‘The Family Law’: Benjamin Law
Source: Black Inc Books
Viewers of the SBS TV series The Family Law will be familiar with the garish humour that suffuses Benjamin Law’s recollections of his life. That same humour graces the pages of his 2010 debut family memoir of the same name that provided the source material for the series. Both heartwarming and heartbreaking, Law’s memoir is an assured reflection on what it meant to grow up as the gay son of an Asian immigrant family in Australia during the 80s and 90s.
Law recalls, with hilarious asides, some of his most formative childhood experiences that would resonate with many Asians who grew up as second-generation Australians. Chinese-Australians can relate to the horrors of learning Chinese at Saturday school, or the generational gap between conservative parents raised in a different time and place and their progressive children assimilating to a new era.
Likewise, the experiences personal to the Law family are written with incisive wit so that every sentence zings with energy. In the first chapter, Law forgoes explanations of many in-jokes from the ‘Family Dictionary’, but instead finds the humour in how outsiders react to these nonsensical jokes, and further finds the warmth in how these records allow his family to bond.
Jenny, Law’s mother, is easily one of the most animated characters in the family dynamic. In many ways, she defies the traditional shackles of subservience usually expected of Asian women with her crass depictions of childbirth and female genitalia. She is unapologetically outspoken, and for that, she leaps off the page. But her life experiences also entail some of the most tragic moments in the memoir: her miscarriage, deep-seated isolation and depression all linger with us long after we’ve finished the book and the jokes have subsided. Hers is the kind of complex characterisation that only a perceptive and deeply loving child could render.
Law’s decision to utilise a non-chronological structure for his story is a sound one. While it adds to the vignette-like feel of the memories unfolding, it also creates an addictive quality that keeps the pages turning. The other added benefit is that Jenny’s depression is depicted with a sense of realism. She moves through one chapter as the outlandish matriarch regaling all manner of stories to the next as the deeply lonely, subdued woman experiencing a depressive episode. In the quest to find narrative and logic, depression’s unpredictable nature tends to be forgotten when being portrayed within literature, and Law’s brilliant avoidance of this cliché should be commended.
The Family Law is the kind of debut memoir that assures us Benjamin Law is well in command of his craft. With a TV series adaptation, multiple essay publications and notable screenwriting credits, the sky is truly the limit for Law.
