tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/memoir-9853/articlesMemoir – The Conversation2024-03-18T19:21:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2228042024-03-18T19:21:49Z2024-03-18T19:21:49Z‘I wanted to stop … but I also wanted to pull’. 1 in 50 people have trichotillomania – a new memoir unpacks compulsive hair-pulling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581450/original/file-20240312-22-juqvok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C3982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Towards the end of Adele Dumont’s affecting memoir <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-pulling-9781922585912">The Pulling</a>, she thanks the reader, her “stranger”, for the opportunity to unburden herself of her compulsion of 17 years (and since the age of 17): to pull out strands of her hair, regularly and frequently. As a result, a large section of her scalp would eventually lay bare, yet cleverly concealed from others. </p>
<p>Hair-pulling, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/pulling-out-your-hair-in-frustration-what-you-need-to-know-about-trichotillomania-45228">trichotillomania</a>, does not come up much in public conversation. While terms such as ADHD, OCD or PTSD have almost passed into common parlance, hair-pulling is not well known, despite, as the author claims, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9063575/.">affecting 2% of the population</a> – an incidence greater than that of <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/schizophrenia">schizophrenia (0.32%)</a> or <a href="https://library.neura.edu.au/bipolar-disorder/epidemiology-bipolar-disorder/prevalence-epidemiology-bipolar-disorder/worldwide-4/index.html">bipolar disorder</a> (around 1% over a lifetime). </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pulling-out-your-hair-in-frustration-what-you-need-to-know-about-trichotillomania-45228">Pulling out your hair in frustration? What you need to know about trichotillomania</a>
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<p>But the secrecy and shame that surrounds trichotillomania mean it is very much a hidden disorder, poorly understood by the general population. <em>Pull your hair out – why don’t you just stop?</em> </p>
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<p><em>Review: The Pulling – Adele Dumont (Scribe)</em></p>
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<p>Dumont’s memoir is structured around themes (“inside an episode”, “shame”, “other people”) and starts with an account of her childhood and family upbringing. The quality of the writing and the tender voice quickly drew me into the mystery of this baffling disorder. </p>
<p>Reading it, I was alert for evidence of trauma or abuse, anything that might explain Dumont’s “eventual unravelling”. There are very few clues from childhood. </p>
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<span class="caption">Adele Dumont’s affecting memoir investigates her trichotillomania, or compulsive hair-pulling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scribe</span></span>
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<h2>Sensing something amiss</h2>
<p>Her parents met while fruit-picking in far-north Queensland; her father was a backpacker from France. Together they spent 15 years moving between orchards and later, with their two daughters, from farm to farm across rural Australia. The family lived in tents and later a caravan, and the young Adele remembers a solitary childhood: lived in nature, but never far from her parents. </p>
<p>The family moved to the outskirts of Sydney for the girls to attend school. In the holidays or on weekends, the young Adele remembers her father lifting her gently from sleep to her bed in the Kombi, waking up in orchards. </p>
<p>Her parents stayed together, despite some “unease in the marriage”. She adored her self-taught French bookworm father, his devotion to her and younger sister (“E”), his capacity to accept others “as they were”. Dumont presents her mother as a psychologically complex character, a little scary. “Mama” was at pains to provide materially for her daughters, but not present in a way that enabled them to relax in their own home.</p>
<p>Mama was devoted to her daughters and they led a frugal (“elemental”) life where nothing was ever wasted. Dumont uses the example of her mother’s tendency to hoard, and her own tendency to hoard secrets, to explain her eventual writing of “this silence and all this story” — lest it be wasted. </p>
<p>Dumont writes of her mother’s “laughter without any happiness in it”. She can’t remember her mother “ever being calm”. Perhaps her mother’s family history might account for this: she had an alcoholic brother who died young and a father diagnosed with PTSD – Dumont recalls him as “emotionally detached and damaged”. </p>
<p>The watchful young Adele falls into a pattern of reasoning that is common to hyperaware and highly empathic children who sense something amiss in the people they love. She feels responsible for, in this case, her mother’s suffering. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-reading-help-heal-us-and-process-our-emotions-or-is-that-just-a-story-we-tell-ourselves-197789">Can reading help heal us and process our emotions – or is that just a story we tell ourselves?</a>
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<h2>Compensating by being ‘exceptional’</h2>
<p>One possible clue to the origins of the hair-pulling habit is that the young Adele resented comparison with her mother (her thick hair or full cheeks, for example) but loved being noticed for being “just like Papa” for her habit of playing with her hair while reading. This innocuous-seeming gesture was, in Dumont’s words “a convenient cover for what I was really doing”. </p>
<p>Another clue is Dumont’s tendency towards perfectionism and savage self-criticism. Like so many young women who, sadly, are not comfortable about their appearance, Dumont developed “good girl” behaviours and excelled at school, writing and languages. (“To compensate for this ugliness I needed to be exceptional – exceptionally good, exceptionally polite, exceptionally kind.”) She became a teacher of English and taught asylum-seekers in detention, the subject of her first book. </p>
<p>Dumont claims her secret was too “nebulous” to even attempt putting into words. But she manages to powerfully and elegantly deconstruct the experience of a hair-pulling episode, at the same time cautioning her reader (“you”) that this might be painful to bear. </p>
<p>She describes the urge to go to the place “where only [she] could go”, the desire to pull, the trance-like state it engendered. In her transportation, she finds something “unknowable”, a kind of clarity and “grace”: </p>
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<p>Rather than different thoughts all jostling for attention, I am able to discern one strand of thought, which reveals itself as cleanly as a fishbone lifted from its surrounding flesh. This strand of thought distinguishes itself not only in its purity but in its fluidity; roaming and cartwheeling and leaping like a creature released.</p>
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<p>Dumont manages very effectively to evoke the full, sensory, “surreal” experience of hair-pulling for her. As a reader, I felt I could enter her world and (almost) comprehend the payoffs of the behaviour. I understood these as something to do with being in flow and claiming an intimate, secret space of oneness with self. There is some enlightenment, yet enough mystery to keep reading. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pulling-out-your-hair-in-frustration-what-you-need-to-know-about-trichotillomania-45228">Pulling out your hair in frustration? What you need to know about trichotillomania</a>
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<h2>Defining compulsions</h2>
<p>There are no simple answers to the problem of trichotillomania: “I wanted to stop pulling, but I also wanted to pull. And one of these desires was always stronger than the other.”</p>
<p>The ambivalence Dumont reveals about her hair-pulling is also reflected in the “irreconcilable” chasm she feels between herself and others, and between her known self and the self revealed to others. It also explains her resistance to therapy. </p>
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<p>It took Dumont 11 years to seek professional help for a disorder that started as a harmless habit and morphed into a significant compulsion that threatened relationships, work, quality of life and her future. Such resistance might resonate with anyone trying to dispense of an unwelcome habit. </p>
<p>There is the sense of not wanting to let go of something that is in some way defining, as Dumont puts it: “Nobody – no professor or psychiatrist – has the power to eradicate my compulsions. They are mine to keep.” </p>
<p>There is also, fortunately for the reader empathising strongly with Dumont’s conflict and pain, a healthy dose of self-dignity at stake (no doubt also familiar to hesitant help-seekers). “Asking someone for help was a form of cheating.”</p>
<p>But the biggest reason for resisting help or even disclosing the habit to those close to her – not even her parents or sister knew – was shame. Shame and being “ashamed at [her] own shame” drew her into a defensive cycle of approaching/resisting help and disclosure. The tension and effort of having to keep the habit secret for fear of being discovered took a toll Dumont admits is “so high it can shape one’s destiny”. </p>
<p>Dumont’s silent plea for the psychologist to whom she would eventually confide could also be “you” – her reader, her stranger. She writes: </p>
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<p>I need her to be tender and patient and sensitive but not to pity me. Professional but not clinical. I need her to understand the gravity of my situation, but not to try to amend it. </p>
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<p>It is a plea for acceptance and a strong aversion to glib solutions. </p>
<p>There is a sharply intellectual quality to this memoir, written by a deeply reflective young woman. By the last page of the memoir, I felt I was indeed Dumont’s intended reader, her stranger, her “you”. I returned her appreciation, grateful for the opportunity to walk a little in her shoes, painful though it was at times – and for her honesty, courage and intimacy. </p>
<p>Dumont’s testimony is written with perceptive insight, both into herself and those around her. She is a gifted and compassionate linguist and writer. </p>
<p>Despite the very specific nature of the subject, the memoir speaks to a broad readership: to anyone who has felt the isolation of difference, whether “being” different or simply feeling it. Hers is at once a brave appeal to readers for understanding and acceptance, and a brave read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Turner Goldsmith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Adele Dumont’s affecting memoir, The Pulling, draws the reader into the secrecy, shame and impulses behind trichotilllomania, or compulsive hair-pulling.Jane Turner Goldsmith, PhD candidate, Creative Writing, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231972024-03-05T01:45:10Z2024-03-05T01:45:10ZIn his entertaining cancer memoir, Peter Goldsworthy explores the ‘necessary narcissism’ of illness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579734/original/file-20240304-18-q0yp5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation, Jeff Estanislao</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Illness memoir is based on a tension between the general and the particular. The writer presents (to use a medical term) as both representing all sufferers of a particular malady – in this case, myeloma – and a unique individual experiencing a specific, unrepeatable event. Peter Goldsworthy, who is both a GP and a prize-winning writer, is better equipped than most to engage with this tension. </p>
<p>Indeed, one of the reasons <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-cancer-finishing-school-9781761340772">The Cancer Finishing School</a> is so exciting (if I can use such a word in this context) is because it so effectively deals with this. It ties together the experiential and the abstract, the intellectual and the embodied, and the everyday and the extraordinary (not to mention other tensions more specific to cancer, such as between rationalism and magical thinking).</p>
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<p><em>Review – The Cancer Finishing School by Peter Goldsworthy (Penguin)</em></p>
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<p>Myeloma is a type of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-go-wrong-in-the-blood-a-brief-overview-of-bleeding-clotting-and-cancer-76400">blood cancer</a> that develops in the bone marrow and is both “an incurable disease” and a “good cancer to get”. </p>
<p>His memoir follows a simple narrative arc, familiar to illness memoirs (or “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119270/">autopathography</a>”) : diagnosis (accidentally via a scan of a problematic knee); treatment (with chemotherapy); hospitalisation (for a stem-cell transplant); and the return home (for recuperation). </p>
<p>And yet, Goldsworthy, the good writer-doctor that he is, makes this familiar journey utterly compelling. The reasons for this are, to use a term favoured by doctors, <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multifactorial">multifactorial</a>. </p>
<p>At one level, Goldsworthy’s account is gripping because the simple facts are inherently interesting. Stem-cell transplant is an extraordinary medical procedure – half science-fiction, half medieval trial by ordeal – involving liquid mustard gas and the killing off of the patient’s bone marrow. This process, Goldsworthy notes, has the alarming mortality rate of 10% after 200 days.</p>
<p>The chemotherapy is also, perhaps surprisingly, fascinating. In this instance, it employs a steroid hormone called <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/medicines/brand/amt,2956011000036100/dexmethsone">dexamethasone</a> to counter the side effects of the chemotherapeutic agents. Dexamethasone produces periods of intense creativity and activity in Goldsworthy. Recreating “Dex bliss” is the source of much febrile inventiveness in the first third of The Cancer Finishing School.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/living-with-complex-illness-and-surviving-to-tell-about-it-anna-spargo-ryans-chronic-optimism-189135">Living with complex illness and surviving to tell about it: Anna Spargo-Ryan's chronic optimism</a>
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<h2>A time of intense living</h2>
<p>But “good material” is not in itself enough. Goldsworthy puts a lot of effort into representing what we might call the phenomenological intensity of not just the “dex” mania, but the entire “journey” of cancer. </p>
<p>Faced with the prospect of death, Goldsworthy recounts a time of intense living, and he gives a powerful sense of what that experience was like bodily and emotionally (a distinction that dexamethasone profoundly calls into question). </p>
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<p>And while Goldsworthy’s style is characteristically unfussy, the memoir is filled with an equally characteristic intense use of word play, anecdotes and motifs that criss-cross the narrative. These give the work a complex structural harmony. </p>
<p>Sometimes those motifs might more accurately be called riffs, and such riffing is continuous with Goldsworthy’s marvellous use of jokes. Jokes, writes Goldsworthy, “are useful forward scouts when entering enemy territory, especially the no-go areas of my own head”. At another level, then, Goldsworthy’s memoir is absorbing because it is so entertaining. </p>
<p>That is not to say Goldsworthy “merely” deals with the sombre in comic terms. He can face the dark night of the soul square on, but the <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/seriocomic">serio-comic</a> is his habitual mode of attack. This mode is one that allows for important insights, borne out of an impressively nuanced and authoritative attention to its subject. For instance, Goldsworthy considers the “necessary narcissism” of illness in the following terms:</p>
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<p>For once everything is about you – you might die, after all. The stakes don’t come higher. I have seen it in my patients too often to judge it. Like a rat in a loaf, the mere knowledge that you have cancer eats out a bigger and bigger space for itself in your brain: a mental black hole that consumes ever more energy, attention, worry, love and conversation, often uselessly. In short: the knowledge you have cancer can be a kind of cancer itself. </p>
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<p>The nonjudgmental reference to patients is significant. While an individual’s reckoning with mortality is usually thought of in terms of a solitary person, one of the compelling features of The Cancer Finishing School is how Goldsworthy powerfully renders his experiences as inherently concerned with others. </p>
<p>Goldsworthy’s self is very much a “relational” one: part of a network of carers, family members (especially his partner, Lisa), friends and patients who fill the pages with their own stories, insights and jokes. </p>
<p>Some of the family and friends are well known, such as the Nobel laureate (and fellow citizen of Adelaide) <a href="https://theconversation.com/j-m-coetzees-provocative-first-book-turns-50-this-year-and-his-most-controversial-turns-25-210891">J.M. Coetzee</a>, the celebrated American writer Joan Didion (whose appearance makes for one of the book’s comic highpoints) and the late poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-his-last-poems-les-murray-offers-a-gentle-gracious-bow-of-farewell-and-just-a-few-barbs-176535">Les Murray</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vale-les-murray-a-witty-anti-authoritarian-national-poet-who-spoke-to-the-world-116186">Vale Les Murray, a witty, anti-authoritarian, national poet who spoke to the world</a>
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<p>These worthies all have terrific walk-on parts, though they are, perhaps inevitably, outplayed by Goldsworthy’s patients, whose stories braid his own experience of illness. These stories are sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking. I am haunted by the bereaved woman who hangs a wetsuit in her kitchen so she might glimpse it and momentarily think the figure is her dead son.</p>
<p>Goldsworthy makes it clear he is not exploiting these patients: he changes ages, names, genders and so on, and receives permission from those who are still alive to give it. And while it is important that these things are acknowledged, the most powerful element of such stories, when it comes to a virtual “ethics clearance” from the reader, is the evident sense of respect that accompanies these literary representations.</p>
<p>If anyone comes off badly in these stories, it is Goldsworthy himself. This is ultimately a work about education, after all, and Goldsworthy’s anecdotes are usually concerned with important lessons (in humanity, in humility).</p>
<p>Education, like illness, is a kind of journey, and Goldsworthy skilfully employs the tropes of schooling and roaming throughout The Cancer Finishing School. One of the notable aspects of Goldsworthy’s illness memoir is how self-conscious it is with regard to metaphor. He shows how the realm of the literal (illness, bodily death) swarms (to be metaphorical) with metaphor. </p>
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<p>Ever since <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/illness-as-metaphor-and-aids-and-its-metaphors-9780141187129">Illness as Metaphor</a> (1978), by Susan Sontag (who suffered and ultimately died from cancer), certain metaphors have been viewed with suspicion when it comes to cancer – mostly obviously, that of cancer-as-battle. </p>
<p>Metaphor can, of course, have pernicious effects, but as Anita Wohlmann demonstrates, in <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-metaphor-in-illness-writing.html">Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused</a> (2022), “even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it can in fact be reused and reimagined in unexpected and creative ways”. </p>
<p>This revisionary power is, of course, the power of literature generally. But it has a special intensity when it comes to memoirs about cancer. Unlike cancer, the generative force of writing is life-affirming: a beneficial unfurling, rather than a terminal metastasising. This is made apparent in Goldsworthy’s case through the way he constantly shows the value – social, <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialogic">dialogic</a> – of story. </p>
<p>Stories are as valuable to the speaker as they are to the listener. As Goldsworthy ruefully writes about first being diagnosed with cancer: “When the writing’s on the wall, it helps to get it down”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David McCooey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Award-winning, much-loved Australian writer Peter Goldsworthy is better equipped than most to write an illness memoir: he’s also a GP.David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2142542024-02-22T00:54:45Z2024-02-22T00:54:45ZChangeling warrior Robyn Davidson has never been lost. She’s a seeker with the courage to keep looking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576605/original/file-20240219-16-1t7zcz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C83%2C5058%2C3344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robyn Davidson as a young woman in Alice Springs</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people know Robyn Davidson as the camel lady, a young woman of 27 who walked over 2,700 kilometres across Australian deserts to the sea with four camels and a dog. A journey captured in her 1980 memoir <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/78895">Tracks</a>.</p>
<p>The vivid images <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/rick-smolans-trek-with-tracks-from-australian-outback-to-silver-screen?loggedin=true&rnd=1708299868794">commissioned by National Geographic</a>, which beamed around the world at the time or those recalled from the 2014 film version of Tracks (starring Mia Wasikowska): how iridescent blue the ocean was on a deserted beach in Western Australia, how regal and accomplished the camels appeared in their watery playground, but most of all Davidson – brown as a nut and beautiful and something else – unflappable, warrior-like, assured.</p>
