back from Varuna

I've just come back from Varuna Writers Centre where I spent a week reflecting and writing. I also started the interviews for my Phd. I interviewed Binh Duy Ta who wrote the play Monkey Mother about identity, community and home. He emphasised the importance of language for him in establishing identity, as his English gets better he feels his Australian side becomes more pronounced. He also mentioned that a friend of his with better English found it hard to integrate into Australian culture- so it's not everything.
My own identity was heavily influenced by language or lack of it (I don't speak Vietnamese)- I have felt that I was just Australian for a very long time and then rediscovered my Vietnamese side when my grandfather died and I was introduced to Vietnamese Buddhism and its rituals. So now I identify as Vietnamese-Australian and sometimes I come across these things in my psyche that my non Vietnamese acquaintances describe as Asian- such as my propensity for silence and introversion.