Masters Series: Benjamin Law on humour, writing about family and getting paid in stereos

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law, Gaysia, the Quarterly Essay: Moral Panic 101 and editor of Growing up Queer in Australia. He created and co-wrote three seasons of the award winning SBS TV series The Family Law and wrote the sold-out MTC play Torch the Place. He co-hosts Stop Everything! on the ABC’s Radio National and interviews public figures for Good Weekend.

They discuss:

• Growing up Asian in Australia, edited by Alice Pung
• This Makers Who Inspire interview with Ben
• Shit Asian Mothers Say, Benjamin Law and Michelle Law
• Waltzing the Dragon , documentary featuring episodes with Benjamin Law and his mother and father
• Rules for writing about people you know
• This quote, from a Liminal magazine interview:

Because we weren’t raised with it. If you come from an Indigenous or migrant background, for instance, you might be raised with the stories, dishes, languages and history of your forebears. Not always, but often that’s the case, because your family shares the same background.

When you’re queer, it’s likely you’ll be raised by cis-het parents, and that you’ll be the minority in your family—if not the only queer person in the household. So you don’t grow up with that sense of queer family, history and customs. You don’t know your lineage.

• Deep Water (the documentary)

ID: Cantonese – Chinese Australian man wearing a blue shirt