<p>I, like millions of others, adored her instantly. The story was compelling, but it was the power captured in those images that made Davidson a global celebrity. Tracks, now in its fortieth edition and published in over 20 languages, has never been out of print. But while interest in the book has never waned, few people know exactly why she spent nine months in the desert. What had drawn or taken her there.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Unfinished Woman – Robyn Davidson (Bloomsbury)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Her motivations are not mentioned in detail or are avoided in Tracks where the focus is on what she is moving within (her developing relationship with country) and toward (an unmapped future). The reasons for the journey were private. But the bullet train of people’s interest in her was already in motion. In a 2015 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ6Q5GYwKlc">interview</a> she said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The more I tried to disappear underneath the radar, the more private I wanted to be, the more people wanted to know about it, to be involved with it somehow. And that has continued.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of Davidson today." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576606/original/file-20240219-28-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robyn Davidson today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Unfinished Woman, Davidson’s first book in over 20 years, we come closer to knowing her. We learn about where this extraordinary self-determination came from and what propelled her into (what was for her, at least initially,) the unknown. We come to know about before. The moment happens a few pages in, when Davidson writes the astonishing line, “My mother hanged herself from the rafters of our garage, using the cord of our electrical kettle.” She then asks, “Where can I go with a sentence like that?” Where indeed. </p>
<p>Davidson, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/after-trying-to-write-about-her-mother-s-death-robyn-had-an-epiphany-20230803-p5dtpv.html">who was 11 at the time her mother died</a>, went many places. She moved interstate at 19 and squatted in abandoned terraces in Sydney. She dated a gangster and worked as a croupier in underground, illegal gambling dens. She traversed a continent. Moved to London and lived in dingy flats and wrote Tracks. She was given a cottage to live in by novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Doris-Lessing">Doris Lessing</a> and spent time with the literary establishment, absorbing words but hating the pretension and the envy. </p>
<p>She followed and documented nomadic peoples in India and Tibet, developing deep connections with many women who were not as free as she was to traverse a wider earth. She “married” a Rajput prince and got to their house in the Himalayas for the first time by way of an elephant. Davidson is a beauty, but it takes a rare kind of person to be able to walk into the different arenas just described and be embraced, confided in, taken on, loved. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Robyn Davidson greets two Indian women in Rajastan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576607/original/file-20240219-22-gslf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robyn in Rajastan circa 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tracks-a-film-that-lets-a-woman-thrive-in-the-outback-24026">Tracks, a film that lets a woman thrive in the outback</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The maelstrom</h2>
<p>Davidson’s face didn’t get her to where she needed to go – she went anyway, sometimes ill advised. Her unique philosophy and drive was formed in a defining moment she documents in Unfinished Woman a short time after her mother’s suicide where she cleaved from the world into nihilism. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t know why it was on that ordinary afternoon there was a sudden shift, or breach in the appearance of things. Of things as they seem. Not a vision exactly, because nothing changed outwardly. But rather an insight that penetrated the everyday world and caved it in […] I sat down by a tree but it was no longer a tree, a life form one could feel kinship with, it was a whirlwind of energies streaming into a tree-shaped funnel […] The agreed upon world trees, leaves and people was something we draped over the top of the maelstrom to protect ourselves from the truth. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a mother holding her baby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576608/original/file-20240219-29-yhjmsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robyn and her mother in 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From that moment, Davidson would be adrift. Some of that free-fall was monstrous and painful but mostly this understanding provided her with a portal – a connection to infinity she’d tuned into and tried so hard to make sense of, wandering with her “kind, faraway Dad” in big sky spaces in Queensland, especially at their property Malabah – evoked throughout the book like a psalm. </p>
<p>To live conventionally would have betrayed that knowledge she describes as moving inside her “like a huge snake”. Some would say to live unconventionally was a movement against her mother’s fate and the times. But it was more than that. The choice to live unbound was existential. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Continents slammed together, crumpled, melted like cheese. Stars exploded, suns collapsed to the size of fists, oceans froze or boiled away, galaxies collided, ripping each other to wisps, and nothing, nothing at all was solid, nothing held still, reality was this and only this: an apocalypse consuming itself, shitting itself out, eternal, merciless […] and where was ‘I’ in the tumult? What and where?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Davidson’s natural habitat is not singular – it is not a particular place, vocation, or family unit – though all these things have reverberated in her at times, her sense of home could not be contained for long. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would not remain in any of these worlds: that is, make them my home. Homes were things it was necessary to escape from. If you did not leave them, what happened to future selves. If you did not leave them, you were stuck with remaining who you were.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Davidson’s natural habitat is a way of being. As such, tripping around the intricacies of her mind – the selves she describes as the “different frames” she uses to move between worlds – is at times unsettling. The chaos of thought, a life lived in discontinuous passages can leave you feeling unmoored.</p>
<p>Then there is illumination. The kind of poetic and deeply felt connection to place and sometimes, people, Davidson depicts is breathtaking. She is not looking at landscape, she is sending us missives from the inside. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>At eight thousand feet the air had a sharp quality; nothing was out of focus. Sound, particularly thunder, rolled around the slopes unmuffled. Storms could be extreme, horizontal sleet blasting from the north-eastern side, from the line of shattered white peaks along the horizon […] as well there were transformations of monsoon, when oaks grew beards of lichen; fungi fruited from earth, trees, log, dry gullies became waterfalls; leeches longed for you to pass by. Rain came down so heavily on the roof that you ducked instinctively […]</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Emotional power and sensory wonder</h2>
<p>I’m not sure I agree with critics <a href="https://www.startribune.com/tracks-writer-robyn-davidson-returns-with-memoir-of-her-mother-unfinished-woman/600323376/">who say</a> her inability to get at the crux of something, her “loss for words” is linked to her mother’s suicide – that she is trying to pick through and make sense of the subsequent trauma she carried would be only part of the story. For Davidson, her mother is a multitude of visions and contradictions – “under cement” or vividly drawn, never thought about, then thought about all the time. And while she lost her so young and ran from those memories and then struggled to reconstruct them, the writing about her mother is, in a strange convergence, full of emotional power and sensory wonder. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In my memory there are bits of her floating around in a kind of fog – hands, smells, veins, phrases, shoes, a crocodile-skin handbag and its contents, the smell of Helena Rubenstein lipstick, a gold tooth, fine pale hairs on her arms, goosebumps, a crystal stopper being dabbed in the crook of an elbow, nervy fingers twisting rings, fingers twitching as she holds my hand […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When it comes to representations of selfhood, Davidson is slippery, suggesting being convinced of who we are is a delusion, an exercise in narrative control she doesn’t want to enter into. It does take courage to allow yourself to fragment, and I sense a large part of Davidson has always been ephemeral, drifting, hovering at the high altitude she loved so much in her sky home in the Himalayas. Another frequency. Not really of the man-made world with its straight lines and demarcations, its restrictive real jobs and endless, mind-numbing suburbs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-write-about-broken-trust-in-a-memoir-janine-mikoszas-homesickness-maps-trauma-in-bold-new-ways-179086">How to write about broken trust in a memoir? Janine Mikosza’s Homesickness maps trauma in bold new ways</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A struggle</h2>
<p>From the outset, Davidson signals she’s never played her cards straight in life and she’s not about to start doing so with her readers, refusing to be neatly categorised by triggering experiences or the expectations of form. In this way Davidson is being true to herself.</p>
<p>Perhaps she resisted the editorial intervention I craved because that would have created an artificial veneer, a sense of refined continuum, her life – indeed any life – does not have. To do so was a risk but Davidson is a changeling. A curlew darting between shadow spaces then suddenly still. Frozen by the notion of being watched, the strange awareness of artificial light. </p>
<p>She struggled for a long time to write this book and at times it shows. Passages written in different moments can overlap or seem incongruous, repetitions and non-linear time frames you must make sense of on your own.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The writing stalled and stalled. A hundred beginnings thrown away, pages and pages of notes stored in boxes, then forgotten. Nothing seemed quite right, or quite true, the memories too scattered, too untrustworthy. Everything I wrote was like debris in a centrifuge, at the core of which, exerting all the power, that purely mathematical point, my imaginary mother.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is this a frustrating headspace to encounter? Certainly. And maybe this is the point – this is not a Sunday afternoon spent dipping into the juicy gossip of literary celebrity – she did once date Salman Rushdie, after all, a relationship referred to obliquely as “The Catastrophe”. </p>
<p>Unfinished Woman is confounding and moving simultaneously and that’s why this review has also been hard to write. I resisted for months. At first, I was hesitant about wrestling with an idol, but I’ve come to realise Davidson doesn’t want to be fully captured. Even by herself. Though her literary gestures would suggest otherwise. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cover of Unfinished Woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576609/original/file-20240219-30-2rlyd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her beguiling face on the cover of this book has followed me on planes challenging me to know her. Her wry smile suggesting the more I read, the less I’d know – how this probably wouldn’t work out, despite the fact she’d written almost 300 pages telling me it would. Davidson has sat next to me in bars. Stared up at me from ornate chairs in Bali, bedside tables in dim hotel rooms in Melbourne, peeking above menus in my local cafe. I kept turning the book over. Because at least on the back cover she is not looking into my eyes.</p>
<p>I have seen reviews of Unfinished Woman or press materials riddled with throwaway lines like: this is a book about a woman who doesn’t belong anywhere – and it’s hard for me to understand that take. Why people confuse curiosity with restlessness and perpetual movement with being lost. Davidson walked across the middle of Australia and never got lost. She spent months in bed in a mental health crisis and crawled out. </p>
<p>On a ten-day pilgrimage to the peaks in the Himalayas she and her dog Malaki were stalked by a panther and she “came to understand viscerally what it means to be prey.” She built a fire, the dog in her lap and waited out the night. She has belonged profoundly and deeply to many places. Has fallen in and out of love with many people. </p>
<p>Her sense of connection is not parochial, it is not delineated or owned. It is not that Davidson doesn’t fit anywhere it is that she blends into multitudes.</p>
<p>Most people don’t fit where they stay but they stay anyway. Davidson had the courage to keep on looking. She is a seeker. A philosopher but not the ivory tower kind. She has tested her theories in open air cathedrals. In life. Go into this book without a compass and she is more than worth your time.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At 27, Robyn Davidson trekked through the Australian outback with four camels and a dog. In her long-awaited memoir we come closer to knowing why she made this journey.Sally Breen, Associate Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218662024-02-19T19:04:04Z2024-02-19T19:04:04Z‘I was who I wasn’t’: McKenzie Wark’s memoir of late transition envisions a less gender-restrictive world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576367/original/file-20240219-24-miu7bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C2404%2C1193&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">McKenzie Wark.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MackenzieWark1.jpg">BaixaCultura, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>McKenzie Wark is a cultural and social critic who teaches at the New School in New York. Her new memoir, <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3113-love-and-money-sex-and-death">Love and Money, Sex and Death</a>, is structured as a series of letters to people she has known: her younger self, her mother and sister, her ex-wife of 20 years, more recent lovers, some fictional people – even a god. </p>
<p>In this series of letters, Wark speaks to her past and imagines possible futures. She muses about how her life has changed since coming out as transgender in 2017 at the age of 56, but she also writes evocatively and fiercely about the loss of her mother as a child, her life and relationships in New York, and her visions for a less gender-restrictive world. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Love and Money, Sex and Death: A Memoir – McKenzie Wark (Verso)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>This is a book which has a lot to say about being trans, but it deliberately avoids becoming a linear story of discovery of a “true” self. Instead, Wark shows us how a “self” is made from its relationships, through “fights and feuds”, through “covens of care”. There is a continual sense of her reconstructing herself through and with others. </p>
<p>This is conveyed in the style and form of the book. Part of the beauty of an epistolary memoir is that Wark gets to write throughout in the second person, giving the book a feeling of intimacy. The concept of “writing to a younger self” in the first and last chapters allows Wark to reconstruct a life in hindsight, retro-engineering the story to fit her late change of identity. </p>
<p>This is done with a light touch. Wark writes to her younger self as to another, someone she knows well, but who has their own problems, perspectives and choices. Stories of the past are as much “about” the present self as the facts of what actually happened. Wark writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When one transitions to another sex, the past comes back as if in a different medium. Memories tell not of who one was but who one wasn’t. I was who I wasn’t for the longest time. Transition brings rushes of the past back. Shots for an incomplete home movie. I had to edit memory as I edited flesh.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These “edited memories” are told in ways that foreshadow, without reducing to, any story of “I was always a woman”. Wark complains that trans people are always pushed to tell essentialist stories about their gender. She presents her life as a series of encounters and experiments, which happened to turn out this way, but might have gone another. “I’m writing this to your own future, or a possible one at least,” she writes on the first page, addressing a young McKenzie.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not going to say you are a girl, or that you always were. You’ve been reading transsexual memoirs on the sly already and not finding yourself in that ‘born in the wrong body’ story. You feel like your body is already a girl’s body. […]
Maybe some sorts of transsexual people ‘always knew’, but you didn’t. You’re always swerving, blindly falling through gender.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wark’s vulnerability and openness about failures, letting people down, not knowing the plot, is part of the book’s aesthetic. But this does not make it a sad story, even as it canvasses death and failed love. As Jack Halberstam argues in <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-queer-art-of-failure">The Queer Art of Failure</a>, failure can open up alternate possibilities for life and love. </p>
<p>Wark is often cynical about the future: “There’s no past, no arcadia. But no future either.” All the same, the book carries the strong themes of care and desire for revolution or utopia, which make it a deeply optimistic work.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/judith-butler-their-philosophy-of-gender-explained-192166">Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Vulnerability and receptivity</h2>
<p>While not sure she was always a woman, Wark writes that she “need[s] to feel feminine”. This does not just mean that she needs to paint her nails (although that, too). It is an overtly sexual “femme” desire: to be exposed, penetrated, made to feel her own vulnerability, openness and receptivity. </p>
<p>One of the things the book does is to enact the queer understanding that this “femme” does not need to be the property of people of any particular gender. Even though she has transitioned into womanhood, Wark maintains a deliberate blurriness about what gender means. Ultimately, she suggests, there can be more revolutionary potential in failing to live up to a single gendered identity than in trying to achieve authenticity. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wouldn’t say that being trans now is living my truth. I’d say it’s a better fiction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the first chapter of part three, McKenzie and “Veronica”, an elegant trans woman friend, talk over lunch in an expensive New York restaurant. Amid cocktails, disagreements and speculations about the other guests’ sexuality, McKenzie presents a full-fledged theory of trans women as utopian avant-garde. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The trans woman bears the burden of the absurdity of gender. She is the scapegoat for what everyone imagines they’re denied. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Precisely because trans women are accused of being deceptive, Wark suggests, they can lead towards a world where people are not constantly in thrall to unattainable “true” models of gender, but instead “make our being together with reference only to each other”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576411/original/file-20240219-22-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">McKenzie Wark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/photo/author/60623.McKenzie_Wark">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “Venus” chapter is addressed to a Black trans woman friend who committed suicide during COVID lockdown. It reports on the Brooklyn Liberation for Trans Lives protests for Black trans women. Here, Wark reflects that she has given up her status as a man, but become a middle-class white woman, a “Karen” (a name she had previously chosen for herself). </p>
<p>Following from the scenes in expensive New York restaurants, this (inevitably) feels a bit tokenistic at first. It finishes, though, in such a blaze of anger and ragged grief, of political will for revolution, connection and shared fate that we can glimpse a form of alliance that might be possible when the privileged are prepared to let themselves be undone. </p>
<p>The “hindsight” structure of the memoir means that the reader is always aware of time. Wark counts the years between herself and her past, herself and her future. “Your life as a woman will be brief,” she says to her younger self. “She’ll die young.”</p>
<p>In many ways this is a book about growing older. It addresses the themes of maturing and how priorities in relationships change over time: the gaining of a warmer, less anxious perspective. </p>
<p>Time was necessary for Wark to become her (if that is what she has done) self. The “trade-off with late transition” is ever-present, for better and worse. There is an insistent sense of time shortening ahead of her. But as with her sense of gender, Wark’s sense of time is fluid, often felt through music – jazz when she was younger, rave and ambient later. Time is felt in Wark’s writing, more than measured. It has a music of its own.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How long have we been here? How long are we dancing? […] We are in a pocket in time where there’s more time […] We go into weightless days, seconds, millennia. On the other side of the measure of beats is a time without measure.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576336/original/file-20240218-22-cja5ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">McKenzie Wark’s new memoir is fast moving and kaleidoscopic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nito/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-essentialism-and-how-does-it-shape-attitudes-to-transgender-people-and-sexual-diversity-203577">What is essentialism? And how does it shape attitudes to transgender people and sexual diversity?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Freedom and joy</h2>
