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On Becoming an Australian: The Journey of Patricia Pengilley

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Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing

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Abstract

The chapter focuses on the Anglo-Indian-Australian author, Patricia Pengilley (1926–2010) and her autobiographical novel The Tiger and the Kangaroo Went to Sea: On Becoming an Australian (1999). The author focuses on the conflicting and evolving experiences of Pengilley as a diasporic Anglo-Indian-Australian. The chapter examines the intensities and intimacies of the contact zones, where Pengilley struggles with her Eurasian, colonial, English, Indian and Australian selves in order to claim a space of her own in her adopted country. As Pengilley encounters the process of diasporic cultural translation on her way to becoming an Australian, the author argues that the essence of diasporic identity and belonging are not characterized by homogeneity or separateness, but can be articulated in terms of multiple possibilities and positionalities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On October 28, 2012, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Hon Julia Gillard MP, launched the federal Government’s White Paper on “Australia in the Asian Century” at Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. The White Paper calls for one-third of board members of Australia’s top 200 publicly listed companies and Commonwealth bodies to have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia by 2025. For the full text of the White Paper see http://australianpolitics.com/2012/10/28/gillard-launches-asian-century-white-paper.html

  2. 2.

    Patricia Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea: On Becoming an Australian (Blackburn, VIC: PenFolk Publishing, 1999).

  3. 3.

    Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York, Routledge, 1997), 6.

  4. 4.

    Australia in the Asian Century: White Paper (Commonwealth of Australia, October 2012), 2. <http://australianpolitics.com/downloads/foreign/12-10-28_aust-in-the-asian-century-white-paper.pdf> (accessed January 28, 2015).

  5. 5.

    For a historical account of early Indian immigration to Australia see Margaret Steven, Merchant Campbell 1769–1846: A Study of Colonial Trade (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1965); David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939 (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999); S. Chandrasekhar, ed. From India to Australia: A Brief History of Immigration; The Dismantling of the “White Australia” Policy; Problems and Prospects of Assimilation (La Jolla, CA: Popular Review Books, 1992); S. P. Awasthi and Ashoka Chandra, “Migration from India to Australia”, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 3 (1994), 2–3; Joyce Westrip and Peggy Holroyde, Colonial Cousins: A Surprising History of Connections Between India and Australia (Kent Town, SA: Wakesfield Press, 2010), 149–157, 175–205.

  6. 6.

    Stephen Castles, The Challenge of Multiculturalism: Global Changes and Australian Experiences (University of Wollongong: Centre for Multicultural Studies, 1992), 7.

  7. 7.

    For a detailed discussion on Australian Immigration policies see Stephen Castles, Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis and Michael Morrissey, Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia, 3rd edn. (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1992); Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), Australian Government, http://www.immi.gov.au/media/history/post-war-immigration/_pdf/19460726_bold_far_sighted.pdf

  8. 8.

    Glenn D’Cruz, Midnight’s Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 165.

  9. 9.

    Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (London: Vintage, 1981).

  10. 10.

    D’Cruz, Midnight’s Orphans, 165.

  11. 11.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, viii.

  12. 12.

    Pengilley, ibid, 212.

  13. 13.

    Alison Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 146.

  14. 14.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 50.

  15. 15.

    Pengilley, ibid, 83.

  16. 16.

    Pengilley, ibid, 84.

  17. 17.

    Pengilley, ibid, 83.

  18. 18.

    Pengilley, ibid, 76.

  19. 19.

    Pengilley, ibid, 78.

  20. 20.

    Pengilley, ibid, 107.

  21. 21.

    Pengilley, ibid, 42.

  22. 22.

    Pengilley, ibid, 148.

  23. 23.

    Pengilley, ibid, 149.

  24. 24.

    Pengilley, ibid, 69.

  25. 25.

    Pengilley, ibid.

  26. 26.

    Pengilley, ibid, 93.

  27. 27.

    Pengilley, ibid.

  28. 28.

    Quoted in June Duncan Owen, Mixed Matches: Interracial Marriage in Australia (Sydney, UNSW, 2002), 47.

  29. 29.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 151.

  30. 30.

    Pengilley, ibid, 6.

  31. 31.

    Pengilley, ibid.

  32. 32.

    Pengilley, ibid, 215.

  33. 33.

    Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London, 1998), 222–237.

  34. 34.

    Rutherford, ibid, 225.

  35. 35.

    Rutherford, ibid, 235.

  36. 36.

    Rutherford, ibid.

  37. 37.

    Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation”. Cultural Studies 7:3 (1993), 349–363, 361.

  38. 38.

    Stuart Hall, “Conclusion: The Multi-Cultural Question”, in Un/Settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, “Transruptions”, ed. Barnor Hesse (London: Zed Books, 2000), 209–241, 226.

  39. 39.

    Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  40. 40.

    Gilroy, ibid, 276.

  41. 41.

    Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin. “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity”. Critical Inquiry 19:4 (Summer 1993), 693–725, 721.

  42. 42.

    Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, 1996).

  43. 43.

    Brah, ibid, 182.

  44. 44.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 140.

  45. 45.

    Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 (London, 1992), 17.

  46. 46.

    Rushdie, ibid.

  47. 47.

    Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 4.

  48. 48.

    Vera Alexander, “Beyond Centre and Margin: Representations of Australia in South Asian Immigrant Writing” in Australia—Making Space Meaningful, ed. Gerd Dose and Britta Kuhlenbeck (Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg, 2007), 153–174, 159.

  49. 49.

    Talal Asad, “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 141–164, 149.

  50. 50.

    Clifford Greetz, “A Life of Learning”, Charles Homer Haskins Lecture, American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper (No. 45, 1999), 14.

  51. 51.

    Asad, “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology”, 159.

  52. 52.

    Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity (Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

  53. 53.

    Papastergiadis, ibid, 124.

  54. 54.

    Papastergiadis, ibid, 131.

  55. 55.

    Papastergiadis, ibid, 139.

  56. 56.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 140.

  57. 57.

    Pengilley, ibid, 177.

  58. 58.

    Pengilley, ibid, 267.

  59. 59.

    Pengilley, ibid, 318.

  60. 60.

    Pengilley, ibid, 179.

  61. 61.

    Pengilley, ibid, 298.

  62. 62.

    Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale, N.S.W: Pluto Press, 1998), 140.

  63. 63.

    Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (London and New York, 2001), 14.

  64. 64.

    Ang, ibid, 15.

  65. 65.

    Ang, ibid, 14–15.

  66. 66.

    Wolfgang Welsch, “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today” in Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, ed. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (London, 1999), 194–213, 196.

  67. 67.

    Welsch, ibid, 197.

  68. 68.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 294–295.

  69. 69.

    Gabrielle Collu, “South Asian Women Writers in North America: The Politics of Transformation” in The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Essays in Criticism, ed. A. L. McLeod (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 2000), 56–67, 61.

  70. 70.

    Collu, ibid.

  71. 71.

    Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.

  72. 72.

    Pratt, ibid, 7.

  73. 73.

    Pengilley, The Tiger and The Kangaroo Went to Sea, 300.

  74. 74.

    Pengilley, ibid, 176.

  75. 75.

    Pengilley, ibid, 302.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia

    Sanghamitra Dalal

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  1. Sanghamitra Dalal
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Women and Gender Studies Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison , Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Devaleena Das

  2. Department of English, Calcutta University , Kolkata, India

    Sanjukta Dasgupta

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Dalal, S. (2017). On Becoming an Australian: The Journey of Patricia Pengilley. In: Das, D., Dasgupta, S. (eds) Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50400-1_17

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