A review by stanro
Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia by Jack Latimore, Deborah Cheetham, Patrick Johnson, Adam Goodes, Aileen Walsh, Tara June Winch, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Celeste Liddle, Jared Thomas, Terri Janke, Miranda Tapsell, Anita Heiss, Amy McQuire, Tony Birch, Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Alexis West
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
With the gathering debate about The Voice, this is a timely read.
As Heiss said in her introduction to the book, “There is no single or simple way to define what it is to grow up Aboriginal in Australia.”
50 Aboriginal people had their contribution selected from a few hundred submissions for publication. The writers are of various ages, differing educational achievement, diverse circumstances, from varied communities and of a range of sexual expression. They work in a variety of fields including the visual and performing arts, sport, teaching, community activism and other professions.
What every story has in common is the casual racism that they encounter. Some encounter more systemic or institutional racism, such as growing up at a time when they were taken from their families under application of government policy, or living under the permit system, being unable to travel from their reserve to a nearby city without a permit.
What many stories contain is the assertion that Aboriginality is not a function of skin colour or genetic quotient. It is recurringly asserted as identity. And they are impatient, indeed offended, by being asked about it. As Tamika Worrell put it, “I will not sit quietly while my identity is questioned.”
The contribution by Don Bemrose takes a different approach to many. Rather than recounting chronologically a segment of his life, he repeatedly apologises to Australia for all the many ways he has disappointed us by over-achieving our low expectations of him, such as by being professionally successful. And for being gay.
And then there is his fellow gay opera performer, the wonderful soprano Deborah Cheetham, who at the time of writing was awaiting a positive outcome of the gay marriage plebiscite. She distinguishes between “growing up,” and “growing up Aboriginal” - the latter being decades after the former. Remarkably, she acknowledges her debt to Andrew Bolt for some of this later growth. I hope that Cheetham has since had that wedding with 200 close friends and relatives that she hoped for.
Tony Birch, author of the excellent novel The White Girl, contributes about his family, speaking frankly and almost dispassionately about his father’s violence. Within his contribution, you can see a glimmer of that book.
Jack Latimore writes, and writes so well, of his search to be Aboriginal.
At this point, I was determined to not keep listing the writers of chapters any more. But I found myself unable to ignore William Russell’s contribution, running two stories interchanging between early childhood and his late adulthood. And, not the only one to do so, asserting his people while questioning whether he could accept being Australian. I feel I understand a little of that. He’s also a poet whose work I will try to track down.
There are fifty contributors in all and I could happily write a paragraph or more about each.
It can be a confronting read, concretising and making personal what we may know in theory or at great distance. As audio, it takes on for me a greater authenticity by having a “non-me” voice in my head rather than my own reading voice. I have to face the humanity of that otherness. It’s a good read. With its short stand-alone chapters, it can be dipped into and returned to later. Though my preference for full immersion provides, I think, more than the sum of its parts.
If you want to read a book to bring to life a form of otherness within “multicultural” Australia, underpinning what we call Australia, this is a good place to start. And, one last contributor mention, Alison Whittaker’s Aboriginemo - so out of my experience - makes the read even more worthwhile. I read that one over again immediately, before proceeding to the next.
As Heiss said in her introduction to the book, “There is no single or simple way to define what it is to grow up Aboriginal in Australia.”
50 Aboriginal people had their contribution selected from a few hundred submissions for publication. The writers are of various ages, differing educational achievement, diverse circumstances, from varied communities and of a range of sexual expression. They work in a variety of fields including the visual and performing arts, sport, teaching, community activism and other professions.
What every story has in common is the casual racism that they encounter. Some encounter more systemic or institutional racism, such as growing up at a time when they were taken from their families under application of government policy, or living under the permit system, being unable to travel from their reserve to a nearby city without a permit.
What many stories contain is the assertion that Aboriginality is not a function of skin colour or genetic quotient. It is recurringly asserted as identity. And they are impatient, indeed offended, by being asked about it. As Tamika Worrell put it, “I will not sit quietly while my identity is questioned.”
The contribution by Don Bemrose takes a different approach to many. Rather than recounting chronologically a segment of his life, he repeatedly apologises to Australia for all the many ways he has disappointed us by over-achieving our low expectations of him, such as by being professionally successful. And for being gay.
And then there is his fellow gay opera performer, the wonderful soprano Deborah Cheetham, who at the time of writing was awaiting a positive outcome of the gay marriage plebiscite. She distinguishes between “growing up,” and “growing up Aboriginal” - the latter being decades after the former. Remarkably, she acknowledges her debt to Andrew Bolt for some of this later growth. I hope that Cheetham has since had that wedding with 200 close friends and relatives that she hoped for.
Tony Birch, author of the excellent novel The White Girl, contributes about his family, speaking frankly and almost dispassionately about his father’s violence. Within his contribution, you can see a glimmer of that book.
Jack Latimore writes, and writes so well, of his search to be Aboriginal.
At this point, I was determined to not keep listing the writers of chapters any more. But I found myself unable to ignore William Russell’s contribution, running two stories interchanging between early childhood and his late adulthood. And, not the only one to do so, asserting his people while questioning whether he could accept being Australian. I feel I understand a little of that. He’s also a poet whose work I will try to track down.
There are fifty contributors in all and I could happily write a paragraph or more about each.
It can be a confronting read, concretising and making personal what we may know in theory or at great distance. As audio, it takes on for me a greater authenticity by having a “non-me” voice in my head rather than my own reading voice. I have to face the humanity of that otherness. It’s a good read. With its short stand-alone chapters, it can be dipped into and returned to later. Though my preference for full immersion provides, I think, more than the sum of its parts.
If you want to read a book to bring to life a form of otherness within “multicultural” Australia, underpinning what we call Australia, this is a good place to start. And, one last contributor mention, Alison Whittaker’s Aboriginemo - so out of my experience - makes the read even more worthwhile. I read that one over again immediately, before proceeding to the next.