Anh Do - Winner of Australian Literary Prize 2011

  Who did Anh’s father rescue from the concentration camp? C

a)      His eldest son who would later become Young Australian of the Year

b)      His wife’s two brothers who had worked for the Australian military

c)       Two of the armed guards at the camp who were really employees of the Australian military and were in disguise.

2.       What was the length of the fishing boat in which they escaped and how many people were on it? B

a)      40 metres long with 9 people

b)      9 metres long with 40 people

c)       20 metres long with 20 people

3.       What honour was Anh’s brother given in 2005? B

a)      Australian Refugee of the Year

b)      Australian of the Year

c)       Young Australian of the Year

4.       What was the main lesson which Anh’s parents insisted that he learn after coming to Australia?

How to read and write 

5.     

           Why was Anh able to attend a prestigious school like St Aloyisius? B

a)      He worked in a sweatshop to earn enough money to pay his fees

b)      He won a half scholarship

c)       St Aloyisius always takes in a certain number of refugees as part of their charity work

7.       Describe what he wore instead of the official sports uniform.

 Tee shirt and shorts

8.       True or false:

a)      His mother earned less than $7 an hour as a cleaner in a hotel. F

b)      At school, Anh was the class clown and this was when he knew he had a future as a comedian.    F

c)       He was often punished at school with a strap.    T  

d)      No-one at school knew at the time that Anh and his family were poor.   F

e)      Anh’s father left the family when Anh was growing up.   T  

9.       What did Anh study at University?

a)      Fine Arts, majoring in Drama

b)      Law

c)       Pure Mathematics

10.   What did Anh do for his mother when he was only 23 years old?

a)      Gave her money for a holiday back in Vietnam

b)      Arranged for her to come and see his first public performance as a comedian

c)       Bought her a house

11.   How old was Anh at the time of this interview?

a)      30

b)      33

c)       40

12.   What was the motto which Anh’s father taught his children to live by?

If you love someone marry them.

13.   Was Anh the victim of racism as he grew up? No 

14.   Write ONE extra question which you would like Adam to have asked Anh, and what do you think the answer would have been?

What was life like in Vietnam 

Teenage Dreamers by Phillip Tang

1. What are the first two sentences of the story and how do they create a tension in the story? 'My father had a sixth sense. He knew when people were going to die.' it creates tension in the story as you know that some one will die and you want to know who this is going to happen to, and when it is going to happen.

2. What has happened to the author’s father as a result of his wife’s death? The author's father looked for something to care about.

3. How does the description of the father removing his hands from his face as ‘unmasked’ related to the seriousness of his following statement? By removing his hands from his face he is showing and letting out all his emotion which he does not show often.

4. Consider how the father lives his life and conducts himself and the other people in the theatre for the film the author and his father are watching. How does this relate to the title of the story?

Conversations with my Parents by Oanh Thi Tran

1. What is ironic about the way the author and the father become close? What has to happen to the father? The Irony of the father and the author becoming close is that they become close in sickness, but they should have been close throughout the whole of the authors life.

2. How would you characterise the conversation that the author has with her parents? The conversations the author has with her parents are always brief and they don't have much to say to each other.

3. What is it that worries the author most about these conversations? The biggest worry that the Author has is that she can never tell her parents how much she loves them, but doesn't know how to and she wants to do it before its to late.

4. There is a gap between the author’s need to express feelings common in western countries and her family’s lack of desire to express their feelings verbally. How does the family still express their feelings for their child, just not verbally? The family expresses feelings to the Author by telling her that they had a specific meal one night and telling her how much she usest to love that meal and how the meal made the family think of the author.

The Early Settlers by Ken Chau

1. How does this title refer to two groups of ‘settlers’? Who are they? The title refers to the two groups of settlers as early settler, the two groups are the white settlers and the Chinese settlers.  

2. How is the first line of the poem successful at being ‘forceful’ regarding the Great-Grandfather’s presence in Australia? It tells the reader that The grandfather has arrived from China to come and live in Australia.

3. What action are the ‘early settlers’ doing that gives them equally a strong presence? the early settlers and the Chinese family are both farmers

4. How is the intention of the Great-Grandfather juxtaposed to the beliefs of the ‘early settlers’? The Great Grandfathers intention was to come to Australia in order to give his family a better life by farming crops, where as the white settlers had the intention of coming to Australia to take over the country and become extremely wealthy with no care about the land.

5. What action does the Great-Grandfather do that ties him both to the ‘early settlers’ and to his own culture? He swears to the early settlers in a way that they would swear at each other but he does it in his native tongue which ties him both to the early settlers and to his own culture.

6. How does this short poem highlight the irony of the hatred that immigrants experience when they come to a 'settled' land like Australia? Because of their difference in appearance compared to a white person, a white person may see them as a potential threat as they may not have seen a Chinese person before.