minority”
(198). Model for who though?
Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks explores race relations in the context of colonialism
and the tendency of colonised and non-white men to develop an inferiority complex. Fanon
notes how they seek approval from white society through imitation, speaking, dressing, and
having sex like white men (9); to put on a new face. The pursuit of white women becomes a
reclamation of something lost, masculinity in the case of Asian men, “By loving me, she [the
white woman] proves to me that I am worthy of a white love. I am loved like a white man. I
am a white man” (45). It’s through this craving for whiteness that many oppressed peoples
tear each other down. The fight for Asian rights therefore mustn’t rally around or defend its
patriarchal practices but seek to confront them, only then can progress be made.
Me, Her, Us offers blunt and biting critiques on the treatment of Asian women by wider
Australian society and their respective cultural enclaves. The main remedy to patriarchy and
racism recommended in the book is exposure. Exposure to female bodily functions, exposure
to female sexual pleasure, and exposure to Asian women. Through her book, Yen-Rong
Wong breaks the rule of face and lays herself bare for all to see. The complexities of warmth
and coldness that melded in on each other to create a Chinese family that was neither hell nor
heaven but one that existed within its circumstance. Despite the utilisation of numerous
academic sources to contextualise her observations, Wong avoids their sterile and sometimes
patronising language. Her first-person voice, coated with humour and familiarity throughout,
creates an egalitarian relationship with readers. Not only is the author’s knowledge imparted
on the reader, but also her anxieties, questions, and unknowns. Rather than an “objective”
western anthropologist eyeing the mysterious and exotic Orient from afar for the benefit of a
solely western audience, she’s a subject that has taken over the study.
Though the book begins with a declaration of its intention being for young Asian women, it
provides important insights for people outside of this segment in society. Me, Her, Us ends
with rousing intersectional calls to action: for Asian women to not just be seen but also heard,
for white readers to tear down the veil of otherness and seek understanding, and for all of her
“yellow fellows” (220) to know they’re not alone.
Citation
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2008.
ZHI YI SAW is a 23-year old writer from Penang, Malaysia. He has an interest in historical fiction and non-fiction works concerning the postcolonial period and the resulting explorations of new identities. He is currently an international student studying for a Master’s degree in creative writing at Macquarie University. He also graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2023.
February 2, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
The World With Its Mouth Open
Zahid Rafiq
Tin House
ISBN 9781959030850
Reviewed by AASHNA JAMAL
The men are restrained and evasive, the women are waiting for something that never arrives. A sense of resignation pervades the eleven short stories in Zahid Rafiq’s debut short story book collection, The World With Its Mouth Open published by Tin House. “He hadn’t lowered the memory of his brother into the earth, and I couldn’t shoulder his grief.”(‘Bare Feet’, p.58). Zahid’s characters are grounded in their own narratives, but Kashmir, Srinagar, with its majestic vistas are ever present, in stark contrast to stories, taut and simple, lived in a land where indigenous political aspirations are muted.
Zahid’s collection does away with what is expected of a writer from a region of conflict. His stories are not about the gun; no one other than Kashmiris take the limelight and in their labour of living, the reader becomes an unwieldy witness, for once we have seen, we cannot look away. One of Zahid’s influences is Flannery O’Connor and much like her celebrated short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Zahid’s primary characters do not want to yield sympathy, but in the face of difficult well drawn secondary characters, they cannot help but engage, often losing a part of themselves in the process. People might protect themselves, defences up, but it’s in their relations with others that they flounder till they are completely ensnared. In ‘The Man with the Suitcase’ a son stops fighting with his mother who is waiting for her other dead son. Afterall, he too looks for signs everywhere, following a man he has never seen or spoken to before.
