Banana Girl (Michele Lee, Transit Lounge)

When it comes to memoir in Australian publishing, it seems that 30 is the new 40, with many writers mining their rollercoaster 20s for outrageously funny and poignant stories and converting them into book deals. Michele Lee, an experienced playwright but debut author, is not as well known in writing circles as other successful young memoirists such as Marieke Hardy and Benjamin Law, but she ably matches their no-holds-barred approach to narrating the self, most notably their wicked sense of humour. In between the politics of sharehousing and casual hook-ups, Lee considers wider issues, namely her identity, and what it means to belong to a small but tight-knit migrant Hmong community. Melbourne readers will also strongly relate to Banana Girl as Lee spends a lot of the book name-dropping bars and referencing many of the city’s in-jokes. In comparison, we only get a glimpse of Lee’s visits to Laos, which seems a missed opportunity. Regarding her ethnicity, Lee likens herself to a banana, ‘modern and golden, slipped loose from the rest of the bunch’. Throughout the book, Lee walks a slippery line between intimacy and indulgence; luckily, she doesn’t fall.

Emily Laidlaw is online editor at Kill Your Darlings

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews