Leah Jing McIntosh

With the release of the much anticipated sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathiser, writer Việt Thanh Nguyễn reflects on his 20-year struggle with fiction.

The new year opened to live footage of cops opening the gates to the United States Capitol, enabling rioters to storm the building. The racial privilege that laid ground for the insurrection was, if not unsurprising, deeply unsettling. Ivanka Trump called …

Catherine Văn-Davies found that her starring role in SBS’s Hungry Ghosts excavated intimate family histories. “For most of my life, Mum wouldn’t talk about the war. But with intergenerational trauma, even if they don’t tell us the experience in their own words, we’re so sensitive to our parents.”

As a frantic March rolled into an accepting April, sliding into a complacent May, the “apocalypse”, now boring, has disappeared into June. The “new normal” became old in the time it took to say the phrase; in supermarket aisles, I’m the only …

In response to the current pandemic, violent attacks against Asian people in Western countries – including Australia – have spiked. Far from isolated events, these attacks are symptomatic of a structural racism embedded in these countries’ histories. Written …

Robin DiAngelo knows a lot about white privilege – it’s in her DNA. The American academic, author and anti-racism advocate talks about how structures of whiteness and so-called white progressives are continuing to damage the lives of people of colour. ‘I grew up in poverty … I was a feminist for most of my life before I realised I could also be an oppressor. But I draw from my experience of oppression … I think that helps. The key is not to exempt myself from being an oppressor, just because I experience oppression. Ask anyone if they’d rather be poor and white or poor and brown – I knew I was poor, but I also knew I was white.’