Peripathetic Notes on (un)belonging

There was something so captivating about always being on the edge, on that shaky precipice of promise – something new and something cool was just lurking around the corner and we’ d arrive at it if we kick around long enough. Peripathetic is about shit jobs. About being who you are and who you aren’ t online. About knowing a language four times. About living on the interstices. About thievery. About wanting. About the hyperreal. About weirdness. Cher Tan’ s essays are as non-linear as her life, as she travels across borders that are simultaneously tightening and blurring. In luminous and inventive prose, they look beyond the performance of everyday life, seeking answers that continually elude. Paying homage to the many outsider artists, punks, drop-outs and rogue philosophers who came before, this book is about the resistance of orthodoxies – even when it feels impossible.

Cher Tan is an essayist, critic and editor living and working on unceded Wurundjeri land (so-called ‘ Melbourne’ ). She previously lived in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide and Singapore, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, The Saturday Paper, Kill Your Darlings, Cordite, Gusher magazine, Catapult, The Guardian and The Lifted Brow, among others. She is the reviews editor at Meanjin and editor at LIMINAL magazine.