the landscape of the everyday
Every now and then, I google my name to see who might have shared my work.
To my surprise, I discovered last week that urbanist Dan Hill had recommended Echoes for a curated display of books at Bookshop by Uro, for Open House Melbourne 2022!!!
For Melbourne Bound: The City in Books, Bookshop by Uro asked '10 Melburnians with a creative or professional interest in the built environment to nominate the books that have had the biggest influence on their understanding of Melbourne, and their practice within it.'
It's always touching when someone recommends my work but this was particularly touching because I'm interested in architecture and hope to write more about it.
I've copied Dan's reflections below and you can find the other recommendations here.
Echoes is a short book of three shimmering stories, each moving lightly and carefully across a loaded terrain of memories, languages, images, sounds and places, artfully eliciting allusions and elisions from the landscape of the everyday. Yet Shu-Ling Chua’s essays are rooted in the shifting identities and imaginings familiar to many a Melburnian whose roots are elsewhere, one way or another. Her stories might start in a share house, or with laundry, or the lyrics to 1960s Cantonese pop songs, but Chua carefully pulls apart their threads until they reveal Malaysia or Hong Kong, distant ‘homes’ which convey both the possibility and longing inherent in this city’s layered identities.
I love that Dan describes Echoes as 'a short book of three shimmering stories, each moving lightly and carefully across a loaded terrain of memories, languages, images, sounds and places, artfully eliciting allusions and elisions from the landscape of the everyday'.
A perfect summation of the small things and rituals I wanted to honour.
In Echoes (in its final essay especially), I was interested in writing about seeking balm in small things, interior spaces and domesticity. I'm glad someone recognised this, however subtle. I'm still very much interested in all these things and am writing about them now.