<p>Wark often assumes an educated reader. Phrases like “This was postmodern aesthetics as Oedipal break-up” will make sense to some readers, but not others. Wark draws on her career as a media theorist, but is also happy to laugh at her “weird brain labour”. There are many funny (although still sometimes painful) moments. Of the dating app Tinder, she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when I say I’m trans, they say it’s OK because they’re into kink. (Then ghost me.) They say they have several selves, only one of them female. (They all need a bath.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the delicious things in this book is the sense of freedom that it invokes. Wark has lived a life of experimentation, following impulses, paying little heed to social conventions. She acknowledges that, at times, this has made her unreliable or even cruel. She does not shy away from responsibility and regret. But overall there is a sense of joy: a “capacity for delight”, as she says of a lover. At heart, these letters are love letters. </p>
<p>There is always more in a book than you can convey in a review, especially a book as fast-moving and kaleidoscopic as this one. But it could perhaps be summarised as a book written from the other side of multiple processes of undoing – loss of loved ones, restructuring of the body and identity, confrontations with violence and prejudice. </p>
<p>Love and Money, Sex and Death ricochets between sparkling defiance, unravelled grief, and furious hope. It always seeks connection with the others it addresses. It combines the personal and political through a philosophy of intimate coalition, in the name of a world where all can find a home and freedom. It’s a fun, wild, devastating ride. Read it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221866/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Love and Money, Sex and Death ricochets between sparkling defiance, unravelled grief, and furious hope.Anna Szorenyi, Lecturer in Gender Studies, University of AdelaideCambrey Payne, PhD candidate, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223942024-02-05T19:09:27Z2024-02-05T19:09:27ZFascination, persistence and optimism: how Fei-Fei Li helped shape the AI revolution in a field dominated by alpha males<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573324/original/file-20240205-27-gb5sa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C13%2C4473%2C2977&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peshkova/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Public debate on Artifical Intelligence has escalated in the past six months, with an outpouring of opinion pieces on the risks and ethics of a science that is undergoing an exponential period of advance. </p>
<p>One of the key figures in this, as a contributor to both the science and the debate, is <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/fei-fei-li">Fei-Fei Li</a>, Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, and co-director of <a href="https://ai-4-all.org/">AI4All</a>, a non-profit organisation promoting diversity and inclusion in the field of AI.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Worlds I See – Fei-Fei Li (Flatiron Books)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Aside from one controversy during her tenure as Chief Scientist for Google Cloud, involving a proposed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-project-maven-pentagon.html">partnership between Google and the Pentagon</a>, Li has been something of a role model, not least because of her prominence in an area dominated by alpha-male personalities.</p>
<p>Free of the influence of stylists and image-makers, she comes across in interviews with the fluency of someone who wants to think their way through ideas as they arise, rather than deliver platform statements.</p>
<p>Li describes <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250897930/theworldsisee">The Worlds I See</a> as “a double helix memoir”. One thread is the coming-of-age of the science of AI; the other is an account of her own coming-of-age as a scientist. The personal dimension came to the fore, she says, after what was initially a “very nerdy book” was given the thumbs-down by a colleague. </p>
<h2>Matter becomes mind</h2>
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<span class="caption">Fei-Fei Li at AI for Good Global Summit, Geneva, June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fei-Fei_Li_at_AI_for_Good_2017.jpg">ITU Pictures, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The story begins in Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province. As the only child of a family “in a state of quiet upheaval”, Li had a sense that her elders had been through more than they could tell. Her academically trained maternal grandparents found themselves on the wrong side of history during the Cultural Revolution. Her mother’s intellectual energies were thwarted.</p>
<p>As if there were some braided version of Yin and Yang in her heritage, her father’s free-spirited personality provided a complementary, if antithetical, form of influence. He was, says Li, the kind of parent a child might design for themselves if left to their own devices. He was impulse-driven, possessed of miscellaneous fascinations, which took him on excursions through the rice fields looking for butterflies, stick insects, wild rodents. </p>
<p>Her mother, meanwhile, was determined to escape. This ambition was realised in 1992, when the family moved to the United States. They settled in Parsippany, New Jersey, where 15-year-old Li, grappling with the demands of high school in a foreign language, demonstrated a capacity for long hours of work directed towards the academic goals her mother valued. </p>
<p>Her father’s fascination with natural life forms transferred to the object world of garage sales. He continued to involve Li in the practice of “studying everything in sight”.</p>
<p>Throughout The Worlds I See, Li reflects on the influence of this parental binary on her advancing career as a scientist. Without the fierce intellectual determination of her mother, she could not have persevered with her high school studies, given the family’s ongoing struggle for economic survival. Without her father’s childlike capacity to pay total attention to random phenomena, her research might never have found its innovative path.</p>
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<p>The braid of fascination and intellectual drive twists in unexpected ways. It eventually fuses into an almost visionary faith in what Li terms the North Star of her life: a vocation to shift the parameters of understanding by asking “audacious questions” of the kind pursued by the great physicists who inspire her: Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Erwin Schrödinger.</p>
<p>Her own audacious question – “what is vision about?” – came into focus by degrees. For someone given to describing her enterprise in terms of revelation and revolution, her actual research on vision seems anything but visionary.</p>
<p>Undergraduate study in physics and computational mathematics at Princeton yielded an opportunity for vacation work as an assistant to a neuroscience team at UC Berkeley. They were attempting to capture the neuronal responses of a cat to visual stimuli. The targeted area of the brain was probed by hairline electrodes to pick up signals. </p>
<p>These signals were translated first into to sound waves, then back to visual patterns from which the team were able to <a href="https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/10-15-1999.html">recompose something approximating the original image shown to the animal</a>. </p>
<p>Hardly the stuff of romance, yet Li comments: “Something transcendent happens. Matter somehow becomes mind.” </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-is-our-promethean-fire-using-it-wisely-means-knowing-its-true-nature-and-our-own-minds-219320">AI is our ‘Promethean fire': using it wisely means knowing its true nature – and our own minds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is data?</h2>
<p>This insight sustains Li through her protracted labours. She becomes convinced that the principle can be applied to machine learning. </p>
<p>Following evidence that visual recognition in the human brain moves from the general to the increasingly specific (bird, water bird, duck, mallard), Li and her postgraduate collaborator set out to feed the computer with a comprehensive range of examples in a limited set of categories. </p>
<p>New image technologies in other domains came to their assistance. <a href="https://www.google.com/streetview/">Google Street View</a> identified 2,657 models of car on the road in 2014. <a href="https://www.mturk.com/">Amazon Mechanical Turk</a> escalated the scale and speed of their research as categories multiplied, from the original ten to thirty, a hundred, a thousand.</p>
<p>But the project had all the burdens that faced Charles Darwin as he attempted a comprehensive taxonomy of pigeons, or James Murray compiling the Oxford English Dictionary.</p>
<p>For Li, the apparently humdrum conviction that learning should be driven by data rather than algorithms arrives as “a moment of epiphany”. The audacious questions “what is vision?” and “what is intelligence?” merge. They become associated with a third question: “what is data?” </p>
<p>A rapid thaw in the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter">AI winter</a>” of the first decade of the 21st century commenced in 2012, when research into machine learning made a breakthrough in the direction of “big data”. It was all about scaling up, increasing the retention capacities of AI to incorporate the range and complexity of phenomena in the world itself. </p>
<p>Li found her approach converging with that of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton">Geoffrey Hinton</a>, the Toronto-based cognitive psychologist often credited with spearheading the AI paradigm shift. Data can be exponentially multiplied, Hinton proposed, when machines talk among themselves. Digital agents scan diverse areas of data and exchange what they have learned to generate more sophisticated modes of correlation. </p>
<p>Intelligence comes to be seen not as an inherent property of a machine or a human brain, but as something out there. It arises from interactions between objects, events, beings and environments. There is more of the gatherer than the hunter in its development.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ai-industry-is-on-the-verge-of-becoming-another-boys-club-were-all-going-to-lose-out-if-it-does-219802">The AI industry is on the verge of becoming another boys' club. We’re all going to lose out if it does</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Distributed intelligence</h2>
<p>Distributed intelligence means distributed opportunities to participate in the co-evolution of human and machine intelligence. Big science and high technology cease to be the exclusive preserve of specialists whose modes of knowledge are beyond the understanding of ordinary people. Anyone who has had an exchange with Chat GPT on Open AI is contributing.</p>
<p>Li insists, however, that effective human learning requires education. The most important figure in her own education was her high-school maths teacher, Bob Sabella, who kept her on track as she struggled with the English language curriculum. He remained a friend and mentor through every stage of her academic advancement. </p>
<p>It is the dedicated school teacher, Li says, who is the real emblem of the future in human technology. She co-founded AI4All in 2017 with the aim of providing hands-on training for high-school students, especially girls, students of colour and those from immigrant families or low income communities. Li herself fits most of these categories. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573341/original/file-20240205-17-jof1ke.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Fei-Fei Li speaking at Stanford, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnhfeNDc0eI">YouTube</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The experiences Li recounts in The Worlds I See display an extraordinary capacity for persistence in the face of obstacles. She completed high school while supplementing the family income with a $2 an hour job in a Chinese restaurant. As a graduate student, she was running the family dry-cleaning business.</p>
<p>Her exams at Princeton were done by special arrangement at the hospital clinic where her mother was undergoing surgery for a deteriorating cardiovascular condition. </p>
<p>But it is as if everything she experiences is turned to account in the pursuit of the North Star. Recurring crises in her mother’s health gave her a familiarity with hospitals, which led her to explore how AI might be deployed, not to replace the vital role of human nurses and health workers, but to support them. </p>
<p>If Li’s efforts can be seen as a feminist enterprise, it is perhaps because the field in which she works is dominated by male celebrities, who persist in seeing the future as a Darwinian struggle between human and machine intelligence. </p>
<p>“Which is smarter?” is less an audacious question than one that needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Speaking in 2018 to a Congressional hearing on Power and Responsibility in the application of advanced technologies, Li said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s nothing artificial about AI. It’s inspired by people, created by people, and most importantly it has an impact on people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Explicitly distancing herself from those, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/02/geoffrey-hinton-godfather-of-ai-quits-google-warns-dangers-of-machine-learning">like Hinton</a>, who are seeing the current breakthrough in AI potential as an existential crisis, Li is concerned with tangible social risks, and specific ways to address them. </p>
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<p>In a recent discussion with former US Secretary of State <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/condoleezza-rice">Condoleezza Rice</a>, now Head of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Li expressed her belief that policy intervention can install the important safeguards in areas where the impact of AI is likely to be greatest.</p>
<p>These include its benign potential in health and education, as well as the dangers opening up through disinformation, the loss of privacy and the replacement of human work.</p>
<p>If there is an overriding theme in The Worlds I See, it is that human and artificial intelligence form a double helix. How this evolves, and with what consequences, will depend, Li says, on whether we create “a healthy ecosystem” in which talent, technology and public sector participation are co-ordinated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222394/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If there is an overriding theme in The Worlds I See, it is that human and artificial intelligence form a double helix.Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197002024-01-28T19:03:43Z2024-01-28T19:03:43ZMaid author Stephanie Land reveals the ‘constant, crushing’ panic of her hungriest year, but this college memoir is ‘emptier’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573656/original/file-20240206-27-poso37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3594%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Margaret Qualley as Alex in Maid</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 2014, her senior year of college. Stephanie Land, bestselling author of <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stephanie-land/maid/9780316505116/">Maid</a>, is almost 35, still two years away from landing the publishing deal that will change her life.</p>
<p>A single parent of a six-year-old, she gulps coffee from an empty peanut-butter jar in college classes and struggles to stay awake after kindergarten drop-off. Before the year is out, she’ll be pregnant again, her circumstances infinitely harder.</p>
<p>Land’s mind is always somewhere else. <em>Rent. Bills. Groceries. Medicine, if the budget will stretch that far. An abusive ex-partner who’s stingy with child support.</em></p>
<p>“It’s pretty relentless”, a college professor remarks dismissively in the feedback on one of Land’s life-writing assignments, a quibble that “throbs” in the aspiring author’s head for days afterwards.</p>
<p><em>My life may be relentless</em>, she later writes in one of her many notebooks, <em>but goddammit so am I</em>.</p>
<p>So the days and weeks unfold in Land’s second memoir, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Class/Stephanie-Land/9781982151393">Class</a>, an insular but vivid reflection on a tertiary education system that seems to sabotage the very students who work hardest to be there.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Class – Stephanie Land (Atria)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“Of all the things in my life that I didn’t have access to or felt like I didn’t deserve for some reason, an education hadn’t crossed my mind as a thing I wasn’t supposed to have,” Land recalls.</p>
<p>Yet getting an English degree while struggling to put food on the table leaves Land frequently wracked with guilt, a “constant, crushing panic”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3222%2C2156&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3222%2C2156&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571312/original/file-20240124-21-2wqmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Class, Stephanie Land is still two years away from the publishing deal that will change her life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erika Peterman</span></span>
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<p>Pressing towards graduation, often on the brink of physical exhaustion, she reflects bitterly on the administrative hoop-jumping required of students with little financial or social support, striking at the corporatised core of higher education in America:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had forgotten the part of the game where no one’s education mattered more than the money the university could make from your opportunity to soak up all that learning. God forbid they would make it affordable or easy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The years she spends in snowy Missoula, Montana, are not just plagued by hunger in the literal sense. They are propelled by it too. She hankers for the respite of an easier life: financial security, reliable child care and possible entry to an MFA program.</p>
<p>But even as the book’s titular play on words conjures both the experience of class immobility and the college classroom Land sets out to critique, the book ends up being about neither in particular. As a sequel of sorts to Land’s celebrated debut, Class lacks the sustained storytelling that helped establish Land as an unflinching class commentator.</p>
<p>Maid makes unexpected connections to the privilege and plight of America’s precarious middle class – afforded by the author’s invisible but intimate presence in the homes she cleans. But Class turns inwards, often as disconnected and unfocused as the year it documents.</p>
<p>As one <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101160309-class?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=TuXFi7pBGX&rank=1">Goodreads reviewer</a> has commented, Class falters in its telling, feeling more like “a recitation of things that happened” than the feat of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/from-middle-class-to-homeless-a-mothers-unapologetic-memoir/2019/02/01/e4db6410-137c-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html">“unfussy prose and clear voice”</a> that glues Maid together.</p>
<p>“Not much actually happens in ‘Maid’,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/from-middle-class-to-homeless-a-mothers-unapologetic-memoir/2019/02/01/e4db6410-137c-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html">Jenny Rogers commented</a> in The Washington Post. Yet it “holds you”.</p>
<p>If Class has a looser grip, what else does it offer readers? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/barbara-ehrenreich-never-stopped-trying-to-change-the-world-189953">Barbara Ehrenreich never stopped trying to change the world</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Mega-success with Maid</h2>
<p>If yours was one of the 67 million households that tuned into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_(miniseries)">Maid on Netflix</a>, you may be more familiar with <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/10/maid-netflix-margaret-qualley-andie-macdowell">Margaret Qualley’s “Alex”</a>, loosely based on Land, whose unplanned pregnancy and subsequent attempts to make it alone push her below the poverty line and into the houses of wealthier people whose toilets she scrubs. </p>
<p>Published at the beginning of 2019, Maid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2019/02/10/">launched at number three</a> on The New York Times Best Seller list and was praised by <a href="https://time.com/6101999/maid-review-netflix/">Time magazine</a> as “an empathetic portrait of poverty that dispels the myth of bootstrapping”. Former US President Obama handpicked it for his <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1J3hS-AyW5/">summer reading list</a> later that year. </p>
<p>And in 2021, Netflix’s ten-episode limited series based on the book was a commercial and critical success, laying bare what Lucy Mangan <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/01/maid-review-netflix-homelessness-drama">has rightly called</a> the “unflinching anatomisation of the red tape that surrounds every effort to access the (already minimal) help supposedly on offer to desperate women and their children”.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cLd0dN25i5g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Netflix’s commercially and critically successful Maid was based on Stephanie Land’s first memoir.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Class picks up where Maid leaves off. </p>
