Michelle Aung Thin
is a novelist, essayist and academic.

The Monsoon Bride is her first novel, set in colonial Burma. Her award winning children’s fiction novel, Hasina: Through My Eyes (Canadian edition: Crossing the Farak River), is a gripping story of one Rohingya child’s experience of the refugee crisis in Myanmar. Her academic work explores narrative, mixed-race identity and cosmopolitan Burma. Michelle teaches at RMIT University.

Essay

‘Sensations of Rootedness’ in Cosmopolitan Rangoon or How the Politics of Authenticity Shaped Colonial Imaginings of Home

Published in Journal of Intercultural Studies

This essay compares three texts, each written from one of Rangoon’s resident mobile cultural identities, that represent ‘sensations of at-homeness’ in the colony.

“…’sensations of rootedness,’ imagined through associations with blood and soil, may be expressed as maintaining equilibrium. This paper contributes to understandings of ‘plurality’ in colonial Burma and ‘Anglo-Burmese’ experiences and identities.”

Opinion

Business Class

Published in Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) - Religion and Ethics

An opinion piece following my 2017 trip travelling Business Class from Guangzhou, China, to Yangon, Myanmar.

“In November 2017, I travelled Business Class from Guangzhou, China, to Yangon, Myanmar. I was trying to catch the end of a conference — which, incidentally, meant flying into Yangon on the same day Pope Francis was flying out. There must have been some embargo on seats that lifted at just the right time, because my travel agent found a seat available in Business Class that was also in my budget. It was, in fact, the same price as economy.”

Essay

How to be different

Published in SBS Life

On the complex process of negotiating who you are in the context of where you are. Originally published in Meet me at the Intersection, a collection of work by new and emerging writers who are often overlooked by traditional publishing projects.

“I have an accent, and when Australians first meet me, they often want to know if I am American or Canadian. Then, because of my looks, they want to know whether I am part Asian. And then they want to know how long I’ve lived here, in Australia.”

Short Story

Tea ceremony

Published in Overland

A short story about Melbourne in a heat wave and the loyalties we find when we get sweaty.

“I knew it was wrong as I left the store, the box sitting flat and heavy in my black and white plastic bag. But there’s a weakness I have for paying less than full cost. If I haven’t really earned a thing, it becomes that bit more precious.”

Recent Media

‘Why I Wrote Crossing the Farak River’