AFTS committee member and writer Thang D. Luong has written a paper resulting from last year’s conference. It is entitled, ‘The Healing Power of Refugee Wolf: A Dark and Satirical Fairy Tale.’ The paper refers to certain European fairy tales which deal with the issues of healing and transformation. And it explores how his short story, Refugee Wolf – a dark comedy about the asylum seeker debate – can help transform society by understanding the interconnectedness of issues underlying the debate

T.D. (Thang Dac) Luong is a Sydney based writer and lawyer. He was born in 1971, the Year of the Pig, during the Vietnam War (1945-1975). The Year of the Pig is considered to be a lucky year in Vietnamese culture. Such luck steered him and his family to Australia as refugees on 20 June 1975, shortly after the war ended.

Refugee Wolf by T.D. Luong

Not surprisingly, he has been inspired by the role of pigs in fairy tales. His short story Refugee Wolf (Flying Pig Media, 2013) is a re-invention of The Three Little Pigs fairy tale. The story is a dark satire about a society of excess and how it fears asylum seekers. Thang’s interest in how animals are used in fairy tales to represent human values started in the early 1980s when he watched the TV cult classicMonkey on the ABC. He believes that regardless of how short or long a fairy tale or fable is, we can find an aspect of ourselves in them.

Thang has completed a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing (UTS) and is currently working on a novel inspired by his late dad, a persecuted journalist during the war.

 View his paper here: The Healing Power of Refugee Wolf: A Dark and Satirical Fairy Tale