<p>In the acknowledgements pages, Land describes a sense of responsibility to her readers to continue the story she’d so far “only partly told”. She insists it’s the book she always wanted to write, focusing on her “hungriest year” – when her “stomach and brain lived in a constant state of anger and lightheadedness”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-just-go-to-school-with-no-food-why-australia-must-tackle-child-poverty-to-improve-educational-outcomes-178426">'I just go to school with no food' – why Australia must tackle child poverty to improve educational outcomes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Easily’ reliving imposter syndrome</h2>
<p>To anyone who’s experienced persistent poverty, generational trauma or the vagaries of solo parenting firsthand, the pervasive themes of frustration and despair that reappear in Class will remain uncomfortably close.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571340/original/file-20240125-19-rygyvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>When Land looks down at her faded clothes and feels like “she always had on the first day of school: a nerdy new kid who didn’t know what to wear in order to fit in”, I can easily relive the imposter syndrome that haunted my own academic journey from start to finish. </p>
<p>The first in my working-class family to complete a university degree, I subsisted on a budget of only $200 a week when I first moved to Brisbane to complete my bachelor’s degree. Ten years later, after bouncing in and out of hospital with life-threatening depression, I was left to pay off thousands in medical debt through my PhD stipend and casual university teaching.</p>
<p>But no matter their background, I suspect few readers could come away from Class without a sharp sense of the unremitting fatigue, frequent indignities and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/books/review/maid-stephanie-land.html">“bleak mental arithmetic”</a> striving to stay afloat demands of the economically disadvantaged. </p>
<p>In Class, Land continues to keep “obsessive track” of her bank account. She pockets toilet rolls from public bathrooms and carries a list of fixed expenses and estimated income with her wherever she goes. </p>
<p>“All my school notebooks had these tiny budgets written inside,” she writes. They’re taped to the wall beside her desk; she scribbles “different versions of it” in her day planner at the start of each month. A tangle of upbeat acronyms – sources of financial assistance like <a href="https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa">FAFSA</a>, <a href="https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/613">TANF</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program">SNAP</a> – represent a demoralising bureaucratic burden for little ultimate gain.</p>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, though, Class is strongest when Land allows herself to drift into a more digressive mode. Her commentary on contraceptive choices, for example, is far more interesting and well developed than the diarised recollections she shares in the lead-up to discovering her second unplanned pregnancy. </p>
<p>Partway through the book, she recalls a time when Missoula was labelled the <a href="https://jezebel.com/my-weekend-in-americas-so-called-rape-capital-5908472">“rape capital”</a> of America after a number of University of Montana football stars were accused of sexual assault. Curiously, she mentions only in passing that a flurry of letters to the editor in response to the news helped her recognise her own experiences of rape.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-most-disadvantaged-parts-of-australia-new-research-shows-its-not-just-income-that-matters-132428">Where are the most disadvantaged parts of Australia? New research shows it's not just income that matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Missed opportunities</h2>
<p>In this way, Class sometimes feels like a series of missed opportunities in the plotting, pace and development of what’s otherwise a compelling premise and an evocative setting. Land writes with an explicit distaste for having to justify or explain herself. She openly objects to the expectation (and veneration) of resilience or “success stories” in the face of gross inequity. </p>
<p>But in Class, this resistance often translates as an unsatisfying emotional distance.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571342/original/file-20240125-19-cohymi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In Maid, where Land speaks of the startling imprint of cleaning other people’s houses on her life – the vulnerabilities she’s exposed to “somehow reminding of her own” – we’re generously treated to what renowned memoirist <a href="https://www.marykarr.com/the-art-of-memoir.html">Mary Karr calls</a> the “totemic objects”, or the idiosyncratic details, that sophisticated writers strive to “place on every page”. The minutiae of her life — and those hers overlaps — feel real in the pungent whiff of her sick daughter’s breath, a client’s hidden cigarette stash, the flecks of vomit on an upturned toilet seat.</p>
<p>Class carries a greater sense of urgency, resorting to a more fervid yet mechanical style that belies its byline as a rumination on motherhood, hunger and higher education.</p>
<p>Land alludes to white privilege only once, commenting that her “plain” appearance has allowed her “an occasional break from my poverty, at least in terms of its visibility to others”. Of class hierarchies, she remarks fleetingly that “what society encouraged and what it actually supported were two different things depending on what economic class you found yourself in”. </p>
<p>Critical engagement with the intersections between identity and the ways we experience the world is noticeably absent. As a writer who labours to reveal the bergs of difficulty that may lurk beneath the appearance of success or stability, she is not always willing to excavate those depths outside her own immediate experience.</p>
<p>In a telling aside that mirrors the book’s inward focus, she exposes a habitual impulse for assuming her circumstances are exceptional, rarely interested enough to look deeper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My friendships were surface level only. Not because I necessarily wanted it that way. I just didn’t have much to give back. There was so much going on in my life between work, kid, and school that I didn’t have the bandwidth to sit and listen while someone talked to me about struggles they had. When I confessed this to anyone, they invariably said that friendship was a two-way street, a give-and-take, where one person needs more support and then the other might and so on. “Yeah, but I don’t know if I will ever not need more support,” I would say.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most baffling is Land’s treatment of her thwarted dream of enrolling in a Masters of Fine Arts (one of few anchoring elements of the narrative), when an unsympathetic college professor denies her application: “Babies don’t belong in grad school”. It’s a gut-wrenching disappointment Land brushes aside in less than a page. </p>
<p>Even America’s increasingly decentralised higher education system goes largely unexplained and unexamined, in a story the publisher packages as a “searing indictment”. </p>
<p>Class is an emptier book, hungry for the reservoir of rich episodic detail that spurred Maid to its unprecedented success as both a memoir and a televised adaptation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-single-parenting-with-a-disability-how-my-9-year-old-daughter-became-my-carer-in-shining-armour-176013">Friday essay: single parenting with a disability – how my 9-year-old daughter became my carer in shining armour</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Like its author, ‘Class works hard’</h2>
<p>Maid, however, was always going to be a tough first act to follow. The so-called “sophomore slump” (or, second-book syndrome) is a recognised phenomenon in the most ordinary of circumstances. An author whose debut has achieved bestseller status and been adapted to the screen invites inevitable comparison.</p>
<p>Even so, Class makes up for what it lacks in craft in its simple insistence on being heard.</p>
<p>Reflecting on her interactions with readers, Land explains that people often ask what motivated her to write about her own life. “The answer is both lofty and painfully basic,” she reveals at the back of Class:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the one hand, I wanted to dismantle stigmas surrounding single moms, especially those who parent under the poverty line. On the other, I needed the money. The prospect of publishing a book wasn’t just the answer to a lifelong dream – it was the discovery of a life raft on a sinking ship.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For readers like me, who’ve floated adrift on their own sinking ships, Class may well be a life raft of another kind. Land’s relentlessness – and her strident aversion to inspirational gloss-coating – creates a redemptive space for lives messily lived, intrusively bureaucratised, and unfairly judged.</p>
<p>At a time when the prohibitive cost of higher education deters so many from the liberal arts (in Land’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/cost-and-lack-of-majors-are-among-the-top-reasons-why-students-leave-for-profit-colleges-204671">America</a>, but also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-27/generational-hecs-debt-university-access-higher-education-cost/102480290">Australia</a> and elsewhere around the world), her story stands as an imperfect but powerful reminder that all voices matter. </p>
<p>Storytelling, Land reminds us, can serve a variety of purposes, discouraging silos of silence from expanding around experiences of marginalisation and expressions of outrage.</p>
<p>Much like Land herself, Class works hard.</p>
<p>It doesn’t always get where it wants to go, but there’s value in its effort.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amber Gwynne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephanie Land’s sequel to her mega-successful debut memoir Maid works as hard as she does – but while its details of low-income single-parent life as a student are valuable, it suffers by comparison.Amber Gwynne, Associate Lecturer in Writing, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169102023-12-17T19:17:00Z2023-12-17T19:17:00ZConversing with the ‘restless dead’ – a posthumous collection of Hilary Mantel’s writing illuminates her singular literary achievement<p>Hilary Mantel’s writing career falls neatly into two periods: before and after Wolf Hall. </p>
<p>At the time of the novel’s publication, Mantel described her nine previous novels as a long apprenticeship for the first volume in her brilliant trilogy centred on the life of Thomas Cromwell: <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008366759/wolf-hall/">Wolf Hall</a> (2009), <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008366766/bring-up-the-bodies/">Bring Up the Bodies</a> (2012) and <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007481095/the-mirror-and-the-light-the-wolf-hall-trilogy-book-3/">The Mirror and the Light</a> (2020).</p>
<p>Her posthumous collection <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/hilary-mantel/a-memoir-of-my-former-self-a-life-in-writing">A Memoir of My Former Self</a> supports this self-assessment. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing – Hilary Mantel (Hachette)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Wolf Hall and its sequel were both awarded the Booker Prize. Before Mantel, only Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee had won the prestigious prize twice; they have since been joined by Margaret Atwood. </p>
<p>But Mantel is the only author to have claimed the prize for two novels in a series and to have won it twice in such quick succession. There is an average of 16 years between the first and second wins for Carey, Coetzee and Atwood. </p>
<p>A shining thread through A Memoir of My Former Self traces Mantel’s impassioned engagement with the Booker, making me wonder whether she is also singular for so openly and honestly setting her sights on it as the pinnacle of achievement for a novelist.</p>
<p>In the essay <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/12/hilary-mantel-exam-stress-booker">Exam Fever</a>, first published in the Guardian in 2009, Mantel describes her Booker routine, which she compares to waiting for exam results when she was so “ill with nerves” and “feverish” that she could not attend school. </p>
<p>Until 2008, her publisher would call when the Booker shortlist was announced, “sounding like an undertaker”. Mantel then “swallowed hard” and continued work on her next book. She recalls that this routine varied only once, in 1992, when Adam Thorpe’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ulverton-9780099573449">Ulverton</a> did not make the shortlist: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I cried, because if Ulverton wasn’t good enough, I couldn’t think what you’d have to do. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The introduction of an official longlist in 2009 broke Mantel’s routine, so that “by the time the shortlist is released you simply don’t know what to do with yourself”. Describing a party for the shortlist announcement, she speculates that the writers’ calm public expressions are masks: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inside (unless they are very unlike me) they feel like mad axemen. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Mantel, to not have made the shortlist with Wolf Hall would have been to know that “words have failed me”.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hilary-mantel-was-one-of-the-great-voices-of-historical-fiction-and-so-much-more-191282">Hilary Mantel was one of the great voices of historical fiction – and so much more</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A celebration</h2>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self is a selection of Mantel’s writings by Nicholas Pearson, her book editor of two decades. To make his selection, Pearson read all of Mantel’s work for newspapers and periodicals, an experience he describes as “a revelation”. </p>
<p>Presented by its publisher as “a celebration of one of Britain’s greatest contemporary writers”, the book appears roughly a year after Mantel’s death as a salve to the many readers saddened that she will write no more. I feel confident Mantel would fully and deeply understand this response to the news of her death. I think, too, that she would appreciate my choice of tense here. In her own words, her “concern as a writer is with memory, personal and collective: with the restless dead asserting their claims”. </p>
<p>The book is published by Hachette’s literary imprint, John Murray, for which Pearson began working as Publishing Director in January 2023, around six months after he was let go by Mantel’s longtime publisher <a href="https://www.thebookseller.com/news/pearson-leaves-fourth-estate-after-26-years-following-redundancy-process">Fourth Estate</a>. Mantel was reportedly “<a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/publishing-giants-left-on-the-shelf-in-dash-for-youth-00q6jc2vh">furious</a>” about Pearson’s departure. There is thus the potential to read this book as a fascinating artefact of publishing history in the making. </p>
<p>Mantel frequently described the work of writing as a type of congress with “ghosts”, a description that extends to Pearson’s anthology. “You talk to the dead one way or another,” she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/17/hilary-mantel-if-suffering-can-make-pay">observed</a>, “and you make it pay.”</p>
<p>There are ghosts asserting their claims everywhere in this book, and throughout Mantel’s oeuvre, including the ghost of the author herself. “As soon as you sit before the screen,” she wrote, “you start haunting yourself.” </p>
<p>Many of the pieces were written by Mantel to “subsidise, financially, the slow process of art”, to support her true calling as a novelist. Reading the collection’s first essay, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview1">On the One Hand</a>, I imagined the ghost of Mantel finding humour in the timing of this book’s release for Christmas, the season when the inseparability of art and commerce is most undeniable. “For many imaginative writers,” she insists, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>working for the press is a fact of their life. But it’s best not to like it too much. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The goal and passion of the novelist, as Mantel presents it, is not to generate the columns, reviews and occasional lectures selected for A Memoir of My Former Self, but to produce a “couture response – lovingly tailored, personal, an unmistakable one-off”. </p>
<p>I am therefore reading with the grain when I write that, while I liked this book, I did not like it too much. </p>
<h2>The shock of personal connection</h2>
<p>I liked this book most for Mantel’s reflections on the distinctive sensibility and habits of readers and writers. I disliked this book most for its flagrant literary exceptionalism, which is communicated through Mantel’s repeated use of “ink” as a metaphor to communicate her essential writerly identity. She is a person for whom “ink is a generative fluid”. </p>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self will be affirming for people seeking endorsement that, as avid readers of high-shelf literature, they are on the better side of human history and culture. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, there were many times when I felt that delicious shock of personal (almost too personal) connection with the writer that Mantel herself describes. It was as though the “author leaned out of the text and touched my arm”. </p>
<p>In 2015, reading Hilary Mantel was my work for several months. I read every one of her books, in the order of their publication, for my essay Hilary Mantel: Raising the Dead, Speaking the Truth, published in James Acheson’s collection <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-contemporary-british-novel-since-2000.html">The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000</a>. I thus felt directly addressed when Mantel, meeting an “amiable man” who remarks that she seems “to have plenty of energy”, asks “what are authors to academics, except more work?” </p>
<p>For avid readers, the potential for such moments of connection is abundant. Mantel recalls a time in her life when she was “unable to walk past a bookshop without going in”. She confesses that she once stole a book from her school library that had been “lying unappreciated on the shelves” since its publication. She claims she is “addicted to the physical act of reading”. </p>
<p>The book is subtitled “A Life in Writing” and Pearson concludes his short introduction with the claim, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What emerges is a portrait of Hilary Mantel’s life in her own words, “messages from people I used to be”. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What it means to succeed or to fail as a writer is the unifying question of A Memoir of My Former Self, but for readers new to Mantel this book is not the place to start considering her success. Instead, begin with Wolf Hall, the novel that explains why she was the first living writer to have her portrait commissioned by the British Library. </p>
<p>For readers who read and loved the Cromwell trilogy, I would recommend her 2005 novel <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007354894/beyond-black/">Beyond Black</a> or her 2003 memoir <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007142729/giving-up-the-ghost/">Giving Up the Ghost</a> (in that order), both of which connect deeply with the Cromwell books and may well inspire you to reread them rather than pick up this volume.</p>
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<p>Many of the pieces gathered here – articles from the Guardian, film reviews from the Spectator, the 2017 Reith Lectures – are freely available online. Charting your own journey through Mantel’s short-form writings might be a better route to the “revelation” Pearson experienced in making this volume. </p>
<p>There is, for example, a special pleasure in listening to the Reith Lectures, recorded live in Manchester and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcbrp">available to stream from the BBC</a>. Mantel’s breathy voice, simultaneously tremulous and supremely confident, gives the lectures a spectral quality they lack on the page. </p>
<p>Having read the 15 film reviews included, Mantel may now be my favourite film critic, and I am impatient to dig into the Spectator archive to read more. But I wish that I had found more coherence in Pearson’s organisation of this book. Perhaps I am simply missing the powerfully controlled authorial voice of Mantel’s books, which no posthumous selection can achieve. </p>
<p>It seems fitting to give the last word here to Mantel’s Cromwell, from the final pages of Wolf Hall: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of the article mistakenly referred to Thomas Cromwell as Oliver Cromwell.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Memoir of My Former Self is a celebration of one of Britain’s most beloved and celebrated novelists.Lisa Fletcher, Professor, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177802023-12-11T19:01:43Z2023-12-11T19:01:43ZIn A Kind of Confession, Alex Miller drops the ‘mask of fiction’ to reveal the intricate depths of a writing life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564699/original/file-20231210-27-o5ekb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C6823%2C4808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sunrise near Winton, Central Queensland.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trevor McKinnon/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alex Miller’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Alex-Miller-A-Kind-of-Confession-9781761470769/">A Kind of Confession</a> is subtitled “the writer’s private world”. It is comprised of excerpts from his notebooks, diaries and selected letters. Spanning 1961 to 2023, these documents sit at a small but decisive distance from the author, having been curated by his wife, Stephanie Miller. </p>
<p>I was wary, at first, of “confession” and “private world”. These words seemed to task the reader with divining Miller’s private life. But the book’s James Baldwin epigraph – “All art is a kind of confession” – disrupted this notion. Gentle teasing is by no means inconsistent with Miller’s fiction, where all is not as it seems. </p>
<p>Stephanie Miller claims the book provides “a direct and intimate narrative without ‘the mask of fiction’”. But readers of Miller will likely know there is no access to the writer’s “private world” that is not already mediated by artful stories. </p>
