Write What You Know - Interview with writer Sunil Badami
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Sunil Badami
Having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Writing and Cultural Studies) in 2003, Sunil Badami was, as he puts it, "your typical struggling writer with neither the time or money to write" until he won the lot - cash and prizes worth over $600 000 - on TV's long-running quiz show, Temptation, last year.
Since then he's found much more time to write, with his story, 'Sticks and Stones and Such-like' being published in an exciting new anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia, edited by well-known author Alice Pung and launched by Black Inc. at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival.
The book, a collection of stories by a number of well-known and not-so-well known Asian-Australians - including film-maker Tony Ayres, TV medico Dr Cindy Pan and Regurgitator front man Quan Yeomans - explores the difficulties, heartache and humour of growing up between two very different cultures.
Having grown up in Australia dealing with the duality - and singularity - of being Indian-Australian, Badami has found that reflections on culture and memory have been worthwhile stories to tell.
"It's an old cliché that "you write what you know," he says. "I've certainly used Indian characters or situations or memories from my childhood in my writing, although I'd say growing up in the 70s, my identity wasn't just hybrid but very slippery. Always being asked - both in Australia and India - where you're really from will do that!"
While acknowledging the importance of reflection, Badami says it's vital not only to write from an "ethnic" point of view but to have enough creative gaze to be able to tell stories outside his own experience.
"I wouldn't want to be one of those "ethnic" writers who only writes about what it means to be "ethnic", as though it privileges them more to write about it. There are many more interesting stories in the world than mine - and I hope I'll be a good enough writer to write them.
"Just as I'd hope to write for people I may never meet, who may be completely different from me, I'd hope I had the imagination to dream up characters and situations that weren't only based on my own limited experiences of life, but were able to capture a much wider and more diverse range and evoke the same authenticity and humanity that I might if I were writing about myself." Similar to the problem of being seen as an "ethnic" writer, Badami says that growing up was a period of understanding the complexities - and frustrations - of ethnicity.
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