Relations of difference: Asianness, indigeneity and whiteness in Simone Lazaroo’s fiction

Issues of representation have been central to critical discussions regarding a contemporary politics of difference. As Monika Kin Gagnon notes, ‘at issue is visibility, visuality, and power, and what is often referred to as a politics of knowledge; it problematises who defines and who determines cultural value’ (23). Simone Lazaroo’s fiction brings to visibility issues of representation, especially the way race and gender are intertwined as artificial constructions of difference within Australian cultural and historical discourse. This article examines how Lazaroo’s novels engage in a triangulated contemporary representational politics through an articulation of ‘relations of difference’ in which characters of Asian, Aboriginal and Anglo ancestry interact and react to racialised and gendered inscriptions of otherness.