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11/11/19 Arts & Culture , Australia , Diaspora & Travel , Society & Politics # , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An open letter to UWA from a former international student and UWAP author

An open letter to UWA from a former international student and UWAP author

Dear Mr. Tayyeb Shah,

 

I came to Australia as an international student from Mumbai, India in 1998. One reason that attracted me to Australian institutions of higher education was their commitment to creativity, to intellectual rigour and to encouraging a plurality of ideas.

I wrote a book of short stories called The Permanent Resident, mainly to chronicle the lives of Indians in Australia, including the lives of international students. This book is published by UWAP. It has since won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award 2018 (Multicultural), been very well-reviewed in Australia and India, is on the syllabi of a number of universities and on several “must-read” booklists. This would not have happened without UWAP, particularly Terri-ann White, championing my book.

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12/06/15 Arts & Culture , Australia , Diaspora & Travel , Society & Politics # , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Double–edged Sword

A Double–edged Sword

By Rashida Murphy

 

July 1985. Sahar Airport, Mumbai: In the urgent business of holding a baby in my arms while negotiating the curly line towards the exit, to where a Qantas 747 waits to take me to Perth, I forget to look around one last time. I miss the sight of Mumbai or Bombay as it was then, saying goodbye. It was never my hometown anyway. It was just where I lived. And I was on the threshold of a new life, as a desirable immigrant with double degrees and English language skills. Australia, about which I knew little except that it had large reserves of underground water and farms the size of small countries in Europe, waited.

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