But the Girl
But the Girl is a wry and razor-sharp coming-of-age novel about belonging, alienation, and the exquisite pleasure and pain of girlhood, for readers of The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
'I used to have this line I saved and brought out for grant applications and writers festivals — that having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me.'
Girl is spending the spring at an artist's residency in Scotland. Far from her home in Australia and her tight-knit Malaysian family, she is meant to be writing a postcolonial novel and working on a PhD on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. But she can't stop thinking about her upbringing and the stories of her parents and grandmother who raised her.
How can she reconcile their dreams for her with her lived reality? Did Sylvia Plath have this problem? What even is a 'postcolonial novel'? And what if the story of becoming yourself is not about carving out a new identity but learning to understand the people who shaped you?
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Publishing has a diversity problem. There are less 'diverse' books being published which limits the discoverability and reach of those authors.
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An anti-racist social enterprise bookstore specialising in BIPOC books.
Only about 11% of books published are by BIPOC authors — so unless you specifically seek out books by BIPOC authors, you aren't likely to find very many of them organically. At Amplify, BIPOC authors are highlighted and celebrated. Here, they don't have to fight to be seen, and you don't have to fight to find them.
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