The collection explores the stillness and acceleration of Kashmir, taking us through narrow alleyways which Zahid seems to know well. His stories are a gradual unravelling of different kinds of lives all drawn from the same spool. Deft sentences bring uncanny sight to the reader. The city is a character, its bylaws, its people, their eyes, the sounds, even crows and dogs. The characters know them intimately – a journalist browsing a papier-mâché shop in ‘Small Boxes’, a boy looking at descending birds in ‘Crows’ – and by the end of the collection, the reader starts beginning to understand how people are placed on this vast canvas. Only just. Zahid’s work is an injunction for those who try to distil Kashmir into a singular experience, a unitary problem. Readers are not promised full comprehension. That’s their homework on their own time.
Zahid is excellent at drawing inner monologues. Thoughts gather, circumambulate, meander and then keep returning to the central worry of the character, building like a crescendo, often ending in futility, as his writing keeps showing so much is out of our hands in a place like Kashmir, where individual wants are tempered by the limits of spatiality.
‘Drops of water slipped down the tall glass, just as they had on those Pepsi bottles …She had never understood where the water came from, believing for a long time that it oozed from the inside, but then she knew better, and yet she had never found out where it really came from.’
(‘The Bridge’, p.14.)
Themes of fear and want go hand in hand in all the stories. People persist in what they desire, exulting in the scariness of not knowing and going in headfirst anyway. They all want more than is given to them, political or material: Nusrat, a woman seeking a hakeem after multiple miscarriages; a boy who fears his tuition teacher; an inquisitive young man swept by the thoughts of the neighbour’s daughter; Mansoor, a shopkeeper whose new mannequin looks sad; Mr. Hussain, a refined store owner who becomes paranoid about death and mothers and brothers who wait for those who will not come back. Zahid moves the needle away from pedantic headlines about Kashmir to a spotlight on its restive veins – blue, maroon and pink, its people, vesting them with unabashed agency:
‘a little earthworm had been torn into two. ‘They will both live,’ she said. ‘Now there will be two of them.’
(‘Flowers from a Dog’, p.85.)
The women are often referred to by their social standing in association with a man – ‘Sham Saeb’s wife’ in ‘Flowers from a Dog’, ‘the owner’s wife’ in ‘The House’, ‘his wife’ in ‘The Mannequin’. But I liked these nameless women, precisely because they understand their place in the system and subvert it:
‘In my husband’s absence?’ She stared at him. ‘Is that possi-ble? I am a woman, after all. I can’t decide on my own.’
(‘The House’, p.106.)
The ‘owner’s wife’ acts obtuse when the labourer Manzoor asks decisions of her she does not want to make. Wives ask their husbands to solve things for them but the only way out of quagmires is for them to claw at the seams. Menfolk are ill-equipped to imagine what women really want. In ‘Flowers from a Dog’, a man longs for a dead woman, who has long left him. But in her leaving, she chose what she wanted; dead or alive, she was not his to own, as much as he mourns her.
In a recent interview, Zahid says ‘the best stories make us inhabit another life and thereby somehow our own, more fully, more consciously’. If there is a pervasive universal truth, his stories repeat it again and again to the reader, and you’re left longing for, and shuddering at his characters. Do we want to be them? No. Can we look away? No. Readers want to solve, to apply salve, but Zahid will not give them an opportunity:
‘… why look into its eyes, useless, to bring a dead thing to life. The dead are for the dead.’
(‘Dogs’, p.124. )
His writing is confrontational in the simplest ways, by repeating the truth again and again, across different stories, so love, grief, malice, jealousy, paranoia, all come together and we are left with an indelible feeling of what being human is.
Having grown up in Kashmir, and then not having lived there for a long time, I felt a sense of nostalgia as well as guilt. Therein, lies our hubris, as readers and altruists who want to solve Kashmir for its people. If the conflict is a constant in Kashmir, what changes? Its people. They change. They do things differently, each time, till in all timelines, they cannot be pinned down, only observed. They will save themselves if need be; by living their lives fully, as characters in stories both fictional and nonfictional, and perhaps in the real world as well.
