When Sydney writer Alana Hicks got the call informing her she had been chosen out of more than 2000 nationwide entries as the winner of the SBS she thought they had the wrong person.
“I thought it was a prank call,” Hicks recalls, saying she was ‘gobsmacked’ to learn she had won.
Judge Melissa Lucashenko labelled , detailing growing up mixed-race, with a Papua New Guinean mum and Scottish-Australian dad, and being exoticised while dating 'as a fierce blow struck in self-defence against casual racism'.
The 38-year-old writer jokes she is a two-decade long emerging success. Last year, after decades of juggling earning a regular income and pursuing creative work, she quit her job at a migrant resource centre and bought herself a year dedicated to writing. Her parents had sold their ancestral home and the psychological security of a safety net inspired her to make a bold move.
Alana Hicks, winner of the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition 2020 Source: Supplied
“I quit on 31 December. I thought, I have a back up – for one year. I’m going to do as much as I can. I’m going to throw myself in and try to write every day.
“It paid off,” Hicks says, of her gamble.
When she saw a call out for the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition offering a $5000 cash prize she felt compelled to enter but also nervous about sharing her personal story. The memoir theme of the competition was 'Growing up in diverse Australia'.
“It’s a vulnerable process to put your history and your words on page or on a screen for other people to judge…it’s taken me a long time to be ok with accepting myself and not really caring if other people do or not.”
In her award-winning entry, Hicks recounts the frightening day machete-armed assailants stormed the family's security compound in Port Moresby, forcing young Alana and her mum Ana to flee to Sydney in 1992. The rest of the entry details Hicks' teen experiences dating, when a boyfriend made a cutting remark that remains lacerated in her soul.
Alana Hicks as a baby with mum Ana. Source: Supplied
"My first real boyfriend said to me he wouldn't be dating me if I looked like my mother. She was so precious to me. So to have someone tell me that if I looked like someone who means so much to me, they wouldn't date me, I thought, 'Guess what? F*** you! Because you would be privileged to date someone like my mother,” Hicks says with tears in her eyes.
Hicks struggled in what she labels ‘beige' 1990s Australia. Men were only interested in a certain excised version of herself. It wasn’t until she met husband Raphael Stephens while they were both studying for a masters in film production at UTS in 2010 - and with whom she shares two boys, aged six, and three - that she felt wholly embraced.
“You need someone who accepts you lock, stock and cultural barrel,” she said. The couple produce work for theatre, film and multimedia.
Hicks’ parents met while Alana's father was a teacher in Papua New Guinea.
Alana Hicks as a child. Source: Supplied
The couple had three small children in quick succession, with Alana, the fourth and youngest born much later in the early 1980's in the capital Port Moresby.
“The white side didn’t accept my mother and the Black side didn’t accept my father. They were sort of adrift on this island together,” Hicks said.
Ana was taken out of school early but was an innate storyteller with a childhood spent sharing stories around the campfire: “She kept that oral storytelling tradition alive and shared it with me. The only thing I had to do was listen.”
Alana Hicks in her dad's lap, both sitting next to her mother. Source: Supplied
In Australia, seeing the racism Ana encountered was painful. Ana stood out. She was loud and had cultural tattoos. A lover of golf, Ana was refused entry into a Sydney golf club in the early 1990s.
"The way people interacted with her was as if she was some weird bizarre creature and for me, her child, and somebody who had the privilege of fitting in, it was really kind of gross to me the way she was made to seem like a circus attraction.”
It was Ana who took her to drama classes and encouraged her with a light touch. When told about her win, Ana was happy and gently blase:" 'Excellent! I knew you could do it, I'm very proud of you. Can you send some money to Patricia to buy me some betel nut?'," Hicks recalls laughing.
Alana Hicks celebrating her birthday as a child. Source: Supplied
Hicks said the key to developing her voice as a writer was to accept the complexities of her cultural inheritance.
"Within me there is both coloniser and colonised, black and white," Hicks said.
"I had this line I would say: 'I'm neither black or white, I'm both fully.' I understand that I'm also this third thing - which many of us are. Growing up being of mixed heritage means accepting both fully and fully honouring the different parts of you, and not feeling you have to choose."
