Book Description
Chek Ling was born in a thatched wooden hut in Sarawak, a subject of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the last Rajah. His mother was young and illiterate. His father, a Confucian scholar turned math teacher, was twice her age and twice widowed. Chek Ling grew up in a blended household filled with anxiety, tension, and desolation.
When he arrived in Australia in 1962 on an unexpected Colombo Plan scholarship, he thought he had finally reached the “God’s own country” he had dreamed of as a child.
This deeply personal memoir traces his journey from colonial subject to fiercely engaged citizen. Along the way, he confronted Australia’s racist history and its obsession with the “other”—a pattern he saw repeated at home and abroad. He watched young Australians sent to unconscionable ends in foreign wars. He saw cruel policies enacted upon those who sought refuge on these shores.
Most of all, Chek Ling laments Australia’s corrupted two-party system, which has bred a winning-is-everything mentality—the root of most of the country’s political ills.
But he has not given up. He vows a revolution through the ballot to make his adopted country a fair, compassionate, and enlightened homeland for his grandchildren.
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