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Author: Yen-Rong Wong

  • MEDIA

    Engaging thoughtfully with racist Disney

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 28 November 2019
    7 Comments

    While there is value in pointing out incorrect or inappropriate behaviour, we are also at a point where we are perhaps a little too quick to declare someone or something 'cancelled'. Many problematic depictions have occurred over the years, and we do ourselves no favours by ignoring them or pretending they did not exist.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    I'm not anti-China but pro democracy

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 27 November 2019
    6 Comments

    I have the luxury of laughing off jokes that make light of the power dynamic between mainland China and Taiwan and Hong Kong, but for many of my friends, it's not such a light matter. I struggle to put myself in their shoes, and I feel a sense of hopelessness that I'm not able to do more.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    AOC speech not racist, just code switching

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 12 April 2019
    6 Comments

    US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was accused by some of 'verbal blackface' due to her manner in a speech last week. But she wasn't being racist — she was code switching, defined by linguists as the act of moving back and forth between two or more languages or dialects. It's something I know a lot about from experience.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Still a long way to go, period

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 16 November 2018
    2 Comments

    Uteruses, and in particular, periods, have long been used against menstruators — to malign, to marginalise, to make us feel lesser than. In ancient Greece, it was thought that the uterus (hysterika) was able to travel throughout the body, and that a wandering uterus was a sign of mental illness. The word hysteria has been used since then to minimise the severity of women’s mental health issues.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Never again locked out by whiteness

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 05 June 2018
    26 Comments

    People have always had issues with my name. They don't pronounce it properly, or want to give me a nickname, or straight up make jokes out of it. I've lived a life of people telling me my name was too different, too hard. One afternoon at the office of my real estate agent, whiteness once again wanted to erase my name.

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  • RELIGION

    Cultural appropriation a year after Shriver furore

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 12 September 2017
    5 Comments

    A little over a year ago, Lionel Shriver delivered the opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, deriding political correctness and defending the practice of cultural appropriation by white writers. This year's festival didn't attract real controversy, but the memory of last year still lingered, and it's clear that parts of that mentality live on.

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  • CONTRIBUTORS

    Yen-Rong Wong

    • Yen-Rong Wong

    Yen-Rong Wong is a Brisbane-based writer, and the founding editor of Pencilled In, a literary magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of Asian Australian artists.

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