First Name Second Name
In this darkly ironic novel, a dead man walks back through four generations of family estrangements to recover his lost identity.
The journey will be long and difficult, one thousand miles. Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. You'll know you've arrived when you get there.
Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland. When they ignore his request, Stephen's corpse makes the nocturnal pilgrimage alone. But what is compelling him and what will he find there?
His journey, as a kind of jiangshi, takes him back through his turbulent family history — from his Chinese great-grandfather's life on the goldfields in 1860s Queensland, to his Scottish grandparents' migration to Australia as ten-pound Poms, and to his own coming of age and coming out in Brisbane and London.
Original and satirical, First Name Second Name follows four generations of one family through a reckoning with racial, familial and sexual identity.
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Book Dimensions: 15.24 cm, 1.52 cm, 22.86 cm
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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.
Representation is important. Read more about why we exist here.
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.
We hope that in our shop, you can discover a new favourite read, find stories that speak uniquely to you, learn about a culture outside your own (or more about your own histories), and gain a better understanding of the systems that connect us all.
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