ABSTRACT
Literature located within the burgeoning field of Chinese Australian and Asian Australian studies highlights salient issues the descendants of Asian migrants face as a racialised minority living in dominant white Australia. This literature has often been inspired by a growing array of visual and textual narratives written and produced by multi-generational Asian Australians who explore what it means to be a gay/straight, male/female person of Chinese/Asian descent living in Australia (Ayres 1998, 1999, 2000; Chan 2000; Leong 2000; Shun Wah 1999; Wang 1998; Yang 1994, 1995, 1996). Emerging from this, Australian academics and scholars have begun to interrogate the construction of contemporary hybridised Asian Australian identities (see Ang et al. 2000); gendered representations of Asian Australian identities within Australian literature (Khoo 1999, 2003a, 2003b; Louie 2002; Louie and Low 2003; Tucker 2000); and the nature of identity politics Asian Australians are forced to engage in as a racialised minority within dominant white Australia (Ang 2000, 2001; Khoo 1999, 2001, 2003a, 2003b; Luke and Carrington 2000; Luke and Luke 1998, 1999). While these works are extremely valuable, there is still room for extensive research to be carried out in this field.
