5 Questions with Adam Novaldy Anderson
Adam Novaldy Anderson is a mixed-race Australian-Indonesian writer and activist. He grew up on Gomeroi land in Tamworth, and is currently based out of Bankstown, Dharug land, in Western Sydney. Adam’s short stories and essays have appeared in various anthologies and publications. He is the editor of Povo (Sweatshop, 2024).
No.1
There is an admirable diversity of voices across Povo, not only in terms of racial identity, but ever-shifting understandings of class and relationships to colonialism as well as age and migration backgrounds. What did the selection process look like?
Povo’s voices are a direct result of Sweatshop’s initiative of having First Nations artists and artists of colour run every part of the book making process: [all the way from] commissioning to proofreading, as well as the administrative side of running an arts organisation.
Sweatshop Literacy Movement has always been devoted to empowering First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse communities through reading, writing and critical thinking, and who has been doing so for roughly a decade. Our practices ensure artists from any marginalised socioeconomic or cultural group feel their stories will be shared in a way that is safe and sensitive to the nuances of their experiences and histories.
Naturally, the people who make up Sweatshop’s network of emerging and established writers reflect this diversity—which made curatorial decisions on my part very straightforward. Any writer with a truthful and complex story could contribute, and when the topic is something as ubiquitous and impassioned as class difference, many writers were itching to get something off their chest.
No.2
In the introduction to Povo, you write that the contributing writers within ‘resist the White-dominated Australian literary community and the classism which plagues literature down to its flowery purple prose; the kind people generally associate with the idea of “good writing”’. I wonder if you can speak more to that, in terms of what makes up yardsticks such as ‘taste’ and ‘form’.
To speak broadly for a moment, this idea relates to artistic practices in western culture and how they tend to operate around the figure of the ‘virtuoso’—an elevation that creates a framework where the stage, page, screen or canvas becomes an uncrossable border between the artist and the community they are supposedly meant to connect with. Class-based othering seems fundamental to the practice itself.
My experience of cultural events in Yogyakarta [where my family is from] are not like that at all. Dancers, puppeteers, musicians, speakers and actors all collaborate with an audience to make one fluid expression of community and culture. I’m sure other Southeast Asians and most ‘third-world looking’ (a term borrowed from Dr. Ghassan Hage) people can, in some way, relate.
I think readers’ misconception of ‘good writing’ is a result of this western framework applied to literature. To me, the quality of a writer’s craft depends on how effectively they can represent and connect with the communities that shaped them as a person. ‘Taste’ should be informed by an artist listening to and understanding their community. Form should be whatever language is appropriate to create a complex and nuanced representation of that community. I think each writer in Povo does a terrific job of speaking to their community in this manner.
No.3
You also note in the introduction that you grew up comfortably middle-class, with ‘plenty of food, a computer with internet, two cars and a holiday each year’. How do these early experiences contrast with how you experience class now, and how did you navigate this while editing the anthology?
I always thought being middle-class meant my goals should revolve around [achieving] upward mobility—such as accessing more affluent spaces through education, personal achievements, employment and other accumulations of capital.
However, it was shortly before starting work on this anthology that I realised a big part of my privilege was having the option not to chase every economic opportunity available to me. My access to intergenerational wealth and the access that comes with being White-passing meant immediate lucrative employment wasn’t imperative to my survival. My positionality [in itself] was a safety net, allowing me to study literature and become an editor while working a modest day job.
While editing the anthology, it was at the forefront of my mind that many writers—particularly those from migrant backgrounds—don’t have the liberty to freely pursue the arts as I did. A lot of these stories were written in slivers of spare time: by teachers, lawyers, students and other full-time workers with cultural and familial pressure to make as much money as possible. The effort and skill put into these pieces despite this dynamic makes them even more triumphant.
No.4
While this may be difficult to understand for people who only consume mainstream news media narratives about Western Sydney, it’s a known fact for many who understand the area’s lived realities that it reflects so-called Australia’s glaring class inequalities as well. Do you think the writing in Povo tries to reflect this too? If so, how?
I totally agree with your observation. The perception of Western Sydney from the outside is so radically different from what happens here. And although Sydney is split along more of an ideological divide than any distinct geographic border, the class inequalities that result from this abstraction are very real. Discussions around the topic often involve indifference, victim-blaming, and racism.
In terms of the anthology, these inequalities are present in the specific details of many of these pieces. However, this is not what these stories are about. Instead of engaging in bad-faith discussions, I urged my writers to emphasise the humanity that persists despite the relentless dehumanising force of our capitalist system and any constructed divisions that might exacerbate these conditions. Of course, any subjugated people should be speaking against their oppressor, but I think the power in literature comes from a writer using their voice to take control of their own story and caring for community by representing them as they are.
No.5
Books and writing—while a psychic salve and hope when discovered by children from working- and underclass backgrounds—remains classed even if much more groundwork has been laid for their democratisation in recent years. This is especially so as they possess an inherent prestige that can ironically alienate yourself from the spaces where you come from, if you do end up becoming a writer and/or immersed in the world of books. How do you think Povo works to resist this?
Povo resists this upper-class stratification of books and writing by engaging with writers with respect and inclusion of all the forms of language that result from the economic and cultural diversity on this continent.
For example, in addition to the 107 languages spoken in Western Sydney households, young people in the area also have a unique and shared way of speaking English, which is often marked as a class-difference by outsiders but can be a source of pride for the people who live here.
As I understand it, the aim of literature is to provide an elevated and truthful representation of a society through language. So, if any piece of writing doesn’t consider the multiple languages—and the many forms of the same language—of a given society, then its not an effective literary practice.
Povo was edited according to this idea, encouraging writers [to] include the many languages that are important to their experiences as well as the linguistic behaviour that a traditional editor might consider to be an error, but are essential to capture the unique voice of Western Sydney’s broad spectrum of socio-economic conditions.
Australia is often referred to as The Lucky Country — a land of economic opportunity and vast natural resources. But how does this myth square up against the true experiences of Indigenous and culturally diverse Australians living in our nation’s most densely populated regions?
In this original and eclectic new anthology, emerging and established writers from First Nations, migrant and refugee backgrounds reveal the true wealth and beauty of Australia’s cultural melting pots.
Featuring Forever Tupou, Victor Guan Yi Zhou, Natalia Figueroa Barroso, Meyrnah Khodr, Adrian Mouhajer, Rayann Bekdache, Daniel Nour, Fahad Ali, Nadia Demas, Jenanne Ibrahim, Leila Mansour, Priyanka Bromhead, Helen Nguyen, Yasir Elgamil, Katie Shammas, Phoebe Grainer and many more!
Edited by Adam Novaldy Anderson.
Get it from Sweatshop here.