Where Are You From?

Where Are You From? Voices in Transition edited by  Margaret Kumar, Heather D’Cruz and Niranjala Weerakkody is now available from The Social Sciences imprint.

Where are you from? Voices in Transition records the diverse recollections and reflections of fourteen Asian Australian women about the question ‘where are you from?’ posed to them and assumptions about their identity made by different people at different times, locations and contexts. The book examines why in the globalised world we live in today, it is not always possible to label or describe a person as having one specific cultural or national identity as they are expected to do by those asking the question.

‘… The question, ‘where are you from?’ can serve a function of demanding an explanation from minority groups about how they belong to a particular community, and whether they even have right to do so. A person who is assumed to belong to the dominant group is seldom asked this question.

The essays in this wonderful volume provide personal narratives of how issues of identity and belonging are negotiated in ways that are always complex and difficult, even painful and haunting, but also creative and playful. They show how answers to the question, ‘where are you from?’ are never uniformly and predictably available, but require telling of personal histories, cultural traditions and professional aspirations but are also continually reshaped by new cultural experiences and exchange. We interpret new experiences in a variety of ways that involve not only particular historical understandings but also acts of imagination that are always a product of a range of factors, both historical and social, as well as political and strategic.’

(Professor Fazal Rizvi, Foreword to Where are you from? Voices in Transition.)