One language among many

About the author

Lia Hills

Lia Hills is an award-winning poet, novelist and translator, born and raised in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is the author of the novels The...

More from this edition

Non-fictionAmerican sociologists John and Ruth Hill Useem first coined the term ‘third culture kid’ in the 1950s to describe the experience of Americans who were raised abroad in a culture different to their birth culture. This term reflects the way children raised overseas straddle three cultures: the culture of their birth, the culture within which they are raised, and a third, nebulous culture – the culture they create through the way they learn to relate to each other. The third culture is interstitial, not an amalgam. ‘Third culture kid’ (TCK) is a term often used as shorthand. Many TCKs will have experienced more than one cultural shift too. Those with diplomatic, military or missionary families are often raised in multiple countries, and others, like me, will continue their travels overseas as adults too, exercising the global and economic mobility they know well.

Notes from a Sunshine City

GR OnlineI feel like our collective relationships with The House™ as a motif changed so much during that time; the housing crisis, lockdown and climate apocalypse were looming large all at once. Personally, I developed this kind of bizarre voyeuristic relationship with the suburbs and houses I passed on my mandated mental-health walks.

The pool

Fiction I CATCH THE school bus home most days, kids kangarooing from seat to seat. Hard for a little bloke like me to get a...