Gaysia

Gaysia

Author: Benjamin Law

Publisher: Cleis Press

Published: 2014-05-13

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 162778036X

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A gay Asian-Australian man wonders what his life would be like if he grew up in Asia, so he travels to several Asian countries and investigates gay culture in Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, and India.


Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East

Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East

Author: Benjamin Law

Publisher: Cleis Press

Published: 2014-04-21

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 162778053X

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Benjamin Law considers himself pretty lucky to live in Australia: he can hold his boyfriend's hand in public and lobby his politicians to recognize same-sex marriage. But as the child of immigrants, he's also curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia. So he sets off to meet his fellow Gaysians. Law takes his investigative duties seriously, going nude where required in Balinese sex resorts, sitting backstage for hours with Thai ladyboy beauty contestants, and trying Indian yoga classes designed to cure his homosexuality. The characters he meets — from Tokyo's celebrity drag queens to HIV-positive Burmese sex workers and Malaysian ex-gay Christian fundamentalists to Chinese gays and lesbians who marry each other to please their parents — all teach him something new about being queer in Asia. At once entertaining and moving, Gaysia is a wild ride and a fascinating quest by a leading Australian writer.


Growing Up Queer in Australia

Growing Up Queer in Australia

Author: Benjamin Law

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1743821085

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‘No amount of YouTube videos and queer think pieces prepared me for this moment.’ ‘The mantle of “queer migrant” compelled me to keep going – to go further.’ ‘I never “came out” to my parents. I felt I owed them no explanation.’ ‘All I heard from the pulpit were grim hints.’ ‘I became acutely aware of the parts of myself that were unpalatable to queers who grew up in the city.’ ‘My queerness was born in a hot dry land that was never ceded.’ ‘Even now, I sometimes think that I don’t know my own desire.’ Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia. ‘For better or worse, sooner or later, life conspires to reveal you to yourself, and this is growing up.’ With contributions from David Marr, Fiona Wright, Nayuka Gorrie, Steve Dow, Holly Throsby, Sally Rugg, Tony Ayres, Nic Holas, Rebecca Shaw and many more.


Adjustment Day

Adjustment Day

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2018-07-05

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1473558751

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The author of Fight Club takes America beyond our darkest dreams in this timely satire. People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They’ve been reading a mysterious blue-black book and memorising its directives. They are ready for the reckoning. In this ingeniously comic work, Chuck Palahniuk’s first novel in four years, he does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Smug, geriatric politicians hatch a nasty fate for the burgeoning population of young males; working-class men dream of burying the elites; and professors propound theories that offer students only the bleakest future. When it arrives, Adjustment Day inaugurates a new, disunited states. In this mind-blowing novel, Palahniuk fearlessly makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche. ‘His best book in years’ Irish Independent


The Family Law

The Family Law

Author: Benjamin Law

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2023-11-28

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1921870354

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Writer and columnist Benjamin Law revisits his joyous and much-loved family memoir, spilling the tea on his family's latest antics The book that inspired the major SBS television series! Meet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide is Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humourist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions. Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? In this updated edition with a new chapter, Benjamin Law fills us in on his family's antics from the past decade. ‘Benjamin Law manages to be scatagogical, hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time. Every sentence fizzes like an exploding fireball of energy.’—Alice Pung ‘A vivid, gorgeously garish, Technicolour portrait of a family. It's impossible not to let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book's end enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.’—Marieke Hardy ‘The eccentric, clever and beautifully resonant The Family Law. It's sharply written, brilliantly observed and infused with an authenticity that makes it compelling.’ —Saturday Age ‘Very funny...you may find yourself at times almost barking with laughter’ —The Monthly ‘Law is a writer of great wit and warmth who combines apparently artless and effortless comedian's patter with a high level of technical skill.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘Simultaneously weird and instantly recognisable, the Laws are an Australian family it's well worth getting to know’ —The Enthusiast ‘Wonderful. Everyone should run to their nearest bookshop and buy a copy.’ —Defamer ‘An addictive read.’ —Courier-Mail


The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

Author: Linda Jaivin

Publisher: The Experiment, LLC

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1615198210

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Journey across epic China—through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. As we enter the “Asian century,” China demands our attention for being an economic powerhouse, a beacon of rapid modernization, and an assertive geopolitical player. To understand the nation behind the headlines, we must take in its vibrant, tumultuous past—a story of “larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation.” The Shortest History of China charts a path from China’s tribal origins through its storied imperial era and up to the modern Communist Party under Xi Jinping—including the rarely told story of women in China and the specters of corruption and disunity that continue to haunt the People’s Republic today. A master storyteller and exacting historian, Linda Jaivin distills this vast history into a short, riveting account that today’s globally minded readers will find indispensable.


