The creation of this fictional work has involved spending time with a lot of fascinating books, people, archival material, websites, magazines, and a lot of time walking around my neighbourhood. My research has taken me off in directions too numerous to account for, but I would like to acknowledge some of the sources that have helped form the bulk of ideas I have explored creatively here. I would particularly like to pay my respects to some of the brave, challenging and in-depth research being done in the area of Australian cultural studies and asylum seeker policy.
For my research into Tampa I have primarily referred to Dark Victory, by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson (Allen and Unwin, 2004), as well as Frank Brennan’s Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem (UQP, 2003). The latter is where I found Solicitor General David Bennett’s quote, which has also been widely cited elsewhere.
Fiona Allon’s Renovation Nation: Our Obsession with Home (UNSW Press, 2008) helped to shape much of my novel’s discussion about building, McMansions and the meaning of home in the era of John Howard. The notes that the anti-McMansion protesters leave around the estate Francis and Antonio work on are adapted from similar notes quoted in Allon’s book.
I have read and reread both of Anthony Burke’s landmark texts, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War Against the Other (Routledge, 2007), and Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety (Cambridge University Press, 2008), both of which have shaped many of the overarching themes about anxiety in this work.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge Azadeh Dastyari, whose work I’ve been following over twenty years of friendship, conversation and questioning, and whom I never fail to admire for her incredible humanity and unwavering commitment to the important job of researching and publishing work on asylum seekers.