Funny Ethnics

Funny Ethnics by Shirley Le

If you love our crazy, mixed-up Australian culture, you’ll love this book.

This coming-of-age tale follows Sylvia Nguyen from procrastinating, desperately parent-pleasing but unexceptional selective school student to procrastinating and marginally more successful, but confused, law student.

Sylvia swims in the cultural soup of Western Sydney. She trampolines between the Western culture she was born into and the Vietnamese culture her world is attuned to, in one episode telling Buddha she knows he’s not Father Christmas. The lovely thing about Sylvia is that she’s a typical young person trying to make her way into the adult world – but in Sylvia’s life, what world is that?

The narrative drops into amusing snapshots from Sylvia’s childhood onwards with quirky characters and oddly ordinary yet bizarre situations. As the book jacket describes it so well, it’s a funhouse mirror held up to modern Australia revealing suburban fortune tellers, train-carriage preachers, crumbling friendships and bad stand-up comedy. It’s also a simple tale full of heart and an enjoyable read.

Find Funny Ethnics in the library catalogue

Jo