<p>I will come back to that key phrase, “the mask of fiction”. </p>
<p>Reservations aside, I found myself drawn into the book’s lively, often thought-provoking exchanges with family, friends and readers. Its recurring preoccupations range from the domestic and homely to the worldly and philosophical. Many details resonate with and illuminate Miller’s other writings.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Kind of Confession – Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Author of 16 books to date – mostly fictional, but also non-fictional – Alex Miller is a man of humble origins, adventurous journeys, and a slow-burning but ultimately impressive literary career. </p>
<p>Aged 15, he left his home and family on a South London housing estate to labour on a farm in Somerset. A year later, inspired by images of the “outback”, Miller migrated alone to Australia. </p>
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<p>The boy made his way from Sydney to Central Queensland, where he worked for five years as a ringer. He then moved to Melbourne for work, a first marriage (that ended in about 1970), and study at Melbourne University. For a time, he lived and wrote in seclusion in the New South Wales valley of Araluen. </p>
<p>After his long writing apprenticeship, Miller published his many acclaimed novels from 1988 onwards. A major milestone was <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_ancestorgame.html">The Ancestor Game</a> (1992), an accomplished work greeted at the time as postmodernist, which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Ten years later, <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_stonecountry.html">Journey to the Stone Country</a> (2002), drawn from Miller’s Central Queensland years and his vital friendships with First Nations people, secured a second Miles Franklin win. </p>
<p>Since then, Alex and Stephanie have lived in Castlemaine, Victoria, raising family, writing and travelling, and corresponding with friends. </p>
<h2>The shape of a confession</h2>
<p>Printed books can evoke specific shapes or even landscapes. A Kind of Confession forms, in my mind, as an upside-down cone. The book’s early sections, furthest back in time, are slight as well as remote. They are from notebooks or diaries, interspersed with occasional letters. </p>
<p>The first few decades are represented by brief fragments that are by turns aphoristic, poetic, dispirited and determined. As Stephanie Miller’s introduction reminds us, gaps may be bridged with the help of <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_simplestwords.html">The Simplest Words</a> (2015), which samples Miller’s fictional and non-fictional prose. </p>
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<p>In A Kind of Confession, the closer we move to the present, the greater the mass of material. This inverted cone mirrors a gradual shift in orientation. Letters overtake the solitary notebook. Connection and community spring from myriad exchanges with friends and readers, longstanding and new. Eventually, email becomes the primary mode for correspondence, accommodating frequent exchanges between the mature, established writer and his widening network of correspondents.</p>
<p>It isn’t surprising that Miller’s letters and email exchanges vary in tone and intimacy. We witness the slightly tentative, even guarded relation between the writer and academic literary critics. Miller’s letters to such readers are courteous, even friendly, though often tinged with formality. One exception is his esteem for Robert Dixon, whose book <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/78884">Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time</a> (2014) occasioned much correspondence.</p>
<p>Letters to particular recipients and close friends are, by contrast, open and relaxed. Correspondents include philosopher Raimond Gaita, academic Robert Manne, US academic Ronald A. Sharp, historian Tom Griffiths, artist and neighbour John Wolseley, poet Ouyang Yu and writer Sylvia Martin, among many others. These letters are by turns entertaining and warm, thoughtful and compelling. </p>
<p>We get a brief, tantalising glimpse of Miller’s friendship with the late Hazel Rowley. His admiring letter about her biography of the Roosevelts, <a href="https://hazelrowley.com/books/book-1/">Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage</a> (2012), holds retrospective interest in light of his later biographical work <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_max.html">Max</a> (2020), in which Miller writes of his journey to uncover the hidden history of his friend and mentor Max Blatt.</p>
<p>Whether frank or formal, the letters in A Kind of Confession testify to Robert Dixon’s claim that the gift – gift exchange – is central to Miller’s imaginative project. When they refer to key figures, such as Blatt, the poet Barrett Reid or Miller’s mother, the letters often contemplate debts owed and the repayment of debts through the long-delayed reciprocating gift of story. </p>
<p>A Kind of Confession revisits other questions too. What does it mean to have been an English migrant to Australia? How has this positioned Miller with respect to the settler Australian establishment and First Nations people? Miller’s thoughts about home and belonging intersect with these themes in his fiction. To fellow novelist Pico Iyer he writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all wonder what home might be. We are all strangers in this world and yet indigenous to it. The enigma of home is in all of us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Miller also recognises that the freedom he enjoys has been afforded by his (partly) outsider status, by his severing of “ancestral ties” and by his choice not to belong to “the establishment”. That he has actively protected this freedom is evident from his 2021 letter to Ian McPhee detailing his reasons for declining an Order of Australia. </p>
<p>And yet, as Miller says, Australia is a beloved land, the place where he feels most at home. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unhappy-unfaithful-women-middle-aged-growth-replaces-self-absorption-in-alex-millers-a-brief-affair-192509">'Unhappy, unfaithful women': middle-aged growth replaces self-absorption in Alex Miller's A Brief Affair</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An accidental scratch</h2>
<p>Miller’s Central Queensland novels, as his letters confirm, are profoundly shaped by his close friendship with elders of the Jangga and Barada Barna peoples – notably Colin McLennan and Frank Budby. Again to Pico Iyer, Miller writes of ancient sites he was permitted to visit: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>at 84 I know I’ve barely left more than an accidental scratch on this rock. The real work has yet to be even looked at. I have seen the Playgrounds of the Old People and know my writings to be of no consequence in the place where they have their meaning. It is not mine and never shall be. And this is to know something about myself and the European invader culture from which I come.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words go to the heart of Miller’s Central Queensland novels. To Tom Griffiths, he writes that what he most cares about in Journey to the Stone Country is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the realisation that the province of Western science has a boundary in relation to the sacred in other cultures […] History surely shows that the more we understand the more we destroy on our way to the heart of the matter. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Western will to know is decisively curbed in that novel’s moral turning point. Yet, in fiction, restraint paradoxically fosters other ways of knowing. There are other means of opening what Tom Griffiths calls “vast spaces of reflection”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>It is clear that Stephanie Miller is central to her husband’s writing life. She is also a former academic and an astute reader of his writing. Her introduction offers the insightful observation that this material illuminates the “thinking behind the writing and publication of his books, much of which he had forgotten and had re-written into his own concocted history”. </p>
<p>I am struck by the phrase “concocted history”. It suggests a personal history that is thoroughly fictionalised, even to the point of self-mythologisation. For Miller, the true quarry is the self, and the self’s elusiveness necessitates the mask of fiction. </p>
<p>Recalling Flaubert’s famous “Madame Bovary, c'est moi”, Miller often adopts the mask of a female protagonist. He explains to Sylvia Martin: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the business of fiction for me is a strange place where self and other begin to meld in mysterious ways, again, not in the combining of facts but in the combining of the sense of someone who is me is not me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This pattern is repeated in Miller’s recent novel <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_abriefaffair.html">A Brief Affair</a> (2022). This late work reprises, in distilled form, situations and themes familiar to his readers. Its protagonist Fran is a kind of self-portrait. Like its predecessors, A Brief Affair unearths, in Stephanie Miller’s words, “material from his earlier life”. </p>
<p>At the same time, Miller’s fiction engages with landscapes, social life and ideas, presenting “our interior lives within the artful carapace of story”. </p>
<p>“Nothing is really new,” he writes to novelist Githa Hariharan in 1994. “It’s all the old stuff finding a voice.” </p>
<p>Miller emerges as a writer less interested in stylistic experiment than in achieving, as he puts it to Hazel Rowley, “a limpid simplicity through which the depths are visible, are present to us, but are not obscure in the sense that complexity is often rendered”. </p>
<p>From this perspective, complex depths don’t become visible through confession. Rather, they are yielded by artful simplicity and the indirect means of “the mask of fiction”. Time and again, Miller returns to places, people and situations formative of the ever-elusive, ever-insistent self.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brigid Rooney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alex Miller is a man of humble origins, adventurous journeys, and a slow-burning but ultimately impressive literary career.Brigid Rooney, Associate Professor (Affiliate), Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123432023-12-07T19:19:00Z2023-12-07T19:19:00ZFriday essay: blind people are often exhausted by daily prejudice – but being blind is ‘inherently creative’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562623/original/file-20231130-19-3d37qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C40%2C6699%2C4396&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thirdman/Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Andrew Leland was in his thirties when he had to stop driving at night – and then stop driving at all. Next, he had to start using a cane in public. As the cycle of decreasing vision became familiar, each absent sliver of vision required more adjustment to how he navigated the world. </p>
<p>He moves through the same steps in the same sequence each time, but each loss is unique, and uniquely stressful. And he can still see the disdain of sighted people, which makes him long to lose all his vision at once:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought about my periodic desire for the eye disease to just get it over with, and take the rest of my sight. I wanted to be relieved of seeing the way people look at blindness: the scorn, the condescension, the entitled, almost sexual leer. Skepticism, pity, revulsion, curiosity. I know I’ve looked at blind people this way too […] But I was a different person then: I didn’t really think of myself as blind.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with glasses and dark hair, smiling, wearing a polo shirt over a black t-shirt. Leafy branches in background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559008/original/file-20231113-15-y77vl9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Leland was in his thirties when he started to lose his vision.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Blindness, creativity and memoir</h2>
<p>Responding to the idea that James Joyce’s blindness influenced his writing of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-amateurs-age-of-unriddling-finnegans-wake-on-stage-38498">Finnegans Wake</a>, his biographer Richard Ellmann asserted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The theory that Joyce wrote his book for the ear because he could not see is not only an insult to the creative imagination, but an error of fact. Joyce could see; to be for periods half-blind is not at all the same thing as to be permanently blind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What Ellmann presents as a fact is actually a common myth. 85% of permanently blind people <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/eye-health/why-do-blind-people-wear-sunglasses">have sight</a>. (I am one of the 15% of blind people who is totally blind, and the even smaller minority born this way.) And the line between blind and sighted is not straightforward. The results of a number of tests, and other factors, are taken into account.</p>
<p>Ellmann sounds like he is uncomfortable with thinking of Joyce as blind, and thinking of blind people as creative.</p>
<p>By contrast, during the writing of Finnegans Wake, Joyce himself was relaxed about the losses and gains of his situation. Responding to a letter from a friend on this topic, he wrote: “What the eyes bring is nothing. I have a hundred worlds to create, I am losing only one of them.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight – Andrew Leland (Penguin Press), Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness – Selina Mills (Bloomsbury Academic)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>These tensions of identity and creativity between those who are sighted and those who are blind existed long before Joyce, and are still prevalent a century later. They are explored with candour and thoughtfulness in two recent memoirs, by <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/life-unseen-9781848856905/">Selina Mills</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-country-of-the-blind-9781984881427">Leland</a>. </p>
<p>Like Joyce, their versions of blindness mean they have sight that gradually decreases over decades. And they are writers – both are journalists. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558971/original/file-20231112-25-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blind writer Selina Mills explores the tensions of identity and creativity in her memoir.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While their memoirs are obviously written from personal vantage points, Mills and Leland detail much more than their own stories. Interwoven with their experiences of becoming blind are the experiences of blind writers, performers, teachers, activists, inventors and so on. </p>
<p>Mills, who is from the UK, researched blind women throughout European history. The few famous blind women she mentions are from outside Europe (which demonstrates the need for her research). One of them is American activist and author <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Helen-Keller">Helen Keller</a> (1880-1968). Another is <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/aston-matilda-ann-tilly-5078">Tilly Aston</a> (1873-1947), also known as “Australia’s blind poet.”</p>
<p>As Mills’ own sight decreased, she felt surrounded by sighted people’s stereotypes of blindness. She was compelled to research the real members of her community, for herself and her readers. As she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>so much of our knowledge of blind people has relied on how sighted people have interpreted blindness. […] We fear it, we punish with it, we find it powerful and alluring all at the same moment and have done so for centuries. Principally, we rarely hear the voices of blind people themselves. Why not? Who were these blind people who lived and died, who were not just heroes or burdens of the sighted world?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly Leland, who lives in the US, concentrates on the recent and present US blind community in order to encourage both himself and his audience to develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be blind:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I met people who said that their blindness meant nothing to them – that it was a mere attribute, like hair color – and others whose blindness utterly defined and upended their lives. […] I sympathized with all of these positions, even as I wondered which attitudes I would adopt for my own life. I tried to understand how blindness was changing my identity as a reader and a writer, as a husband and a father, as a citizen and an otherwise privileged white guy.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-amateurs-age-of-unriddling-finnegans-wake-on-stage-38498">The amateur’s age of unriddling: Finnegans Wake on stage</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What blind people have in common</h2>
<p>I was drawn to both books by their exploration of historical and philosophical questions. But as I read, Leland and Mills’ experiences of being blind with some sight also became compelling for how universal they are. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558981/original/file-20231112-25-gkxftm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>I have talked with many people losing sight as they transition to blindness, and am well aware of the shape of the sight-loss journey. Yet these books emphasised to me the significant number of experiences blind people have in common, regardless of how much sight we have, or where we live, or when we were born.</p>
<p>Mills and Leland have both been losing sight for two decades now. But they began at different levels of sight and the cause was different for each of them. </p>
<p>Leland’s sight loss began as night blindness when he was a teenager. His research on the early internet suggested the cause was <a href="https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/retinitis-pigmentosa#:%7E:text=Retinitis%20pigmentosa%20(RP)%20is%20a,that%20people%20are%20born%20with.">retinitis pigmentosa</a> (RP), a degenerative condition where night blindness is followed by peripheral vision loss, then central vision loss, sometimes ending in total blindness. After his first year of college, he went to an eye clinic where his self-diagnosis was confirmed. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-birthday-braille-how-writing-you-can-touch-is-still-helping-blind-people-to-read-and-learn-89550">Happy birthday, Braille: how writing you can touch is still helping blind people to read and learn</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Leland’s interest in understanding blindness as an identity develops another dimension when he learns his retinitis pigmentosa is part of his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. He discovers that throughout history, blind people and Jewish people were often denigrated in similar ways. </p>
<p>Medieval literature and disability studies researcher Edward Wheatley points out, for example, that both groups were branded as greedy, lazy, and dishonest. And both groups were said to be responsible for their marginalisation by Christian society – Jewish people for refusing to convert, and blind people for sinfulness.</p>
<p>Significantly, both blind people and Jewish people were early and constant victims of the Nazis. And the threat multiplied if you belonged to both groups. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disabled-people-were-holocaust-victims-too-they-were-excluded-from-german-society-and-murdered-by-nazi-programs-198298">Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The borderlands between blind and sighted</h2>
<p>Mills’ sight began to decrease in her early thirties. However, she was already accustomed to living in the borderlands between blind and sighted: she was born with no sight in one eye. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558980/original/file-20231112-21-psr9xn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Growing up, she attended mainstream schools. Her childhood, though, had many experiences in common with other blind children. Teachers incorrectly assumed that she had learning difficulties when she was six and she got a prosthetic eye when she was ten. She was left to drift rather than being supported throughout her schooling and she finished school without having been taught braille or how to use a cane.</p>
<p>Having only spent time with sighted people, she was used to thinking of herself as similar to them, even though she was often exhausted and they were not. </p>
<p>In her twenties, she became a journalist and travelled throughout Europe. She only sometimes carried a cane, just as a precaution. Mills was in her early thirties when bus numbers and step edges became difficult to see. This prompted her to go to an ophthalmologist, who discovered she had an inoperable cataract.</p>
<h2>Other people’s prejudice</h2>
<p>Mills and Leland have to manage a range of emotions that accompany losing sight, as well as the reactions of their families and friends. But the most difficult aspect of being blind, they discover, is other people’s prejudice. </p>
<p>Echoing the experiences of the blind people whose lives they explore, they are exhausted by the frequency and variety of prejudice they have to manage in their daily lives. </p>
<p>Sometimes it is overt: being denied education or work, being told to not have sex or have children, being refused entry to a venue if not accompanied by a sighted person. Sometimes it is questions disguised as concern – about whether you can cook, or how you are sure you have performed a work task properly, or whether you actually need to learn braille. </p>
<p>It always contains the message that being sighted is superior to being blind, and blind people should feel envious of sighted people and ashamed of who we are.</p>
<p>I suspect it was this prejudice Joyce was reacting to when he said, “What the eyes bring is nothing.” I don’t think he meant he had no use at all for the tiny amount of sight he had. I think he was exasperated by so many people continuing to insist it must be more difficult for him to write as a blind person. Certainly, he felt sight was not a prerequisite for creativity and that blindness had enhanced his writing.</p>
