you’ve got here is a fictional fight that happens on New Year’s Eve between a group of LebaneseAustralian kids and Anglo-Australian kids, which you dub the “Brighton Brawl” in the book. But the real Cronulla riots have a strong presence in everyone’s anxieties in this book, in the parents’ anxieties, and in all the kids, there’s a concern about the safety of their children... was that palpable for you too?
In a sense, not so much from my parents’ perspective, but I had just started dating an AngloAustralian guy at the time that the Cronulla riots happened, and I was really surprised because I had concerned friends asking me, “Oh are you still going to go out with him?” and I was like yeah, we weren’t the ones that got into a fight... I don’t know what was happening that day, some people got drunk and they protested and it just spiralled out of control... but it did play an important role I think for a lot of people, because it really forced us to question how we feel about “otherness” in Australia, and I think as Sophie examines these things the people that she’s surrounded by are concerned about this otherness... but I think she comes to learn that Australians are generally open people, and Lebanese people are as well... There’s a scene where she talks to one of the boys in her class and she says, are you telling