Benjamin Law
Benjamin Law is an author, journalist, TV screenwriter and newspaper columnist. His new anthology, Growing Up Queer is a book of stories about what it’s like to grow up in Australia with gender or sexual diversity. Benjamin Law will be a guest at this year’s Byron Writers Festival and took the time to chat with Paradiso magazine’s Aarna Hudson about growing up queer, history, books and the song he’d choreograph his dream gymnastics floor routine to.
Benjamin, you write books, columns, essays, feature journalism and TV screenplays such as the story of your family life in The Family Law. Growing up in South East Queensland, was creative writing a place of refuge for your younger self? Or were you a kid that escaped into stories? Tell us how your career as a writer emerged.
I have to say it would be a much neater story to say ‘Oh I grew up wanting to be a writer! I daydreamed about it!’ But I think if anything I wanted to be an actor on Home and Away and Channel 7. Acting dreams aside, the thing that I did have a lot of, constantly, was books and magazines. I was always a huge, huge reader and growing up that was always Roald Dahl and Paul Jennings and all of those books and probably later on, reading age inappropriate things like Stephen King at the age of 12 or something! I was never not a reader and then as a teenager I was voraciously consuming magazines. I basically lived at the newsagents. When I think about how I am so on the internet now, and in a largely pre-internet era in coastal suburban Queensland, magazines were really the connecting point to all of these stories out there in the world that blew my mind! I read about politics, I read about science, and I read about art through magazines at the newsagents. Reading The Face that was coming out of London! This was a whole new gender queer, punk kind of wonderful world that I wouldn’t have even been able to fathom on the Sunshine Coast, and so that was really my entry point. I was always kind of lost in stories like you say, but it wasn’t until I left school that I thought maybe I could try my hand at making those stories myself.
You have edited the latest anthology from the Black Inc. Growing Up Series - Growing up Queer. This book is a collection of stories from across the LGBTQIA+ community. You’ve said, we as a society need to be inclusive, non-prescriptive and embracing of everyone. Is this what you hope Growing Up Queer in Australia will achieve, especially for young people?
I hope it will be a contribution to that. There are a couple of reasons why we have put this book together. One we saw how much Growing up Asian in Australia, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia and now Growing Up African in Australia, which has just come out, how much that has changed the conversation for young people who really haven’t seen stories like theirs and also for people who are beyond school age and can see all the resonances in their own life as well. We are such a diverse country but I think we are still learning to include all of the rich stories that we have, and I think when we grow up queer you have the extra conundrum because say, if you grew up with Asian, Aboriginal or African ancestry in Australia, like the three other anthologies I have done, even if you feel marginalised or different you go back to a family where that affirms who you are. Whereas if you are growing up queer you don’t often have that. You go to a school where you are different, and back to your family and also feel different and that is where stories really come into it, so that inclusivity is really important when you don’t necessarily have that community built around you. Sometimes stories are the most important lifeline and that is definitely one of the things that we are trying to do with the book.
Storytelling is so powerful and it’s important for people to be visible and see themselves reflected in stories, as every person’s life story is unique. Was it important for you to tell a broad range of stories to support all the varied experiences in the LGBTQIA+ community?
Yeah you have completely nailed it. I think growing up queer and LGBTQIA+ plus, these are really broad banners that represent so many different communities and we wanted to make sure that all of those different experiences were represented in the book in some way because growing up trans is a different experience to growing up gay, which is a different experience to growing up intersex, and so on and so on. On one level that representation was really important, to make sure all of our communities and voices were included as best we could. We wanted to make sure we did as many multi-generational perspectives as possible because obviously in this country, especially growing up queer in this generation, is very very different to someone like David Marr’s generation, and he will have a really different experience to Jax Jackie Brown who comes from a disability background, and Jax will have a really different experience from someone else. I think the other thing that was important was to make sure those other voices were included. As much as this book is hopefully an education course for transgender and straight, and that it helps young people connect or feel connected and that they have a community, I think it is also an education for queer people themselves. I think just because you are same sex attracted doesn’t mean you are necessarily fully across what transgender experience might be like and vice versa. If you are queer in Australia there are still so many opportunities to educate yourself about the queer community. I have to say personally, I don’t think the term Cisgender was even on my radar probably about five years ago and now it is a common parlour to be used. I think we all have a long way to go in educating ourselves. That is another reason why it was important to include voices from across the queer spectrum.
I find it really heartening to hear my children’s conversations around lots of different topics, but particularly when it comes to equality and same sex relationships. Their attitude is inclusive.
That gives me such great hope. I have kids in my life who are reading books of female role models and male role models who didn’t have to kill a dragon or save a princess. Within the first few pages of one of their books, you have got a male transgender pioneer in science and letters you know? I can’t even fathom that, and these are the kids who jump on our beds when we are on holidays, to wake up my boyfriend and I. I am only one generation older than them and I didn’t even grow up with queer people in my life. It is a huge difference and that is a great thing.
During your conversation with Scott Harrower at Lismore Regional Gallery, you said ‘Take our broken hearts and turn them into art.’ You’re a Doctor of Television Writing and Cultural Studies. I was wondering, would this be Dr. Law’s remedy for life and getting through the challenges that everyone faces?
We all have to find sustenance and nourishment, and I don’t just mean food, from somewhere, and I think some people find that from religion. I am not a religious person so I find that through community and art. The arts give me a community, the arts give me that guidance to meaning, and art requires work. On an everyday level, art is so crucial to all of our lives. We watch TV shows, we love our films, we need our music. Our most famous built structure in this country, houses the arts. The arts aren’t adjacent to our lives, they are central to our lives, and where we find meaning and where we get nourishment and make sense of the world. I think that is so, so important. It is not a luxury. It is a real necessity and it is how, going back to our original point, it is how we find community and each other.
Your Mum and Dad moved here from Hong Kong in the mid 70’s. It’s an incredibly brave thing to do. Did they come to a supportive community or did they find a supportive community around them?
I think they did. Yes, they absolutely did. They were very much welcomed. It was the 1970’s and 1980’s Australia, very kind of multicultural embracing. At the same time they came to a place where there were very few people like them as well. They really did stand out. But this was a country where they forged new beginnings, made a new family and were really supported. I think you know the first generation, my parents who came here, they hit the ground running and they were supported in that. I think it is the second generation who were born here, like me, who kind of noticed the 80’s were great and most of the 90’s were too but when Hansonism reared its head, the second generation noticed that kind of exclusionary dimension of Australia a bit more.
You’re currently making a two-part ABC feature documentary with your parents. You’ve found out there’s evidence that trading between the Chinese and the Yolngu people of North East Arnhem Land, pre-dates Australian colonial history. It’s exciting that these conversations, about all of Australia’s history, are being discussed and hopefully will help to effect the national conversation around who we are.
We are actually in the editing suite now. I have been travelling with my Mum and Dad and the crew since January and we only just stopped filming around the end of May. I think one of the things I love about Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, is that it makes us really think about what Australia is and our understanding of Australia. Understanding that it is built on some pretty shoddy foundational myths, and in our own way, we hope that this documentary does that to, to shake up myths about the Chinese contribution to Australia and where Chinese people fit in the place of history. We’re as much of the story of this nation’s founding, as white colonial history is.
It must have been great to work with your parents. I’ve noticed your Mum wearing some pretty covetable items on your Instagram account! She seems like great fun.
Yes, she’s an icon.
“We all have to find sustenance and nourishment, and I don’t just mean food, from somewhere, and I think some people find that from religion. I am not a religious person so I find that through community and art. The arts give me a community, the arts give me that guidance to meaning, and art requires work. On an everyday level, art is so crucial to all of our lives.”
Back to the subject of history, you became an Ambassador for the National Library of Australia last year. What does that role entail?
So look, I’m not sure if I am officially their Ambassador anymore. I think it was a year-long thing during their anniversary. But when I was Ambassador it was just about getting people aware of this great institution and resource that we have, and also making people aware that you don’t need to go to Canberra to access the National Library! One of our most treasured archives in this country, can be accessed digitally now through Trove. You can do research into history, into your family, find out things about your own past that you never knew, and also remind people that librarians are some of the most exciting perverts that we have! Everyone thinks of librarians as very demure, cardigan wearing people, and they are and can be. The librarians were the first to remind me, ‘We have got such an amazing collection of Australian pornography here as well!’ So yes, my role was just reminding people how lucky we are to have that institution.
Speaking of libraries, stories and books, you are appearing at this year’s Byron Writers Festival. Who are you looking forward to seeing, and sharing a panel with this August?
Min Jin Lee is just such a superstar and we met at the Brisbane Writers Festival. We have stayed in touch since and seeing the rise of her novel Pachinko, going gang-busters all over the world and now it’s going to be a landmark TV production, made in three different languages, I can’t wait to see her and say ‘What the hell happened?!’ and also delve into that story again. I think Pachinko is one of the most remarkable novels of the last few years, I just keep thrusting it into people’s faces. Obviously Uncle Bruce Pascoe. Dark Emu is such a landmark Australian book and it is so heartening to see that it is still in bestsellers lists around the country. And of course, Behrouz Boochani. What Damon Gameau is doing I think is really exciting and Leigh Sales, and Tara June Winch, who has just been a powerhouse! Her new novel is terrific.
You were a Mariah Carey-obsessed gymnast as a child. I want to know what your favourite apparatus was as a gymnast? And if you were choreographing a floor routine, what Mariah Carey song would you be performing to?
That is so funny. That is such a great question. The funny thing is I actually always envied all of the women’s apparatus. I am like, ‘Why don’t dudes get to do beams?! Why don’t dudes get to do uneven bars?!’
And they don’t do that?
No, men’s gymnastics is parallel bars, rings, pummel horse, vault. I mean the only two apparatus that women and men do is vault and floor but then all the other apparatus are completely different, so men have high bar they don’t have uneven bars; they have rings and pummel horse; they are kind of boring and really strength based whereas I was ‘What is testing our balance? Why don’t we get to do beam?’ Look, if I had to do a floor routine to a Mariah Carey song it would be a newer one. It would be the song ‘Get the Fuck Out’. Have you heard it yet? It really is great! If you imagine a floor routine to that I think you will burst out laughing!
I love it! It’s been wonderful chatting with you Benjamin. Thanks for talking with Paradiso and we look forward to seeing you at the Byron Writers Festival.
I am really grateful you took the time as well. Thank you so much.
Benjamin Law will appear at Byron Writers Festival, 2—4 August 2019. Growing up Queer in Australia is published by Black Inc. and is available nationally this August.
Originally published in Paradiso Issue 10