Transnational Imaginaries: Reading Asian Australian Writing

Abstract

In the introductory essay to this collection, Wenche Ommundsen offers an account of the recent emergence of Asian Australian writing as a category within Australian literature and Australian literary studies: its relation to other critical categories such as diasporic writing or transnational writing; its debates and theoretical underpinnings; its capacity to redefine the national literature as a whole. The essay concludes with some reflections on the trajectory of Australian literature in the 'Asian century' and the transformative power of transnational and transcultural interaction.