Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} by 'It's like a turducken of mums': Benjamin Law on fact, fiction and The Family Law. There’s a saying: when a writer is born, a family dies. “I’m that guy,” says Benjamin Law. Of course, that’s not strictly the case. Law may have turned his experiences of growing up in a large Asian Australian family on Queensland’s extremely Anglo Sunshine Coast into a memoir – and that memoir may have spawned a television comedy series starring characters named after and modelled on his actual family, featuring things that actually happened to them, both painful and amusing – but the backlash has been minimal, at least in real life. When we meet on set for season two – in a stinking hot warehouse in Brisbane – he has both families to contend with. The real Law family are trickling in for their opening episode cameo – something they did in the first season, too. It’s also the birthday of one of the cast members – Trystan Go, who plays teenage Ben – and the warehouse is buzzing with activity. In fact, there are so many layers of Laws in the building that I am starting to feel dizzy. The actors playing the on-screen family call each other by their screen names between takes, with the on-screen children calling their on-screen parents “mum” and “dad” in everyday life. When I ask now 15-year-old Go what his real mother thinks about this, he says she’d probably prefer not to comment. But The Family Law family is about to claim her too: the opportunity for a cameo is being extended later in the season to the real life families of the actors. Law explains the intense meta-family dynamic on set best when talking about when his actual mother, Jenny, who is played on screen by , recently met Choi’s mother: “It was like a turducken of mums.” Law’s self-deprecating, colourful and frequently scatological sense of humour first came to public attention when he published The Family Law in 2010. The television show was later picked up by Matchbox Pictures and first aired on SBS in June last year. Law’s heartwarming, hilarious script is remarkable for the careful balancing act it performs between fiction and fact – between using real people’s lives as comedic fodder on screen and genuinely respecting the people and relationships that are at its core. ‘A love letter to motherhood’: real life Jenny with her on-screen counterpart, Fiona Choi. Photograph: SBS supplied. “It’s a different prospect, a TV show that’s inspired by your family versus a book,” Law says. “A book is almost a more private experience … But then television is really public. It’s a much more exposing kind of process.” It’s difficult to pinpoint where the real life inspiration ends and the characters begin. The character of Jenny, for example, is forward, often to the point of inappropriate. In the very first scene of the first episode of season one, she describes childbirth as like “squeezing a lemon out of your penis hole”, setting the tone for the show to come. Readers of the memoir would know that this line was in fact a verbatim quote from real life Jenny, whose forthright humour is one of the things that makes her both endearing and embarrassing. She is hilarious but her character isn’t just there for the comedy: real life Jenny also experienced a prolonged and painful divorce, which confronts her TV counterpart at the end of the first season. “I feel like [the character] is a love letter to motherhood,” Choi says. “Sure, she’s outrageous and she has no sense of that . but the thing that really drives her is just that she will do anything for her children.” The show pivots primarily around the relationship between Ben and his mum – often fraught, occasionally explosive, and frequently funny, but complicated by Jenny’s deteriorating relationship with Ben’s father, Danny. “Knowing the real Jenny as well, she’s so resilient, she’s just naturally a joyful, optimistic person,” Choi says. “It’s never about her, it’s about the children, so all these tough things that come her way, she takes them on the chin and just moves on.” Choi spent a lot of time with real life Jenny, who moved to Australia from China in the 70s, getting to know her and perfecting her accent. Choi is sometimes surprised by feedback from people who mention how funny her character is, but attributes much of the success of on-screen Jenny to the empathy and honesty of Law’s writing. “I’ve never played her for laughs,” she says. “I’ve just played the truth of Jenny.” ‘If we’re not writing it like a drama, the stakes don’t feel high enough.’ Photograph: SBS. Law says he didn’t experience much pushback from his family around the TV show and any that did occur was ameliorated when his family read the scripts. He says that they decided very early on in the writers’ room to script the show as a drama first, with those “emotional truths” at its core, before bringing in the jokes. “If we’re not writing it like a drama, the stakes don’t feel high enough,” he says. Trystan Go, Fiona Choi and Bethany Whitmore in season two of The Family Law. Photograph: SBS supplied. They also decided that they didn’t want to feel beholden to the reality of Law’s experiences. In some ways this was a question of practicality – his book is essentially a collection of vignettes, which doesn’t translate well to television. As a result, the series imposes a narrative arc that condenses into one long, hot Queensland summer what, in real life, occurred over a number of years. “Real life is messy. But at the same time we don’t want a portrayal of a divorce to be clean on this show either. So series two [asks], ‘What does a post-nuclear family look like?’” Post-nuclear having two meanings: unconventional and, he says, with fallout. Season two sees the Law family embark on new beginnings, spring cleaning their lives – and contending with new relationships and a new school year. Ben’s dad, Danny (Anthony Brandon Wong), has moved in to his own, slick apartment, sold the Chinese restaurant and opened a new business. Jenny is looking to spread her wings – or, as she calls them, her “flaps”. Eldest sister Candy (Shuang Hu) is getting married to Wayne (Sam Cotton), whose parents live in the “One Nation heartland” of Mount Isa. Meanwhile, Ben desperately wants to be middle-school captain and is still battling with his nemesis and neighbour, the uber-perfect Klaus (Takaya Honda), while picking up the pieces of his friendship with Melissa (Bethany Whitmore). It’s hard to watch a show like The Family Law without feeling like it was crafted with a lot of love and the cast and production team are so tight- knit that, when I ask about their motivations for the show, their answers are so similar that I briefly wonder if they have been coached. Is it possible, in of shows as bleak and cynical as House of Cards, or Fargo, or A Handmaid’s Tale, to create television with genuine warmth and generosity? But it’s only a moment of doubt, because it’s hard to leave The Family Law without feeling like this big, sprawling family has just claimed you as a member, too. The Family Law season two starts on SBS on Thursday 15 June at 8.30pm. Books, books & more books. Sign up to our emails and be the first to know about new releases, special offers and more. Readings. Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021. The Family Law: Benjamin Law. Reviewed by Jo Case, editor of the Readings Monthly newsletter. Benjamin Law is set to become the Next Big Thing in Australian non-fiction writing. More precisely, he’s set to become David Sedaris. (Or: the Asian Gen Y Australian David Sedaris.) Along with a small army of devoted Law fans, I’ve been a fan of his writing in publications as diverse as Frankie, The Monthly and The Good Weekend for a few years. So it was a real treat to finally be able to immerse myself in a whole book of him doing what he does best: writing about his eccentric, straight-talking, kinda foul-mouthed family. Sedaris fans take note: he even has a particularly loveable-but-crazy mother, whose anecdotes number among his best. In ‘Baby Love’, she tells Ben about childbirth in graphic detail: ‘Can you imagine squeezing a lemon coming out of your penis-hole? Yes, yes! That’s what it’s like. I’d like to see a man squeeze lemons out of his penis-hole.’ This collection of humorous personal essays is the kind you’ll want to share with your work colleagues (as I did), read aloud to your family while they’re trying to watch TV (guilty, again) and guffaw over on public transport. But it’s not all belly laughs. Many of these stories are also touchingly poignant, or subtly confronting. Ben writes frankly and often with tongue firmly in cheek about being a child of divorced parents, and fitting in as a gay teenager or as an Asian Australian (holidaying at Queensland theme parks, he and his siblings ‘would do our best to distinguish ourselves from the Asian tourists’). In one affecting essay, ‘Skeletons’, he reflects on the period when many of his relatives were swept up by the federal police and deported back to Hong Kong, which they’d fled in the lead-up to the Chinese takeover of 1997. His mother’s elderly parents were the last to leave. ‘Mum was four months pregnant by then. When they left, her parents asked her what the use of crying was.’ What is it that makes Benjamin Law’s writing so good? It’s the flair for language. It’s the sharp wit. It’s the open warmth. It’s the blend of the thoughtful, the silly and the affecting. It’s all of these things, in one package. Benjamin Law. He’s the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101 (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin created and co-wrote three seasons of the award-winning SBS TV series The Family Law, based on his memoir, and wrote the sold-out mainstage play Torch the Place for Melbourne Theatre Company (2020). In 2019, he was named one of the Asian-Australian Leadership Summit’s (AALS) 40 Under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians – winning the Arts, Culture & Sport category – and one of Harper Bazaar ‘s Visionary Men. He has a PhD in creative writing and cultural studies from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Every week, Benjamin co-hosts ABC Radio National’s weekly national pop culture show Stop Everything and interviews public figures for Good Weekend . He hosted ABC TV’s two-part feature documentary on Chinese-Australian history Waltzing the Dragon , and has appeared on TV shows like Filthy Rich and Homeless (SBS), Q&A (ABC) , The Drum (ABC) and The Project (Ten) . He has also written for over 50 publications in Australia and beyond—including the Monthly , frankie , Guardian , Monocle and Australian Financial Review . https://www.jcaf.org.auhttps://www.jcaf.org.auContact. For media appearances and book-related enquiries, contact Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency. For screenwriting and playwriting enquiries, contact Jenn Naughton at RGM Artists. The Family Law. “In The Family Law , Benjamin Law has painted a vivid, gorgeously garish, Technicolor portrait of family. Every gaping wound, every red-raw hurt, every hysterical shriek is splashed out on the page for us to pore over and admire. His writing is viscous and brilliantly pungent.” Marieke Hardy. “I truly didn’t need so much of Benjamin Law’s mother’s vagina.” Anson Cameron, The Age. Meet the Law family — eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful new Australian talent. In 2016, watch the TV adaption of The Family Law on SBS, Thursday nights at 8.30pm from January 14. Buy The Family Law in paperback (RRP $19.95) from most Australian bookshops. Readings offers $3 flat delivery shipping per order within Australia. You can also purchase it as an eBook from these retailers: • Apple iTunes (iPad/iPhone) • Kobo (ePub format: Kobo, Sony, Nook, iRiver) • Amazon (Kindle) The French edition of The Family Law ( Les Lois de la famille ) is published by Belfond. R E V I E W S. “A writer of great wit and warmth who combines apparently artless and effortless comedian’s patter with a high level of technical skill.” Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Morning Herald. “A truly remarkable book. This guy knows how to write. In fact, for someone so young, he’s already a master. You’ll be laughing out loud.” Adam Boland, Channel 7 “This collection of humorous personal essays is the kind you’ll want to share with your work colleagues (as I did), read aloud to your family while they’re trying to watch TV (guilty, again) and guffaw over on public transport. What is it that makes Benjamin Law’s writing so good? It’s the flair for language. It’s the sharp wit. It’s the open warmth. It’s the blend of the thoughtful, the silly and the affecting. It’s all of these things, in one package.” Jo Case, Readings. “Within the first two pages of The Family Law I was laughing out loud. It’s a rollicking series of insights into the life of a pretty awesome family. For those who love their writing fresh, fun and packed with laughs, it’s perfect.” Eliza Metcalfe, Bookseller & Publisher magazine. “Enjoyable, easy reading — heartwarming, cathartic in its kookiness.” Raili Simojoki, Literary Minded (Crikey) “Simultaneously weird and instantly recognisable, the Laws are an Australian family well worth getting to know.” Mel Campbell, The Enthusiast. “Obsessed. I read it in a day. A really funny book. Fearless.” Cleo. [PDF] The Family Law Book by Benjamin Law Free Download (240 pages) Free download or read online The Family Law pdf (ePUB) book. The first edition of the novel was published in June 1st 2010, and was written by Benjamin Law. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of 240 pages and is available in ebook format. The main characters of this non fiction, autobiography story are , . The book has been awarded with Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Nominee for Biography and for Newcomer (2011), and many others. The Family Law PDF Details. Author: Benjamin Law Original Title: The Family Law Book Format: ebook Number Of Pages: 240 pages First Published in: June 1st 2010 Latest Edition: January 4th 2016 Language: English Awards: Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Nominee for Biography and for Newcomer (2011) category: non fiction, autobiography, memoir, biography, humor, cultural, australia, biography, autobiography, lgbt, humor, comedy, family, glbt, queer Formats: ePUB(Android), audible mp3, audiobook and kindle. The translated version of this book is available in Spanish, English, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian / Malaysian, French, Japanese, German and many others for free download. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. Some of the techniques listed in The Family Law may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed.