Review of Banana Bending: Asian Australian and Asian Canadian Literatures, by Tseen-Ling Khoo

Abstract

The etymology of the term 'banana'—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—coupled with 'bending'—a transformation and a politicisation— suggests new strategies of reading and comprehending Asian literatures and identifications. In this timely work Khoo reads the multiple sites and deployments of the term 'multicultural' enshrined in the imagining of contemporary Canada and Australia. Khoo's work has a wide range and interrogates notions of race, citizenship, embodiment and diaspora; the immigration policies of the two countries; and issues of gender and sexuality within the Asian literatures of the two countries.