Wellmania

Wellmania

Author: Brigid Delaney

Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1771643714

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THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE HIT NETFLIX SERIES "I laughed so hard I choked on a donut reading this book."—Jen Mann, NYT-bestselling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat Tired of late-night parties and all-day hangovers, thirty-something-year-old journalist Brigid Delaney decides to test the things that are supposed to make us healthy and whole, looking (with skepticism) to the trillion dollar wellness industry as her guide. She begins with a controversial and brutal 101-day fast, which leaves her glowing and "giddy," but also unemployed, bed-ridden, and strangely stinky. Next, she tries yoga classes, meditation, CBT, Balinese healing, silent retreats, group psychotherapy, and more, sorting through the fads and expensive hype to find out what works, while asking, "What does all this say about us?" With refreshing honesty and biting wit, Wellmania is an all too relatable book about the lengths we go to achieve optimal health—and whether it’s really worth it. As The Cut's Katey Heaney said: "Reading about all these impossible, expensive, scientifically unsupported self-improvement projects piled end on end, I wanted to shake Delaney, as I might shake myself, were I brave enough to tally all the money I've spent on green juice and witchy crap." According to comedian Judith Lucy, the result of Delaney's harrowing wellness journey is "a bloody entertaining read that leaves you wondering whether you want to do yoga or get mindlessly drunk and despair at the state of the world."


We Are Not the Same Anymore

We Are Not the Same Anymore

Author: Chris Somerville

Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 0702250937

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"We are Not the Same Anymore" is a collection of short fiction about people trying to connect with each other and the difficulties of finding intimacy. These stories play out the small catastrophes of everyday life. A man turns up at his daughter's birthday party with a goldfish in an ice-cream container. On the way to collect firewood, a woman and her teenaged neighbor crash in a snowstorm. An unwilling son helps his sister and father put up posters for a missing dog named Michael. Familiar and endearing, Chris Somerville's characters are consumed with their own neuroses, and through their eyes, the landscape of the domestic becomes surreal and dully terrifying. Suffused with a dark humor, their struggles for intimacy are recreated on the page with a deft and affectionate touch.""


Happy Never After

Happy Never After

Author: Jill Stark

Publisher:

Published: 2019-03-14

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9781911617587

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What if all the things you'd been told would make you happy ... didn't? Jill Stark was living the dream. She had a coveted job, she was dating a sports star, and her first book had just become a bestseller. After years of chasing the dream, she'd finally found it. And then it all fell apart. Getting her happy-ever-after plunged Jill into the darkest period of her life, forcing her to ask if we've been sold a lie. Could it be that the relentless pursuit of happiness is making us miserable? From the ashes of Jill's epic breakdown comes this raw, funny, and uplifting exploration of our age of anxiety. Happy Never Afteris a soul-searching journey from despair to clarity and a forensic examination of our troubled times. Road-testing neuroscience's latest psychological frontiers in compassion, acceptance, gratitude, play, hope, and solitude, Jill turns the happiness fairytale on its head and asks what would happen if we flipped the script and found contentment in places we least expected?


Torch the Place

Torch the Place

Author: Benjamin Law

Publisher: Melbourne University

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780522876659

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Teresa's mum finds it impossible to let anything go--from grudges to household objects. She thinks of her home as a museum full of irreplaceable treasures. But she's not really a curator, she's a hoarder. When her kids return home to celebrate her 60th birthday, she's over the moon to have the family back together. But this isn't a reunion. It's an intervention.Celebrated TV writer Benjamin Law (The Family Law) is one of this country's brightest literary stars. For his hysterically funny and moving playwriting debut, Law employs his effortless wit to spark joy in the clutter and find truth in those chaotic moments that bring families closer.Commissioned through MTC's NEXT STAGE Writers' Program with the support of our Playwrights Giving Circle Donors, The Ian Potter Foundation, Naomi Milgrom Foundation, The Myer Foundation, Malcolm Robertson Foundation and The University of Melbourne.