Is 'Love and Vertigo' mainly a novel about whiteness or a novel about immigrants?

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2003 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 2+, Freie Universität Berlin, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The novel 'Love and Vertigo' is about Grace Tay, a Chinese woman, who returns after a number of years from Australia to Singapore to her mother's wake. It is a place with uncountable memories for the protagonist Grace and there, in Singapore, she wants to tackle with the life of her mother Pandora and the history of her family. Grace talks about her problems being in a new country, about migration and culture gaps. Does she has problems because she is not white or because she is an immigrant and therefore an outsider? Or both? That is the main question I am asking in my homework and I will try to find out. I worked with some essays that deal with the themes of being white - being non-white in addition to the novel to find out what the novel is really about. Hsu-Ming Teo, the author of the book, was born in Malaysia and immigrated as welllike the characters in her story - to Australia with her parents in 1977. 'Love and Vertigo' is her first novel and she is the Winner of the Australian Vogel Literary Award 1999. Migration, racism and the problems that come with a new life in a new country are the main events in the novel. Hsu-Ming Teo gives an inside look at three generations of one family. History - for example the Japanese occupation and the anti-Chinese riots in Malaysia in 1969 - and political events are employed to situate the stories in their historical backgrounds. At the same time the gap between the mother's and the daughter's experiences, expectations and the gap between the different generations and cultures are mentioned and told in a realistic way with realistic characters as well. I liked to read the book a lot because it is an interesting and fascinating story, which is based on historical events. I will try to take a closer look at the story in my homework and try to find out if Love and Vertigo is a representative story of immigrants or more about the problems of not being white or both- a story about coloured immigrants.