Citations
1. 5 Questions for Zahid Rafiq, with Michelle Johnson. World Literature Today, January 2025
AASHNA JAMAL is a writer from Kashmir. Her stories appear in Fountain Ink, Muse India, Caravan, Inverse Journal, The diplomat, and Bebaak Jigar- Of Dry Tongues and Hearts, a print anthology of Indian fiction. She is a 2024 Sangam House writer resident and a 2022 South Asia Speaks Fellow. She is working on her debut novel. She is currently an economic advisor to the government in Somalia.
January 25, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Politica 
by Yumna Kassab
Ultimo Press
ISBN: 9781761152009
Reviewed by ALISON STODDART
Coming late and virginal to Yumna Kassab’s literary work, Politica is written in what I now know is her trademark fragmentary style, something that invites the reader to commit to. But commit I did and was well rewarded with a novel of war and its subsequent fallout of
disorder.
Politica is Kassab’s latest novel and set in an unnamed country in the Middle East. It’s a
difficult read, divided into innumerable chapters and densely packed with characters, many of
whom are memorable. Each chapter’s title is a hint to deeper meaning. Titles like ‘A
Martyr’, ‘Human Shields’ or ‘An Ode to Reason’ unlock the characters. The war seen
through their eyes, creates a complex narrative on the far-reaching impact of war.
The many people who live through this turmoil, some who reappear throughout the book,
some who are referred to only once and some who aren’t even named, convey the lives of
ordinary people and the effect war has on idealism, identity and social structures.
It’s a novel alive with characters but no plot or storyline. We are brief visitors bearing
witness to Jamal, a student who desperately wants to pick up a gun and join the war effort as
an escape from the conflict at home with his father. Or the inappropriately named Yasmeena,
leader of a revolution whose name means flowers and delicate things. We get to know her
father, Abdullah who once was an idealistic political student who wanted to bring freedom to
his people.
It is through these sparsely sketched characters that we experience the atrocities of war. But
Kassab dilutes the unexplainable with stories that can be identified with. Stories of love, loss
and defiance. We are privy to villagers who visit the town’s well. People like Um Kareem
whose husband wishes to take another wife. Or Amira whose son Khaled has been killed in
the fighting, but she does not know this yet and still has hope, a misguided hope that
survivors of war cling to with feigned ignorance, because she ultimately knows that few
soldiers survives war.
These people could be anywhere. Kassab decontextualises where they are because what they
are suffering through can happen anywhere and to anyone.
War is political because it is always happening. There is no plot in this novel because,
according to Kassab, there is no beginning, middle or end to war and her novel reflects this.
The chapters in Politica are simply vignettes of humans existing in the continuous tale of
dispossession and displacement.
Many of the chapters are snapshots of an event, something that ultimately results in said
event being used to for political gain. In ‘Human Shields’ a young girl out walking with her
mother, is shot and killed even as her mother tries to shield her. But twenty years later
dispute is still raised over who was the shield and who was shielded, and how truth is the first
sacrifice. ‘The mother’s name was Fatin and her daughter’s name was Rayan. These are
facts. The rest is a feast for the dogs. In this way Kassab portrays how war turns all aspects
of human existence into fuel for propaganda.
In between these chapters of each character are interspersed brief paragraphs of insight.
Kassab is adept at profound explanations of attributes of war. From propaganda, ‘how do you
strip people of their culture? First you take their language and then you outlaw their beliefs’,
to the futility of war ‘once injustice is dead, it will find life somewhere else’.
The sparsely written prose is allegorical in places. The sentences are sharp and complex
which often requires a rereading to grasp the meaning. Kassab cuts off any narrative just as
you start to work out. If you are not interested in plot but enjoy vignettes with insight, then
this is the novel for you.
So where does Politica fit in current society? As of the time of this review the Gaza war is in
its second year, the Russia/Ukraine war grinds on and the world is about to have a new leader
of the free world who wants to own Greenland and may not rule out military might to do this.
It is an apposite time to read this novel. It’s a timely book about war when the world is
undergoing more than enough. ‘The personal is political’ is the opening quote of this book.
But everything is political if you make it that way.
Kassab is Australian, born and raised in the western suburbs of Sydney and, interestingly for
someone so literary, is also a science teacher. She has been appointed the City of
Parramatta’s first Laureate in Literature, a position she will use to write about growing up in
the diverse community of Parramatta.
She attributes her sense of self to being raised in this multicultural area of Sydney but not
entirely because of the family and friends surrounding her. It is her fascination with the
community that grew up around the emergence of the football team, Western Sydney
Wanderers that cemented her love for the west. In an interview with ABC Online’s
Rosemary Bolger, Kassab observes ‘it kind of centred the community, and people who
previously wouldn’t have said they were from the area, suddenly were saying they were from
the area’. Kassab’s interest in how communities can unite, and regions re-emerge in
favourable circumstances are themes that can be found in Politica. Dispossession and
displacement can be stopped.
Sonia Nair in her review for the Sydney Morning Herald points out the tie between the power
plays of the western world with the wars of the middle east. Sometimes war is a short-term
act of violence to achieve a specific aim, but Kassab does not believe dictators or
revolutionists rain down from the sky. She is more aware of the prolonged impact of war and
the way it echoes down the generations.
Would I recommend this novel? This is not a story. If you are someone who likes decoding
literary writings and revelling in the discovery of literary devices, then Kassab is your author.
If however, you are the type who likes to pick up an airport novel for reading on the beach
then perhaps Politica is a step too far
Undeniably, this is a worthy book. An erudite reader that can put in the effort to discover
Kassab’s insightful prose will benefit from its resonance. It’s a difficult book that rewards
perseverance. A second read of this novel provided more clarity and understanding of
Kassab’s worldliness and she writes against a background of humanity, and what it means to
be part of a collective. Politica offers profound reflections on the convergence of politics and
the individual. Kassab makes is clear that choice in war is idiosyncratic, and the personal cost
of that choice is forever borne.
ALISON STODDART is a country born and bred, Sydney writer currently undertaking a master’s degree at Macquarie University which she is hoping to finish soon. She completed her BA Degree majoring in Creative Writing in 2020.
Twitter @a_hatz5
January 5, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
We’re seeking unpublished creative nonfiction writing, poetry, and new experimental prose for an anthology of creative writing by disabled and neurodivergent writers.
To be edited by Mascara and published by NewSouth Publishing the anthology focuses on the perspectives and voices of First Nations and CaLD, disabled writers as well as those with multiple marginalities.
This anthology of creative writing seeks to challenge dominant power structures, through a disability justice approach, by platforming nonfiction and nonfiction poetry writers and amplifying intersectional voices whose stories are so often unfairly erased. The ongoing pandemic has revealed the deep inequalities and barriers faced by First Nations disabled people and CaLD disabled people. They have been, and they continue to be disproportionately impacted. Through the vivid nonfiction writing by disabled and neurodivergent First Nations and CaLD writers, this anthology will offer community building and a deeper understanding.
The call out is open to diverse styles within the genre, including new experimental writing alongside established creative non-fiction and consideration of theoretical essays.
Guidelines for authors:
Word limit for flash prose: 1500 words.
Line limit for poetry: 200 lines
Word limit for prose and creative non-fiction essays: 3000 words
All contributions will be paid $500
Deadline (extended): 5pm COB: 30 April 2025
Formatting & Process:
- We accept only Microsoft Word doc files (.doc and .docx)
- Format your document in 12 point, Times New Roman, 1.5 spaced
- Name your file by surname and genre (e.g. yoursurname_poetry)
- In the subject line of your email, write your surname and genre of submission (i.e.
