Songs of the underclasses

About the author

Cherry Zheng

Cherry Zheng is a writer and dancer of Cantonese heritage. Her work has appeared in Overland, Aniko Press, The Suburban Review and the British Science-Fiction...

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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.

Shelf life

Non-fictionEarly in his career, Charles Dickens notably underestimated the reputational risk of library-shelf browsing when he invited the critic George Henry Lewes home for tea. Over steaming cups, Lewes eyed naff triple-decker novels and bland travel books, ‘all obviously the presentation copies from authors and publishers’. He recalled the experience in a waspish elegy published shortly after Dickens’ death: ‘A man’s library expresses much of his hidden life, I did not expect to find a bookworm, nor even a student, in the marvellous “Boz” but nevertheless this collection of books was a shock.’

Mesopotamia

FictionTheir camp is on a floodplain, dirt baked dry for now, among a stand of black box trees. Close to the bank, river red gums tower and would provide better shade, but Kim had been worried about falling branches. From a rise near their tent, they can monitor the vast, slow drift of the watercourse, progress marked by its bobbing contents. Wordlessly, this is how they spend most of their time.