Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage

In this absorbing and accessible book, Zozan Balci looks at the adult children of culturally and linguistically mixed families. Amid the assimilatory pressures of educational institutions, social expectations and racial positioning, being hybrid and ethnically ambiguous entails silences and struggles over heritage and identity, but also possibilities for other ways of being. Fascinating, painful, rewarding.Alastair Pennycook, Emeritus Professor, University of Technology Sydney This book is a rich, insightful and passionate plea to recognise mixed identity as a valid and significant way of being for millions of linguistic and cultural ‘in-betweeners’. In a time where the norms of nativist nationalism, monolingualism and monoculturalism are overwhelmingly hegemonic, the importance of this forceful argument for cultural hybridity cannot be overstated.Ien Ang, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University Through a compelling examination of cultural hybridity in Australia that resonates globally, this book reconceptualises hybrid identities not as deficits to be managed but as valid ways of being that deserve recognition and nurturing, particularly in educational settings. This accessible yet theoretically sophisticated work offers vital insights for scholars across sociolinguistics, migration studies, and education, while its call for normalising hybrid identities provides an essential framework for contemporary policy discussions around diversity and inclusion.Julie Choi, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne Zozan Balci elegantly weaves personal anecdote and empirical evidence into her discussion of identity, complicating otherwise reified understandings of this complex component of human self-understanding, which sits at the nexus of self and society. She thoughtfully sets out the tangible and intangible ways in which language can shape and contour identity and how these impact conceptualisations of cultural hybridity and the drive toward belonging.Bilquis Ghani, Lecturer, University of Canberra