<p>This prejudice even extends to sighted people believing they have the knowledge to distinguish between blind and sighted strangers within seconds of seeing them. And they believe they are entitled to call out anyone they are convinced is faking it. </p>
<p>This happens to Mills at a train ticket barrier when the guard asks her for her ticket, then for her disabled person’s travel card. Like most blind people, she keeps the card in a specific place in her wallet, ready for these occasions. But the guard associates blindness with slowness and incompetence, so takes her organisation as evidence she is faking blindness:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“How did you get that then?” “Get what?” “Your disability travel card? – I mean, you can see all right, can’t you?” Having learnt to be patient with other non-believers, I was calm. “Oh, I know, but I have only got about 20 per cent vision on a good day. The doctors tested me.” Unconvinced, the guard continued: “You think you can get your card, and just get away with it. I saw you walking down the platform, bright and breezy. You are faking it!” He was quite proud of his little diatribe and seemed unkeen to let me through unless I confessed to my high crimes and misdemeanours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fortunately she has an irrefutable piece of evidence – her prosthetic eye, which she removes and presents to the guard: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“ The queue gasped. I was shaking with fury. You really think I had my real eye plucked out and went through the pain of having a false eye made, just to get a discount on my f*king train ticket?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blind people are harassed in this way regardless of our level of sight. As a totally blind person, I have many similar anecdotes. However, these experiences can have a particularly devastating effect on someone adjusting to blindness. </p>
<p>Both Mills and Leland discuss how incidents like this make them reluctant to use a cane. "Sometimes I left the cane behind, just to have a day off from the reactions, but the falling over and bashing into lampposts is not always worth it,” writes Mills. “The more I need to use my cane to find curbs and doorways, the more patronizing and intrusive (and sometimes hostile) strangers become,” echoes Leland.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-lawson-and-judith-wright-were-deaf-but-theyre-rarely-acknowledged-as-disabled-writers-why-does-that-matter-208365">Henry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Blind women from history</h2>
<p>Connecting with other blind people helps both Leland and Mills not just accept, but value their blindness. The blind people they encounter show them how to minimise the effect of sighted prejudice on their identity, and to understand that being blind is inherently creative.</p>
<p>Mills connects with blind women from history who deserve to be better known. And it is thrilling to learn about them with her, and to know that details of their lives are finally more publicly accessible. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of Saint Odile, bowing in a gold robe, among greenery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558972/original/file-20231112-27-sorot6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saint Odile of Alsace, a blind woman, founded two monasteries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odile_of_Alsace#/media/File:Alsace_Mont_Sainte-Odile_24.JPG">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odile_of_Alsace">Saint Odile of Alsace</a> (an area now occupied by France and Germany), born in 660 AD, who travelled throughout Europe and founded two monasteries. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se-Ad%C3%A8le_Husson">Therese-Adele Husson</a>, born in 1803, was a French writer of children’s books and romantic fiction. And <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresia_von_Paradis">Maria Theresia von Paradis</a>, born in 1759 in Austria, was a talented pianist from a young age. </p>
<p>As an adult, Maria Theresia’s life was divided between being subjected to one horrific so-called cure after another and performing throughout Europe. She was friends with Haydn, as well as Mozart – who composed a piano concerto for her. She was a composer herself, of more than five operas and more than 30 sonatas, and in Vienna she established one of the first schools for blind musicians. </p>
<p>As Mills points out, “unlike Mozart and Haydn and a few other known women composers, who died penniless or unpublished, she had what few musicians had in the age – a successful profession and an income.”</p>
<h2>Developing a blind identity</h2>
<p>Leland feels connected to a number of 20th-century blind writers, such as James Joyce, and to many current blind writers, as well as advocates, engineers and artists.</p>
<p>Many blind people devoted years of their lives to argue for the rights of all disabled people to have equal access to public spaces, education, employment and more. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, so much technology in everyday use over the last century has been created or enhanced by blind people, from long-play records to internet chat forums. And every step of the way, many blind people generously shared their knowledge to help others who were still developing their skills. </p>
<p>One of the people who shared their knowledge with Leland was American activist and teacher Barbara Loos. Leland met Loos at a blindness convention. She encouraged him to attend the residential training course that later accelerates Leland’s cane skills and confidence. </p>
<p>She then pinpoints the problems with how he’d been taught to read braille. This sets him on the path to reestablishing and reinvigorating his identity as a reader by learning to read braille correctly and obtaining a braille display – a device that connects to a computer and displays the screen one line at a time.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>once I’d finished my last course, I brought it [the braille display] out again, and fell in love. Reading on the braille display was a palliative against my anxiety about going blind. The more facility I gained with it, the more I could imagine a rich life for myself as a blind reader.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reading these books, and the lives and work they explore, I feel extremely proud of my community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Tink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two new memoirs make blind writer Amanda Tink ‘very proud’ of her community – and share the stories of blind writers, performers, teachers, activists and inventors.Amanda Tink, Adjunct Research Fellow, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173282023-11-10T10:41:48Z2023-11-10T10:41:48ZBarbra Streisand’s autobiography My Name is Barbra shows how she redefined the diva<p>Barbra Streisand, whose autobiography – <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/432737/my-name-is-barbra-by-streisand-barbra/9781529136890">My Name is Barbra</a> – was published this week, is one of the most successful divas of the past 60 years.</p>
<p>She has released 117 singles, 36 studio albums, 12 compilations, 11 live albums and 15 soundtracks. And there are the countless awards. A Tony, eight Grammys, five Emmys, four Peabodys, two Oscars, nine Golden Globes and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.</p>
<p>With the Oscar she won in 1977 for best song (Evergreen, from her version of A Star is Born), Streisand became the first woman to win the award as a composer. She also won the Golden Globe for direction for the 1983 movie Yentl, a film she also co-wrote, produced and starred in. It took until 2021 for <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/awards/industry/chloe-zhao-golden-globes-best-director-award-nomadland-1234619634/">another woman to win the award</a>.</p>
<p>In the US, she’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/arts/music/streisands-encore-tops-the-billboard-album-chart.html">had a number one album in every decade since the 1960s</a>, and she is the second bestselling female album artist after Taylor Swift, who <a href="https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-breaks-record-most-no-1-albums-women-2023-7">only overtook her this year</a>.</p>
<p>In short, whether you like her work or not, Streisand is an undeniable trailblazer. Yet the word “diva”, which has regularly been applied to her, is something she tends to reject. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zv7sfHYj0o">a 2014 interview</a>, Streisand discussed the topic directly, appearing to reject the label for two reasons. First, because she’s not an opera singer, and second, because she dislikes its pejoratively gendered use. “Why does nobody call a man a diva?” she asked.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gSMReKtGq1Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Streisand winning the Oscar for Evergreen in 1977.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The word itself means “goddess”, but for every empowering interpretation (a superstar, a queen, an idol) there are a host of dis-empowering ones (difficult, self important, demanding). </p>
<p>Last month I gave <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=p_e_ueLuwGA">a lecture about Streisand</a> as part of my series of lectures on 20th-century divas. I understand why Streisand doesn’t like the idea of the “diva”. It’s irritating for a successful woman to be given a label that seems to automatically brand her a troublemaker, when women have historically been barred from many positions of power. You have to cause a bit of disruption if you want to effect change. </p>
<p>But it also seems to me that for someone whose work has been significantly focused on smashing glass ceilings – taking fiscal responsibility for several films as well as directing them, for example – the way in which the word “diva” evokes images of power means it’s a great word for her career.</p>
<h2>The power of ‘diva’</h2>
<p>As a diva, Streisand has consistently defied instructions not to do something by doubling up her efforts. For example, at the start of her career when she was auditioning for record labels, one of the executives said she had a nice voice but was “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0_JjRtILHc&t=278s">too ethnic</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Barbra Streisand in 1962." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558405/original/file-20231108-19-w6vjh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Barbra Streisand in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barbra_Streisand_1962.jpg">United States Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her response was to loudly embrace her Jewish identity. She played explicitly Jewish characters in her first two and only stage roles, in the musicals I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) and Funny Girl (1964). She refused to get a nose job and drew attention to her nose a lot in her work. And she co-wrote, produced, directed and appeared in the hit film Yentl (1983), about a Jewish woman who pretends to be a man in order to get an education. </p>
<p>Success has often come to Streisand by doing things people have told her not to do: a twist on the negative diva trope.</p>
<p>Her self-actualisation is demonstrated through her changing the spelling of her first name (Barbara to Barbra), highlighted once again in the title of her new memoir My Name is Barbra, and insisting on her second name being pronounced a particular way. </p>
<p>She even got the CEO of Apple to <a href="https://playbill.com/article/barbra-streisand-gets-apple-ceo-to-correct-pronunciation-of-her-name#:%7E:text=Instead%20of%20saying%2C%20%E2%80%9CStrei%2D,the%20next%20update%20on%20Sep.">correct the pronunciation of her name on Siri</a>. Although this may seem like diva behaviour, she is actually solidifying a strong sense of self, which has been at the heart of all her work.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Streisand in 2015." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558406/original/file-20231108-24-qgt394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Streisand in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barbra_Streisand_with_Francis_Collins_and_Anthony_Fauci_(27806589237)_(cropped).jpg">National Institutes of Health</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pejorative connotations of the word “diva” have sometimes been used unfairly towards Streisand. It’s clear that she enjoys and relies on strong collaborators. Documents from the <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/funny-girl-how-barbra-streisand-turned-once-struggling-production-classic-broadway-hit">Library of Congress</a> show some of the changes that the lyricist (Bob Merrill) and composer (Jule Styne) made during the rehearsals for Funny Girl to help enhance her performance (including making cuts and changing words and keys).</p>
<p>Having found her voice, chosen her name and controlled how it’s pronounced, and achieved influence through producing, directing and writing, Streisand has appropriated the power of being a “diva” to achieve her ambitions. She may understandably dissociate with the negatives about the word, but by finding her own path and rejecting the historical limitations of her gender, she has become a diva on her own terms.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Broomfield-McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a diva, Streisand has consistently defied instructions not to do something by doubling up her efforts.Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, Professor of Musicology, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157012023-11-06T05:38:40Z2023-11-06T05:38:40ZThe atomic bomb and a near-death experience shadow Richard Flanagan’s autobiographical Question 7<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557050/original/file-20231101-27-9cax5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4771%2C3183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rapids on the Franklin River, Tasmania.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Taras Vyshnya/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The most astonishing and accomplished sequence in Richard Flanagan’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/question-7-9781761343452">Question 7</a> arrives near the book’s end, as he describes the near-death experience that inspired his first novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/death-of-a-river-guide-9781761048111">Death of a River Guide</a>, published in 1994. </p>
<p>It reads as if Flanagan has spent the book winding up, gathering the strength to find an angle of entry into that formative trauma. With propulsive confidence, he details the hours spent trapped under a kayak, being battered and pressed by the Franklin River’s tumultuous waters, brushing up against death, perhaps briefly succumbing, before being rescued and returned, transformed, to the world of the living. </p>
<p>The irony, however, of this sequence’s brilliance, is that it clarifies how certain aspects of the book that precedes it are oddly hesitant. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Question 7 – Richard Flanagan (Knopf)</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>Question 7 begins with an epigraph from a review of Moby-Dick, printed in an 1851 edition of the Hobart Town Mercury, speculating about the generic ambiguity of Herman Melville’s masterwork. The reviewer is baffled as to whether they are reading “history, autobiography, gazetteer, tragedy, romance, almanac, melodrama or fantasy”.</p>
<p>The reader is thus introduced to the refusal of Question 7 to neatly inhabit a single genre, and its occasional efforts to trouble the distinction between truth and fabrication. </p>
<p>The formal experimentation appears to derive from Flanagan’s anxiety that autobiography is necessarily fictitious. The desire to document one’s life accurately, he suggests, is made foolish by the ephemerality of language, the unreliability of memory, and the unaccountable contingencies of history.</p>
<p>Notably, the narrator of Question 7 – who seems, despite the formal evasiveness, to be Richard Flanagan – refers to Death of a River Guide as “another novel”, suggesting this was the category he had in mind when writing Question 7. Much of the book is, however, essayistic and, for what it’s worth, it is categorised on the publisher’s website as “non-fiction prose”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-moby-dick-by-herman-melville-52000">Guide to the classics: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Who loves longer?</h2>
<p>The question around which Question 7 orbits is taken from an early Chekhov story titled “Questions Posed by a Mad Mathematician” (Flanagan omits the title). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Flanagan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/richard-flanagan">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Chekhov’s version, a description of a train travelling between stations at specified times, written in the style of a tricky question of arithmetic, ends instead with a metaphysical query: “Who is capable of loving longer, a man or a woman?” </p>
<p>Flanagan’s version, returned to throughout the book, is: “Who loves longer?” </p>
<p>In considering this question, Flanagan traces a path from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/H-G-Wells">H.G. Wells</a>’ affair with <a href="https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-biography/rebecca-west/">Rebecca West</a> to Wells’ 1914 novel <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm">The World Set Free</a>, the invention of the atomic bomb, and the bombing of Hiroshima, which brought about the end of his father’s internment in a Japanese prison camp. </p>
<p>Hungarian physicist <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/biographies/szilard.html">Leo Szilard</a>, a key figure in the bomb’s creation, reads Wells and, comprehending the potential destructive reality of such a weapon, conceives of its scientific possibility. Flanagan explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction. Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flanagan thus intertwines his personal narrative with a kind of historical fiction. The impulse to understand how he is implicated in the broad sweep of historical catastrophe is understandable, but pays off inconsistently. In one instance, for example, he imagines Szilard taking a bath (Flanagan tells us Szilard was an inveterate bather) and contemplating the possibility of Wells’ apocalyptic fictions becoming reality: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As he lay back in his tub that autumnal London morning, Leo Szilard wondered why the forecasts of writers sometimes prove to be more accurate than those of scientists.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leo Szilard c.1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leo_Szilard.jpg">U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the acknowledgements, Flanagan admits Szilard’s bath is “pure fancy”. The problem is that it reads like fancy, more caricature than characterisation, adding nothing of substance. This is particularly evident when contrasted with Flanagan’s descriptions of members of his own family, whom he typically brings to striking, vivid life. </p>
<p>The bath sequence is followed by a passage in which Szilard is struck by the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction while watching traffic lights change in central London, a fact to which the physicist attested that is startling enough and needs no embellishment.</p>
<p>Similarly, a chapter in which Flanagan attempts to get inside the heads of West and Wells during their first encounter, which led to their affair and lifelong entanglement, feels fabricated and flimsy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And so as their monologues began duelling, dancing, fighting and playing together, tumbling like dangerous kittens, she began enjoying herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And yet there are moments of startling historical insight. Fascinatingly, terrifyingly, Flanagan explains that the systematic genocide of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people by British colonists was the stimulus for Wells’ novel <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-War-of-the-Worlds-novel-by-Wells">The War of the Worlds</a>. Flanagan thus connects the nuclear destruction that terminated the war with Japan, where his Tasmanian father was imprisoned, to the systematic extermination of the first peoples in his native Tasmania. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-war-of-the-worlds-128453">Guide to the classics: The War of the Worlds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Throughout all this, he continues to ask: “Who loves longer?” I was never sure what exactly this meant. Flanagan reads the question as being</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like so much of what Chekhov wrote … about how the world from which we presume to derive meaning and purpose is not the true world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Undercutting this, the power Question 7 possesses is sourced almost entirely from those moments when Flanagan appears to be trying his hardest to tell the truth. It is an incomprehensible paradox, never quite reconciled, that Flanagan seems convinced of the insufficiency of language, yet equally convinced of a novel’s role in bringing us to the edge of apocalypse. </p>
<p>“All words,” he writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>are at best transitory and soon enough become archaic, ceasing to belong to language at all and instead becoming the property of data sets that after a further time return only dead URL links, so many 404 errors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His conclusion? Writers are “no more than dancing shoes sliding between the dancer and the floor”.</p>
<p>There are several philosophical asides like this, expressing anxiety about the language’s failure to rightly communicate meaning. In this picture, there is a true world unavailable to us, and a false one determined by our words. Yet these conceptions of truth and falsity are also linguistically determined, so Flanagan’s notion of insufficiency, hanging on language, in the thrall of a commitment to some essential yet unavailable reality, undoes itself from the inside out.</p>
