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Melbourne writer and lawyer Alice Pung will give an insight into what it was like to grow up Asian in Australia at a free public lecture, at The University of Western Australia next Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

Asian-Australians are known to each other and the outside world by many labels:  quiet achiever, gangster, mainlander, banana.  Yet are these labels based on some degree of truth, or only fiction?

Ms Pung's talk will cover these issues and her experiences on what it means to be Asian and Australian, dismantling stereotypes and clichés along the way.

She is the editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia, which was released earlier this month and features contributions from 56 Asian Australians, including West Australians.

Ms Pung's work has appeared in The Age , The Good Weekend , The Monthly and Meanjin . Her book Unpolished Gem was a national best seller and received the Australian book industry's Newcomer of the Year award.

The lecture is part of the 2008 Humanities Lecture Series, co-sponsored by UWA's Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Institute of Advanced Studies.

It will be held at UWA's Social Science Lecture Theatre, within the Faculty of Arts building, at 6pm.  Enter UWA from Hackett entrance 1.

Media references

Audrey Barton (Institute of Advanced Studies)  (+61 8)  6488 4797

Nina Kenwood (Publicist, Black Inc Books) ( [email protected] )  (+61 3)  9654 2000

Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716