BOOK REVIEWS
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would be particularly so in a transient, tourist-oriented location like Las Vegas,
Nevada, where Popular Culture Review is housed.)
“Moving Between Places,” Chapter 4, is, in its title, explicit about its
concerns. Here, Dennis places her assay “in the context of a governmental
cartographic exercise that has effectively drawn new lines around Australian
territory insofar as migration is concerned” (133). Indeed, Christmas Island “is
currently excised from Australian territory for the purposes of migration; it is, in
other words, a migration exclusion zone in which the island is liminally located
as a part of Australia and, for the purposes of migration, not a part of it” (137).
Although often portrayed in the Australian media—particularly following the
events of 9/11 in America—as a potentially dangerous place given its proximity
to Indonesia, Christmas Island is actually a very safe place for its human
inhabitants who, according to Dennis, “move from mosque to home to school or
work to stores, or otherwise from scrabble to coffee to golf and back again” with
little, if anything, to fear (142). Trouble on the island “does not issue from
within but, rather, from beyond its borders. Locals are fond of educating visitors
about the lack of poisonous animals on the island; there are no snakes, no killer
spiders, and no real threats lurking in the coral gardens that grow in the shallow
bays around the island” (143). Meanwhile, any “tension between ethnic groups
on the island is evidently overwhelmed by relationships that ostensibly privilege
the respectful acknowledgement of differences and the sharing of culturally
specific celebrations” (143). However, the threats that do come from without the
island arrive by the sea and include the ocean itself, which can create
enormously destructive waves, especially during storms, invading military
forces of other countries, human so-called asylum seekers in search of a haven
from persecution or harsh economic conditions in their original lands, rats and
cats—both of which pose serious hazards to the indigenous plant and animal life
on the island, and, lastly, yellow crazy ants, which were unknowingly imported
by ship and which are capable of destroying the red crab population and of
marring the pristine landscape of the island beyond recognition (143-145).
Though seemingly an almost literal paradise, Christmas Island has its less-thanidyllic qualities, too.
In Chapter 5, “Leaving Christmas Island,” Dennis surveys the stories of
several people who left the island for one reason or another and reflect on what
their memories of it are. One talks of shooting bats with slingshots, then frying
them with chili and wolfing them down afterward as scrumptious snacks (182),
while others remember with profound disgust the “bloody eggs and weevils in
the rice” that were, apparently, features of some of the unfamiliar culinary
customs of “others” on the island (185). Lastly, “In Movement, In Memory,”
Chapter 6, offers readers a fitting conclusion to the overall study. Christmas
Island allows for a myriad of sensual experiences, such as
being located in between the safety of the bounded island and
the very edges of the nation where dangers emerge and are