<p>The central oddness of the book is that the power of this generalised question, fictitiously posed by a mad mathematician, is far less potent than the urgency conjured by Flanagan’s humblest reminiscences. Recounting a cherished childhood memory of capturing and riding a Clydesdale bareback, experiencing the thrill of risking and resisting a fall, Flanagan writes, a touch awkwardly: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a time of wonder and all things had the shape of miracles. And like a miracle, no evidence that it ever happened remains.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">H.G. Wells in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H.G._Wells_by_Beresford.jpg">George Charles Beresford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite his doubts, Flanagan presents us with the evidence that it did in fact happen, the form of his testimony, his memory. If neither memory nor testimony is evidence of anything, then I’m not sure how we are to make sense of ourselves. Flanagan is presenting a binary view of the world, where the fallibility of memory and language throws our identities into utter crisis. </p>
<p>This is happily undermined by the vibrant energy with which Flanagan tells us of the people he has loved. </p>
<p>The most moving and intelligent parts of Question 7 are the least concerned with the grand fluctuations of world history. They describe Flanagan’s family: his ornery grandmother, known as Mate, regretfully outliving her husband and friends, “condemned to survive on her children’s charity”; his father, disgruntled by Flanagan’s mother’s culinary adventurousness in serving meat and four veg, requesting an end to this “modern food” and a return to meat and three. He recounts a trip to Japan where he meets his father’s erstwhile captors, and describes the death of his mother, the unbearable beauty of friends and family gathering around her in the final days. </p>
<p>Flanagan is at his least convincing when philosophising about the purpose and capacity of writing, as when he makes this baffling claim that the book itself does not bear out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the only writing that can have any worth confounds time and stands outside of it, swims with it and flies with it and dives deep within it, seeking the answer to one insistent question: who loves longer?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A generous interpretation of this belief is that the best writing raises questions that are impossible to answer. But there are many types of productive ambiguity. Mightn’t there be other formulations, other dispositions, with which we can understand ourselves, others, and literature? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-richard-flanagans-the-living-sea-of-waking-dreams-considers-griefs-big-and-small-147105">Review: Richard Flanagan's The Living Sea of Waking Dreams considers griefs big and small</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>That’s life</h2>
<p>Question 7 owes a particular debt to Kurt Vonnegut’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/slaughterhouse-5-9780099800200">Slaughterhouse Five</a>, another novel that forges a complex relationship with autobiography and contends with the legacies of destruction wrought by the Allies during the second world war. </p>
<p>As Vonnegut meditatively repeats “So it goes” whenever a death is mentioned in his novel, Flanagan repeats the decidedly less poetic “That’s life” a handful of times throughout the book when the spectre of death is conjured. </p>
<p>There are numerous repetitions of this kind – some effective, others less so. For instance, Flanagan twice writes unhelpfully that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Experience is but a moment. Making sense of that moment is life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Repetition is used more elegantly to reckon with the shifting understanding of one’s parents that comes with ageing. Flanagan tells of his father returning from the unspeakable horrors of a wartime prison camp, taking a train trip around Tasmania:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps he wanted to see people and places he had thought he would never see again. Perhaps it was an immeasurable comfort to him to be allowed to sit in their homes, their kitchens, their lounges, their backyards and say little or nothing, warmed by the human goodness of others, to be astonished by the small everyday acts of kindness too easily dismissed as everyday.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Near the book’s end, Flanagan writes of his return to the ordinary world after his near-drowning, seeing places and people he thought he would never see again:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was such a comfort to be allowed to sit in their homes, I sat in their small kitchens, their tired lounges, their blighted backyards and said little or nothing, warmed by the immense human goodness of others. I was astonished by the small everyday acts of kindness too easily dismissed as everyday.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The repetition conveys the ways we follow and resist our parents, the ways we forever comprehend them anew as we grow towards and beyond the age they were when we were born. Through language, through writing, despite his reservations, Flanagan begins to understand and begins to be understood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Dixon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Question 7, Richard Flanagan writes of the contingencies of history, and troubles the distinction between truth and fabrication.Dan Dixon, Adjunct Lecturer, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165452023-10-27T11:37:38Z2023-10-27T11:37:38ZBritney Spears’ memoir is a reminder of the stigma and potential damage of child stardom<p>Britney Spears’ new memoir, The Woman in Me, illustrates once again the potential lifelong damage that can be caused by being a child star. Like many before her, including <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judy-Garland">Judy Garland</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Jackson">Michael Jackson</a>, Spears was ushered into the dangerous terrain of childhood fame by the adults who were supposed to be protecting her, and was utterly unprepared to deal with the fallout.</p>
<p>Spears’ <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53494405">father’s conservatorship</a>, controlling every aspect of her personal and professional life, was finally rescinded in 2021. She is now able to share the details of her extraordinary years in the limelight and beyond.</p>
<p>From a sociological perspective, childhood is considered socially constructed. This means that there are specific ways of raising children which are socially and culturally defined. We discard these conventions surrounding the early years of life at our peril. </p>
<p>The boundaries and rules around what is and is not acceptable during childhood, and the normal activities and institutions that shape the experience of being a child have developed over the centuries for a reason – to try and keep children safe from the harsh realities of the adult world. </p>
<p>Being sexualised and valued for your appearance, being paid to work, having to deal with criticism and unwanted attention from strangers – these are all difficult aspects of growing up. Children and teens need careful support and guidance if they are to navigate safely into their adult lives and identities.</p>
<p>The experience of childhood fame throws aside this social safety net for children in every possible way, and the consequences can be disastrous. </p>
<h2>The price of child fame</h2>
<p>From the earliest child stars of Hollywood’s golden age, through the television sitcoms and shows of the mid-20th century, the rise of the pop and film industries in the following decades and the burst in popularity of reality TV and talent shows of the early 21st century, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17482798.2011.584378">children have always featured</a>. Many have paid a heavy price for their often short period of fame.</p>
<p>Sad stories of <a href="https://www.or-nc.com/why-do-child-stars-become-addicted-to-drugs/">drug and alcohol addiction</a>, <a href="https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/11/02/uncle-fester-star-jackie-coogans-tragic-life-child-fortune-to-horror-crash">family disputes</a>, <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/child-actors-who-became-criminals/nathan-gibso">criminal activity</a> and <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/us-showbiz/former-nickelodeon-star-drake-bells-29769568">toxic relationships</a> are frequently reported by the media. These reinforce the stereotypical “child star gone bad” and “too much too young” narratives that the wider public has come to expect.</p>
<p>For example, stories abound of <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/11/macaulay-culkin-reveals-never-divorced-parents-emancipated-12222457/">Macaulay Culkin “divorcing” his controlling parents</a> and his difficulties transitioning into adult life, <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/film-tv/why-it-was-not-a-wonderful-life-for-macaulay-culkin-after-he-found-fame-in-the-hit-christmas-film-home-alone/37620091.html">feeling trapped</a> in the image of boyhood innocence of his most famous character, Kevin in the Home Alone movies.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kSJ8XjTw10kC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">In her autobiography</a> actor Drew Barrymore has written about her casual acceptance at Hollywood parties and consumption of alcohol at a very young age, following her role in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/">E.T.</a> (1982) aged five. </p>
<p>There is also the tragic life and death of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/may/29/gary-coleman-obituary">Gary Coleman</a>, cute kid star of the American sitcom <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077003/">Diff'rent Strokes</a> (1978-1986). </p>
<p>Coleman, who died at 42 following a history of <a href="https://nypost.com/2010/05/29/troubled-80s-child-star-gary-colemans-life-is-cut-short-at-42/#:%7E:text=In%202005%2C%20Coleman%20moved%20to,and%20%22wanted%20to%20die.%22">substance abuse</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2010/05/28/gary_coleman_dies/">depression</a>, reported being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/may/29/gary-coleman-obituary">deeply humiliated</a> by people asking: “Didn’t you used to be …?” when he was working as a security guard at a supermarket as an adult.</p>
<h2>Other possibilities</h2>
<p>It’s important to note, however, that a difficult trajectory is not the experience of all child stars and former child stars. The actors from the Harry Potter films, for example, seem <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/22/the-not-so-cursed-child-did-harry-potter-mark-the-end-of-troubled-young-actors">largely to have transitioned well</a> into adult lives and careers – some in the spotlight, others not. </p>
<p>And the new generation of famous children and teens such as <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/stranger-things-millie-bobby-brown">Millie Bobby Brown</a>, star of the Netflix show <a href="https://theconversation.com/stranger-things-is-the-upside-down-to-disneys-cute-and-cuddly-universe-83417">Stranger Things</a> (2016-present), seem more prepared for fame than their predecessors, in control of their images and identities via their own social media platforms and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44045291">potentially protected to some extent</a> from extreme sexualisation by the MeToo movement. </p>
<p>Even so, Brown <a href="https://www.popbuzz.com/tv-film/news/millie-bobby-brown-birthday-instagram-post/">commented on her 16th birthday</a> that: “There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization, and unnecessary insults.”</p>
<p>For Spears though, these were more than moments. She details in her memoir how the constant public scrutiny of her body and physical appearance, being valued for her sexuality and treated as a commodity have characterised her entire life. </p>
<p>It is no wonder <a href="https://people.com/britney-spears-reveals-why-shaved-off-hair-in-2007-exclusive-8362494">she shaved her head</a> in 2007, a move interpreted by the media as her having “gone mad”, but in fact a powerful indication of her anger at being perceived as nothing more than a dancing sex-doll. As she writes in her memoir: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot. Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: fuck you. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you. You want me to be good for you? Fuck you. You want me to be your dream girl? Fuck you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about the stigma of having a “<a href="https://www.howcommunicationworks.com/blog/2020/12/16/what-is-stigma-explaining-goffmans-idea-of-spoiled-identity">spoiled identity</a>” whereby people carry with them the public shame of transgression or physical difference. </p>
<p>Being a former child star can be stigmatising for many reasons, including being constantly compared to an ideal younger version of yourself and not having had a “normal” childhood or conventional family relationships. </p>
<p>In this memoir, Britney attempts to face down that stigma and reclaim her identity and person-hood as an adult. In doing so, she demonstrates that it can be possible to leave the dangerous terrain of early fame behind – but the journey is a tough one.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216545/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane O’Connor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Britney Spears’ memoir illustrates once again the potential lifelong damage that can be caused by being a child star.Jane O’Connor, Reader in Childhood Studies, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134592023-10-25T19:10:19Z2023-10-25T19:10:19ZUniversalism or tribalism? Michael Gawenda’s memoir considers what it means to be a Jew in contemporary Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555737/original/file-20231025-23-w729gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=172%2C19%2C2249%2C1417&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menorah_1.JPG">Brücke-Osteuropa, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At one point in this book, journalist Michael Gawenda claims “only progressive, secular reviewers are chosen to review books about Jews.” So I need begin my review of <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/my-life-as-a-jew-9781761380471">My Life as a Jew</a> by acknowledging that I fit this description.</p>
<p>Like Gawenda, I am the son of Jewish refugees, although I grew up in a totally secular home. I think of myself as Jewish, although on the census forms I tick “no religion”. I have virtually no contact with the organised Jewish community. For much of his adult life, that might also have described Gawenda.</p>
<p>Positioning myself at the outset is important because Gawenda has written a very personal book, which in some ways is a direct challenge to Jews like me who are deeply critical of Israel. I am also friends with several of the people he criticises, particularly Louise Adler and Peter Beinart.</p>
<p>Gawenda came out of a specifically left Jewish tradition, that of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bund-political-movement">Bund</a>, which was secular, socialist and, in its origins, opposed to Zionism. Like many others who grew up in Bundist households, Gawenda has constantly struggled with his growing identification with Israel, which is simultaneously a foreign country and one that grants citizenship to all Jews. </p>
<p>“Whether I liked it or not,” he writes, “I was connected to Israel, the Jewish state.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: My Life as a Jew – Michael Gawenda (Scribe)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>For most of his professional life, including a period as Editor in Chief of the Melbourne Age, Gawenda did not see his Jewishness as central to his being. My Life as a Jew traces a growing sense of Jewish identity, in large part due to his sense of growing antisemitism on the left, which makes him increasingly uneasy about his former political allies. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555151/original/file-20231022-15-y4bgms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>He provides copious examples both of leftist antisemitism and efforts to deny it, although the examples come largely from outside Australia. Most of his examples revolve around left hostility to Israel, which as we have seen recently can too easily turn into crude antisemitism. </p>
<p>Gawenda has fallen out with those on the left who have turned against Israel. He is particularly critical of former foreign minister Bob Carr, whom he claims exaggerates the power of the Israeli lobby. While Carr may be prone to exaggeration, my own experience suggests the most active supporters of Israel in Australia are capable of bullying and intimidation.</p>
<p>Nor is Carr the only significant Labor figure to have changed their attitudes towards Israel. Strangely, Gawenda has nothing to say about Gareth Evans, whose position on Israel is very similar to Carr’s. Gawenda writes of accompanying Bob Hawke on a visit to Israel, and acknowledges that Hawke, once an ardent defender, became increasingly critical of Israel as it increased its occupation of the West Bank. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gareth-evans-the-case-for-recognising-palestine-207624">Gareth Evans: the case for recognising Palestine</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Gawenda is aware of the dispossession of Palestinians and the increasing encroachments on Palestinian settlements on the West Bank, but he offers no real alternative to the situation in which five million Palestinians find themselves. The book was written before the current war, but the horrors unleashed by the Hamas attacks of October 7 only underline the reality that without recognition of Palestinian claims Israel cannot be simultaneously Jewish and democratic.</p>
<p>The question is not, as Gawenda suggests, whether Israel has the right to exist, but rather whether Israelis can find ways to accept the Palestinians as equally deserving of sovereignty. As New York Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-tangled-grief-of-israels-anti-occupation-activists">stated recently</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I stand with the Israeli people trying hard to create a different future. And I stand with the Palestinian people trying hard to create a different future. I don’t stand with the Israeli government. There is no future that’s not a shared future, a shared future with complete equality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gawenda claims many on the left lack “a genuine and consequential commitment to Israel’s survival as a Jewish majority state”. What is lacking in this claim is an acknowledgement that settlements in the West Bank have made Israel itself responsible for undermining this possibility.</p>
<h2>An age of tribalism</h2>
<p>Ours is an age of tribalism and Gawenda is honest when he writes: “I know and have heard Israeli voices in a way I never have the voices of the Palestinians.” He then acknowledges this is a flaw shared by much Western media reporting, which seems strange given his earlier complaints about the Australian journalist John Lyons, whose booklet, <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/dateline-jerusalem/">Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment</a>, makes precisely this point. </p>
<p>Gawenda taps into the underlying anxiety all Jews feel whenever debate about Israel moves into antisemitism, as happened in very ugly ways in the past few weeks. Opposition to Israel and antisemitism are logically separate, but the line is blurred both by defenders of Israel and its most vociferous opponents. Of course, Israel also has some strong defenders among people who are antisemitic, such as sections of the American Christian right.</p>
<p>In his concern with growing antisemitism, Gawenda devotes considerable attention to what he sees as the “de-Jewification” of the Holocaust, some of which he lays at the feet of Hannah Arendt, whose study of Adolf Eichmann and her phrase “the banality of evil” he sees as contributing to this. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555688/original/file-20231024-29-4i86cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hannah Arendt in 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hannah_Arendt_1933.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>I think there is a stronger case to be made that there is rapidly declining knowledge of the Holocaust, and indeed of the inclusion of Roma and homosexuals as targets.</p>
<p>There is hard evidence <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/assaults-verbal-abuse-and-harassment-alarming-rise-of-antisemitism-in-australia/sm0r31rww">antisemitism is growing</a> in Australia and I wish Gawenda had spent more time analysing it, rather than relying on overseas examples. We are all aware of the rise of a small Nazi movement and fringe elements of the Palestinian movement; what is less obvious is the existence of persistent prejudices and stereotypes which too often go unchallenged. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-government-action-to-thwart-neo-nazi-groups-is-far-more-difficult-than-it-appears-205677">Why government action to thwart neo-Nazi groups is far more difficult than it appears</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In contemporary Australia, the real question of how to tackle antisemitism gets too easily misdirected into semantic wrangles. Currently, our universities are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/06/australian-universities-split-on-decision-to-adopt-controversial-definition-of-antisemitism">arguing about which definition of antisemitism to adopt</a>, rather than thinking through how best to tackle the root causes of antisemitism and racism.</p>
<p>Antisemitism feeds on many sources other than hatred of Israel, from the genteel British version, apparent in many of Agatha Christie’s writings, to the religious intolerance many migrants bring with them from ancestral feuds. My Life as a Jew is so focused on opposition to Israel it passes over the more pervasive low-level antisemitism we encounter all too often.</p>