non-fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry)
- In the body of the email, include a short bio and attach your submission file
Send submissions to: disability_anthology@mascarareview.com
December 22, 2024 / mascara / 0 Comments
Stamatia X
by Effie Carr
ISBN: 9780648170716
Primer Fiction
Reviewed by ANGELA COSTI
Stamatia X is a novel fuelled by Greek philosophy, grammar, poetry and history to tell the riveting story of a Greek-Australian, migrant family’s return to their “homeland”. Nostalgia has no place to dwell in this book as the family of five return to civil unrest, violence and the absurd, rampant malpractice of a military dictatorship. The year of their return to Greece is 1973. This is the year of pent up, popular protest against the ruling colonels, when students occupied the Athens Polytechnic calling themselves the “Free Besieged”, demanding “Bread-Education-Liberty!”But then to be brutally bulldozed by a tank crashing the gates of the Polytechnic, leading to deaths, including 24 civilians. In the chapter titled, “17 November”, Effie Carr utilises the complexities of her main character, Stamatia, to reimagine this definitive historical event – the outcome is extraordinary.
Although Effie Carr’s Stamatia X was formally released in 2018, it wasn’t until 2019 at the Greek Writers’ Festival, based in Melbourne, that the book gained wider recognition among the literary community. It went on to be highly commended for the Book Prize 2019 by the Greek-Australian Cultural League. With its intricate weave of mythology, history and use of grammatical trope, it’s certainly deserving of a larger, international readership.
The third-person narration begins in 1970s Australia and is mostly told through Stamatia, a 13-and-a-half-year-old female, born in NSW of Greek migrants. Stamatia in Greek means “stop”. Stamatia is keenly aware of her father’s disappointment in her gender as he wanted his firstborn to be a son: “She thought her name was appropriate given that her father wanted to stop having any more female children” (9). Greek Orthodox patriarchal traditions are questioned through Stamatia’s intellect and distinct gift for learning. She has a photographic memory and significant synesthesia, enabling her to effortlessly recite the entire 158 stanzas of the ‘Hymn to Liberty’, a poem written by Dionysios Solomos, which is used as Greece’s national anthem. Her mother, Maria, despairs at Stamatia’s intellectual capacity:
Why did Stamatia have to be this way? She thought Stamatia had to learn to conform and become more selfless. Or else, be forced into it. No good could come of such an individualistic nature. There were more prospects in silent conformity. (36)
After Vasili’s alcoholic dejection at Stamatia’s birth, he grows to rely on his daughter’s resourcefulness and “studious disposition” (39). As the first born and the daughter, Stamatia is in the unenviable position of “parentifying” Vasili with his decision to return to Greece. In a surge of emotion, Vasili pushes the responsibility of making the decision to return to Greece onto Stamatia, and she unfortunately accepts:
She felt ashamed for him, that he was so confused and troubled. She was angry. She felt lost. She was floating in a vacuum… It was her decision, her journey now. She would have to make it her journey. By force if necessary. (39)
With resonances to Odysseus’s journey of return, Stamatia has quests and challenges to face before she disembarks in Greece. In particular, she is expected to know the Greek language as fluently as a well-educated, Athenian-born speaker. For the past four years she has been “in training”, “much like an Olympic athlete” (21). Vasili believes it’s imperative that his daughter “assimilate into the Greek high school system” (22) and so Stamatia is tutored rigorously for two hours, three times per week, by the perfectionist, Mr Lalas, a classics expert with one seeing eye “who had fled from Greece when the Junta had staged a military coup in 1967”(14).
The relationship between Mr Lalas and Stamatia is intriguing as it wavers between mutual respect (as if they’re philosophical peers) to one of mutual antipathy, as they labour over gruelling grammatical rules:
Stamatia loved studying the stories of the revered books, but found the endless conjugation of verbs and the outrageously huge tome of classical irregular verbs tedious and oppressive. (15)
As Stamatia conjugates verbs – delivering them from the past to the past continuous, and from the present to the present continuous – she realises her life seems stuck in the continuous present, the constant act of here and now without any sense of future.
In another reflective lesson with Mr Lalas, they explore the meaning of the word epistrophe. Although commonly known as a noun, its etymology is Greek and it means “to return”, “to turn upon” and further:
In music it meant a refrain, to return to an original melody. It was one word with so many possibilities. She loved that Greek had the capacity for expanded meaning. One small word could mean so much. (17)
This word, epistrophe, services the novel’s narrative arc splendidly. Its literal meaning in Greek is “turning about” which is what the final chapter conveys. As the story returns to the original migration from Greece to Australia. The journey embarked on by Vasili and Maria aboard the famous ship, the Patris, is told mainly through Maria, the young wife and mother-to-be. Maria is pregnant with her first born, Stamatia. As a developing foetus, Stamatia, expresses her dilemma from the womb:
How do I keep my head above water? I’m suspended yet connected to a giant placenta ball, which is connected to her. She feeds me. Breathes for me. Could I play with the placenta ball? Will this make me a boy? It could be good practice for when I’m in the park with my father. My mother is so worried. (238)
The refrain throughout the novel is how parental expectations of, and roles for, a Greek daughter are unequal and unfair in comparison to that of a Greek son. Stamatia’s two younger siblings are boys, and although they are not teenagers yet, their world of toys and games doesn’t seem to be compromised by responsibility or duty. Indeed, this story of inequality for Greek-Australian females within the Greek Orthodox social code is acknowledged through oral histories, news articles, the arts and literature. On a personal level, my own experience as the eldest daughter of a conservative Cypriot Greek household aligns with Stamatia’s discrimination and mistreatment.
Significantly, Effie Carr’s detailed rendering of Stamatia shows a multi-faceted character preventing shallow tendencies towards pitying women from culturally diverse backgrounds who experience oppression. Stamatia is both fascinating and feisty. Even as a six-year-old, she recognises the painful truth “that she had been supplanted, uprooted in her parents’ affection”(63) by the birth of her younger brother, Christos. But this little girl doesn’t hide from her anger and jealousy as she tries in desperate ways to regain her parents’ love and attention. There is her failed attempt to smother Christos with a pillow and then developing an eating disorder:
Stamatia realised that it was easy to stick her fingers down her throat and purge the
small quantities of food she was forced to eat. It was strangely satisfying to be able to do this. The reaction she got from her parents thrilled her. This was the final straw for Stamatia’s mother, who made an appointment with a child psychologist. (71)
From birth, Stamatia was destined to interrogate the status quo with her inquisitive mind and thirst for knowledge, therefore attempts to erase her identity and dignity are her epistrophe. The X after her name is apt. In Greece, when her father is ludicrously imprisoned by the corrupt regime, her status is elevated as her father’s saviour. She gives a most precious medallion, her only connection to her deceased Grandmother (Yiayia) Fotini, in exchange for her father’s release.
Still, on another level, we come to understand “the X factor” that drives Stamatia as human and signifies her as symbol. Her female body is acknowledged and activated in a sexual encounter in Greece with Philip, an 18-year-old. Although she is four years younger, she takes the lead, but panics when she hears her mother’s urgent voice, as she realises she’s no longer a virgin. She decides that her destiny differs from that of her mother’s: “She never wanted to marry a nice Greek man.” (128)
Stamatia’s story is also part of “the Greek continuous past” (112) as the novel is interspersed with vivid stories and memorable characters within the context of Greece during WWII, including its civil unrest and military dictatorship (during the early to mid-20th century). There’s Yiayia Fotini with her colourful dresses and swimming regime, the poignant war story of Giovanni Modeno and Sophia, as told through young Vasili, and the explosive incident that caused a gifted and political Lalas to lose his eye.
Stamatia X is another creative documentation of Greece’s history. One that doesn’t shy from showing complete systemic failure for Greeks who stayed and those who returned. It places the Greek daughter squarely in the foreground as she navigates between duties to her family and their country and finally, to herself.
ANGELA COSTI is known as Αγγελικη Κωστη among the Cypriot diaspora, which is her heritage and ancestry. She is a poet, playwright, reviewer and essayist. Her latest poetry book is An Embroidery of Old Maps and New, Spinifex 2021. Her latest chapbook is Adversarial Practice, Cordite Poetry Review, May 2024.
Vessel
