Funny Ethnics seems like a sweet love letter to Sydney. From an exciting new voice in Asian-Australian literature, I was luckily enough to catch the book launch conversation between Shirley Le herself and Benjamin Law.

There isn’t really a plot, and the story follows an unconventional storyline where there isn’t necessarily a start, middle and end. It seemed like we were just getting glimpses and snippets into the protagonist’s life.

Our protagonist, Sylvia Nguyen the only child to Vietnamese refugee parents finds the courage to tell her parents she wants to drop the law part of her Arts/Law degree. Obviously her parents are shocked and disappointed and goes through the motion of telling her why it’s a big mistake etc etc. From here, we get glimpses of Sylvia’s life — the (free) tutoring by some random old white man, getting into a selective school and all the stigma that comes with that, navigating friendships and boys, not being Vietnamese or Australian enough, and just trying to figure out life as teenage girl.

Does Sylvia find the courage to forge her own path through life or will she succumb to the pressures and expectations of what it is to be a “good, Asian daughter”?

New Australian fiction!

I loved reading this debut novel by Shirley Le, a second generation Vietnamese-Australian writer, who gives us a funny and endearing coming of age story about Sylvia Nguyen growing up in Yagoona, south-west Sydney.

In a 2018 interview with Stephen Pham, Le talks about how her personal exinfluence her writing but also how writers of colour are often asked 'did that really happen?' and not given full credit for their creativity. I have to confess that when I started reading I thought I was reading Le's memoir. Once I realised 𝙵𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝙴𝚝𝚑𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚜 is a work of fiction and not necessarily autobiographical fiction I think i appreciated it much more. It is actually wonderful to read an Australian novel that has characters and places that show a more diverse Australian identity. We need more fiction like this.

Le is part of the SWEATSHOP Writer's Group which is part of a literacy movement established by Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad, author of 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚎𝚋𝚜 (𝟸𝟶𝟷𝟾) and more recently 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙾𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝙷𝚊𝚕𝚏 𝚘𝚏 𝚈𝚘𝚞 (𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟷).

For those of you living in Sydney, Shirley Le will be in conversation with the wonderful @mrbenjaminlaw on 9 March at @betterreadbookshop to celebrate the release of 𝙵𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝙴𝚝𝚑𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚜.

Thanks to #netgalley and @affirmpress for the free e-ARC in return for an honest review. This book will be published on 28 February.

Funny Ethnics is a coming-of-age tale that is like no other. Rooted in the streets of Western Sydney, a series of vignettes takes us from Sylvia’s childhood through to early adulthood.

Sylvia is the child of Vietnamese refugees - this is a story of living between two worlds, and a lifelong quest to find love and acceptance. This exceptional book traces her emotional growth as we struggle with her through all-too-familiar challenges of school (and beyond), friendship and family.

All-too-familiar challenges but layered with the themes of identity, choices, racism, and the realities of immigrants and their kids growing up in Australia. The author handles all of this with a light touch, with sensitivity and humour.

This book brims with honesty and is utterly grounded in its setting. Living in Western Sydney, I loved the level of artful detail scattered throughout. These are my streets too and it is a wonderful reading experience to share a little of the book’s world. But snappy warts-and-all observations will convince anyone of its authenticity.

It pulls no punches in the racism and ignorance experienced every day by those of diverse cultural backgrounds. There’s a scene where Sylvia starts to feel more at peace with her identity - “I felt good about being a Nguyễn” - only to be brutally ripped down for “centering” her cultural identity. Her response is heart wrenching, writing metaphorically about Bonsai - “Pruning little by little, day by day, will condition your bonsai to conform to what you desire.”

The narrative form is unusual and did take me a little while to settle into. While fiction, it reads a little more memoir than a traditional fictional arc. I was waiting for “the plot” to develop - but this is truly character driven development. This might not work for all readers, but I’d really encourage you to push through. While there are moments that might feel a little slow, it is full of heart, and it all comes together artfully, satisfyingly, at the end.

I loved this and will recommend widely. Five stars.