<p>Gawenda still identifies as a “secular Jew”, but struggles to reconcile his growing sense of belonging to a Jewish world with a recognition that: “I do not believe that being a Jew will ever encompass all that I am and all that I believe.” The book fluctuates between the two poles of tribalism and universalism, which at its most eloquent echoes debates that have divided Jews over the past century. </p>
<p>My Life as a Jew is a book full of contradictions. This is not necessarily a criticism. As Freud observed: “Only in logic are contradictions unable to coexist; in feelings they quite happily continue alongside each other”. The real strength of this book comes from Gawenda’s honesty about his struggles to define exactly what it means to be a Jew in contemporary Australia.</p>
<p>The most moving part of the book comes as Gawenda talks of returning to the Yiddish he heard as a child, to which his own children have returned through song and language. At this point, My Life as a Jew speaks far beyond our tribe to the reality for millions of Australians, caught between the dominant culture and memories of the cultures they have left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman received a small ARC grant forty years ago to research the deabtes about Israel within the Australian student movement
And I have acknowledged my connections to several people criticised by Gawenda, which should also have included Bob Carr</span></em></p>My Life as a Jew is an honest and very personal book about a growing sense of Jewish identity, but it has its contradictions.Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157282023-10-19T14:40:38Z2023-10-19T14:40:38ZA Memoir of My Former Self: Hilary Mantel’s final book is a reminder of the many stories she still had to tell<p>In <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250342232/amemoirofmyformerself">A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing</a>, Hilary Mantel writes: “There is no failed writing, only work pending.” She’s referring to the 97 notebooks that she kept in a wooden box. Mantel promised: “There is nothing I won’t say, only what I haven’t said yet.” </p>
<p>These words were written in 2016, just after her epic novel of the French Revolution, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/jan/09/review-hilary-mantel-a-place-of-greater-safety">A Place of Greater Safety</a>, was published. After that, Mantel released the third and final book in her <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/series/wolfhalltrilogy">Wolf Hall trilogy</a>, a series that earned her two Booker prizes.</p>
<p>But what Mantel hasn’t said “yet” is precisely the problem. The author suffered a stroke and died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2022. Reflecting on her death, her admirer and peer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-remembered-she-was-the-queen-of-literature">Margaret Atwood asked</a>: “What might she have written next? I don’t know, but I will miss it.” </p>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self celebrates the breadth of Mantel’s reading interests and the precision of her voice. The book is a selection of her writing for journals, newspapers and public lectures, published together for the first time. One section is dedicated to film reviews and another to book reviews, each of which were a voluminous part of Mantel’s output. </p>
<p>Her <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08vkm52/episodes/player">1997 Reith lectures</a> on history, art and literature are an important inclusion. Other pieces concern Mantel’s childhood, family and marriage, her health and physical life, her career and public life, and her reflections on religion, society, politics, education, place and art. Reading and writing form the spine of every piece.</p>
<p>The book discloses the lifelong physical and psychological impact of her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jun/07/health.genderissues">endometriosis</a>, intensified since doctors misdiagnosed her pain as hysteria and depression. Her <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/589418/pdf">feminism</a>, evident throughout the collection (not least in her discussion of Hillary Clinton), evolved as a direct response to her <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1371221">medical experience</a>.</p>
<p>The short pieces reveal careful and expansive reading, wit, intellect and daring. But above all, they share secrets – Mantel’s own, alongside those of the writers, historical figures, books, events and places that she describes.</p>
<h2>The life of a writer</h2>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self positions Mantel at the centre of her nonfiction writing. Perhaps the only person who rivals her for our attention is Jane Austen, who she often allows to take centre stage, mentioning Austen and her works throughout the book.</p>
<p>Mantel’s main essay on Austen addresses her novels, life, family, juvenilia, the few letters and portraits that remain, and several biographies. In just 13 pages, Mantel reveals the complex material circumstances that Austen navigated and their impact on her writing. </p>
<p>She approaches Austen’s archive with objectivity and scholarship, and the result is twofold: a desire to reread Austen, and a deep regret that the book Mantel was working on will never be completed. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/22/my-last-words-to-her-were-i-wont-be-long-hilary-mantel-husband-on-her-last-days-and-the-novel-she-left-behind">Provocation</a> was to be a humorous adaptation drawing on Austen’s full catalogue of works, but focused on Mary Bennett, the least prominent sister in Pride and Prejudice.</p>
<p>For Mantel, the writer’s life is a promiscuous one – with so many other lives to pursue and so little time for the task. This book leaves the reader certain that her imagination and resources would never have been exhausted.</p>
<p>Mantel’s Booker-winning historical novels assembled period worlds with something of the Victorian novel’s attention to detail. Groups came together to witness iconic historical events, such as the beheadings of queens and royal courtiers. But instead of the overburdened, maximalist interiors of 19th-century realism, Mantel’s histories were sparse and sharp. A well-placed wooden chest evokes a time, a carefully chosen meal reveals the substance of a person.</p>
<p>Atwood describes the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">authentic yet contemporary</a>: “If Cromwell had had a phone Mantel could hack, you’d scarcely be brought closer to the inner wheels and cogs of his bloody-minded and bloody-handed machinations.”</p>
<p>Obituaries remarked on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-author-wolf-hall-dies">wealth of writing</a> that Mantel produced. Her work is far-reaching and genre-crossing. It has been described as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">guarded, intimate</a>”, with “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">sly wit</a>”, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">deceptive indirection</a>” and “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">slow subtlety</a>”. It is “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-her-10-greatest-books">mischievous</a>”, “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315592374-4/hilary-mantel-space-life-writing-neil-vickers">bleakly comic and politically astute</a>”. For me, her writing is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-remembered-she-was-the-queen-of-literature">boundless</a>, breathtaking, and conveyed with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-remembered-she-was-the-queen-of-literature">immense clarity</a>.</p>
<p>Actor Ben Miles played Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/may/18/wolf-hall-bring-up-the-bodies-review-mantel-aldwych-theatre">adaptation</a> of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. He and Mantel became good friends and worked on a <a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-wolf-hall-picture-book-hilary-mantelben-milesgeorge-miles?variant=39763797868622">picture book</a> together. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/my-favourite-mantel-by-margaret-atwood-colm-toibin-anne-enright-and-more">Speaking to the Guardian</a>, Miles suggested that Mantel’s novels had the power to reveal worlds that were historically and culturally distant as if they were within effortless reach. Her worlds felt at once intimate, sensory, funny and horrific.</p>
<p>This sense of closeness is what many readers will hope to experience by reading A Memoir of My Former Self – and they will not be disappointed.</p>
<hr>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenni Ramone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book shares secrets – Mantel’s own alongside those of the writers, historical figures and places she describes.Jenni Ramone, Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Global Literatures, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099892023-09-24T20:01:53Z2023-09-24T20:01:53Z‘Excavating something I barely had language for’: two memoirs of disability and family explore Deafness and dwarfism<p>In my many years of reading and writing about disability and chronic illness, my preference leans toward books that look outward, rather than inward, in their approach to truth-telling. The intricacies of living in a marginalised body tend to feel more philosophical if they resist solipsism and reach toward the universal. </p>
<p>I’m thinking about Fiona Wright’s essay collection, <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/the-world-was-whole">The World Was Whole</a>, which focuses on suburban and urban houses and homes, and invites us to think about the body as home – and the question of what happens when the body fails us. </p>
<p>Books like this prove inclusive, rather than exclusive, because they cater to those living with disability, but also use a near-universal experience (in Wright’s case, the theme of houses and homes) as a framework to help readers to imagine their way into their specific experience (for Wright, of being failed by her body).</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The House with all the Lights On – Jessica Kirkness (Allen & Unwin); Broke – Sam Drummond (Affirm Press).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The more people included in a readership, the wider the discussion and the greater the potential to grow larger communities of caring and empathy. </p>
<p>In their plight to lift the lid on oft-hidden disabled experiences, two debut memoirs – one exploring Deafness, the other pseudoachondroplasia (a form of dwarfism) – do just this. They focus not just on the experience of living in an othered body, but on the authors’ experiences of family.</p>
<h2>Deaf ways of being</h2>
<p>Jessica Kirkness’s grandfather videoed his family, his sheep and the busy ants. But as a Deaf person, he didn’t bother with the audio when showing those videos to others. For him, audio was irrelevant: it’s seeing that matters.</p>
<p>Being a highly-tuned seer is a Deaf Gain. As Kirkness explains in her book, this is “the notion that there are unique cognitive, creative and cultural benefits arising from Deaf ways of being in the world”. Her memoir illustrates this notion.</p>
<p>Kirkness grew up living next-door to her Deaf grandmother and grandfather and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/House-With-All-The-Lights-On-9781761069079/">The House With All The Lights On</a> is about the deep love they shared. In its very language, it’s hyper-aware of Kirkness’s role as a hearing person writing about the Deaf experience. </p>
<p>To be deaf (small “d”) is to be without hearing – but to be Deaf is to be part of a shared culture, who identify as culturally Deaf and share a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-sign-language-21453">signing language</a>. (In Australia, that’s Auslan, or Australian sign language.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I were to tell you a story in sign language – the story of my grandparents and me – I’d begin with a single finger touching my chest. My hands would form the signs for “grew up” and then “next door”, a flattened palm rising from my torso to eye level, followed by my index finger hooked over my thumb and turned over at the wrist like a key in an ignition. I’d use the signs for “my grandparents”: a clenched fist over my heart, and the letter signs “G, M, G” to represent “grand-mother-father”. Then, placing two fingers over my right ear, I’d use the sign for “deaf” to refer to them, and to describe myself, I’d use “hearing”: a single digit moved from beside the ear to rest below the mouth. I’d sign our closeness by interlocking my index fingers in the sign that doubles for “link” or “connection”. By puffing air from my lips, squinting my eyes slightly, and rocking my looped fingers back and forth, I’d place emphasis on the sign, the duration, direction and intensity of its delivery giving tone and shape to the meaning it makes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a scholar specialising in d/Deaf people’s appreciation and perceptions of music, there is a deep rhythm to Kirkness’s telling. A musician, she’s an aural person, but having grown up as a conversationalist with and interpreter for her grandparents – and later, a sign-language teacher to children – she is, consequently, a visual person, too. </p>
<p>The sound of her prose in the reading-mind is sometimes magnificent. And the descriptions of her grandparents communicating – with her, with one another – is abundantly, respectfully detailed. Passages such as the one above are plentiful, bound to draw readers wholeheartedly into the narrative of her unique upbringing. </p>
<p>Not shying away from statistics, chronicles and definitions, the book is also instructive. And though Kirkness clearly appreciates the role Deaf culture plays in her life, it’s rarely biased. </p>
<p>By this I mean: if I had a friend whose baby was diagnosed deaf, and that friend had to make a decision about whether or not to give the baby a cochlear implant and therefore the gift of sound, I would give them this book with the intention of providing the pros and cons of Deafness. </p>
<p>A con might be particularised in the following passage, where Kirkness writes about experiencing rude comments and looks directed at her grandparents:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inside of me, pride and shame were housed in separate but neighbouring compartments. Much as I tried to ignore this fact, they grazed against one another often enough to produce a kind of reckoning in my adulthood. In all the years I tended to the fault line between my grandparents and the world – the contact zones that carried the eternal threat of turning hostile – I’d never thought to acknowledge the feeling that accumulated like sludge in my belly. My strategy was to bury it. Deny it. If I could keep anything negative from Nanny and Grandpa, I would.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-lawson-and-judith-wright-were-deaf-but-theyre-rarely-acknowledged-as-disabled-writers-why-does-that-matter-208365">Henry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Not own-voices, but valuable</h2>
<p>Reading a hearing person discuss the negative effects of growing up a grandchild of Deaf adults might raise alarm bells for some. In an own-voices story of Deafness, the story would be written by the Deaf person themselves. </p>
<p>Not following that etiquette is taboo from some points of view within marginalised communities. But I think it depends on your reading of the book. </p>
<p>Yes, this is a story that educates its readers about Deaf culture. But it’s also a story about familial love, told in the wake of loss after Kirkness’s grandfather died.</p>
<p>The passage continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But the layers of feeling – the residue of the unexpressed – began to tug at me. I threw myself at the problem the best way I knew. I began to read. From the university library, I sought everything I could from the fields of Deaf and Disability Studies: books, journal articles, online forums. I finished one postgraduate degree and began another, all in the name of excavating something I barely had language for.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a sense that signing is the best language for digging through emotion. But because it is not Kirkness’s native language, she’s had to work hard to learn to inhabit it – and it’s paid off. The House With All The Lights On is a product of that work – and a stunning act of gratitude.</p>
<p>Kirkness refuses to speak of her grandparents as if they are one unit, their Deafness shared. She consistently gives them individual agency. She has drawn them with thick lines, voluminous curves, edgy angles and various colours. She has deftly brought to the page what her Grandpa and Nanny have brought to her life – while also providing insight into Deafness with each anecdote.</p>
<p>One especially memorable sketch shows Granny learning to speak English: the chalk powder placed on the back of her hands, so when she put her lips close and the chalk either moved or did not, she could tell the difference between “p” and “b”. Granny then positioned her granddaughter’s hand on her throat and sounded out “m” and “n” and said, “I learned about sounds through feeling, see?” </p>
<p>Nanny was proud of her speech and of her ability to lip-read, whereas Grandpa only wanted to sign: “To appreciate him fully, I need visuals, for his voice was always carried in his hands.” Kirkness later describes those hands, which turned thousands of pages, as she described his relationship with books: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ever the autodidact, Grandpa was always reading. He’d frequently consult his encyclopaedias and reference books whenever he found himself wondering about one thing or another. It was a habit he developed in childhood, having found himself excluded, often unintentionally, from family conversations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The House With All The Lights On is a profound book on Deafness as identity, written by a hearing person who cannot divorce Deafness from the love she feels for her grandparents.</p>
<p>Kirkness’s book sits bravely and beautifully alongside Fiona Murphy’s <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-shape-of-sound">The Shape of Sound</a> and Jessica White’s <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/hearing-maud">Hearing Maud</a> as part of a growing dialogue on deafness and hearing, and on Deafness and seeing. </p>
<p>It is one of the most touching, generous, superbly written family memoirs I’ve come across.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-has-brought-auslan-into-the-spotlight-but-it-would-be-wrong-to-treat-the-language-as-a-hobby-or-fad-151667">COVID has brought Auslan into the spotlight, but it would be wrong to treat the language as a hobby or fad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The injustices of growing up disabled</h2>
<p>Sam Drummond begins his memoir, <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/browse/book/Sam-Drummond-Broke-9781922848475/">Broke</a>, with a scene that does not live in his own memory. His child-aged mother is playing the piano and her mother, who sits beside her, is contemplating how to tell her children she’s dying. </p>
<p>By beginning with his mother’s story, rather than his own, this prologue works as an explanation for why Drummond’s mother might have moved him and his brother around so much – and had so many failed romantic relationships. It’s a signpost to how we should read his story.</p>
<p>Drummond is a disability advocate and lawyer who lives with pseudoachondroplasia, a form of dwarfism that impacts bone growth and joint health. </p>
<p>The injustices of growing up disabled – schoolyard taunts, unfit to play sports, going for a job interview for the first time and striking out before a question is even asked – run throughout, in matter-of-fact prose that avoids the sentimental and resists overindulgences. </p>
<p>If I’m to trust the prologue, then the author’s reliance on a far-from-self-centred narrative is due to a focus on his mother, rather than himself. For example, after he leaves hospital for a surgery involving the breaking and resetting of his legs, he notices his mother’s back pain as she lifts him from the car into the wheelchair:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I realised my Mum was mortal. People had been telling me my whole life that I was deficient in some way, if not directly then in the way they treated me. I had reassured myself I would always have Mum there to make up for my deficiencies. She was a fitness machine. Life had thrown mud at her and she had simply brushed it off. She was a survivor. Yet here I was, at a moment of complete reliance on her. My survival depended on her. And I had glimpsed a chink in her armour. This terrifying thought had not crossed my mind until then: even survivors have an end point.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-female-dwarf-disability-and-beauty-84844">Friday essay: the female dwarf, disability, and beauty</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rising above it, but not a hero</h2>
<p>Drummond’s struggle with the physical and mental pain of his disability, and with multiple shifts in home and family set-up, is interesting. But at times I found it difficult to pinpoint the focus of this book.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549493/original/file-20230921-15-olhs9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sam Drummond, with his mum and brother.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At one point I questioned if generational trauma was the focus, but Drummond doesn’t follow through enough with the causes and ripples of his grandmother’s untimely death or his grandfather’s PTSD. Mostly, I read it as a story of survival – of both his mother’s and his own.</p>
<p>Inspiration porn is a genre of memoir that shows the hardships of living with disability, chronic illness or inflicted trauma, so in the end the author can say, “See! I made it out the other side! And you can too if you keep trying!” While the disability community often shuns it, the masses tend to eat it up. </p>
<p>But though Broke follows inspiration porn’s rising-above-it-all plotline, Drummond mostly manages to avoid falling into this genre. His style is pragmatic, rather than straining to inspire.</p>
<p>When describing an afternoon at Centrelink, for example, he writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Mum. Why doesn’t anyone complain about waiting so long?”<br>
<br>
“Because we have no choice, darling.”<br>
<br>
I looked around at the elderly, the migrants, the other people in wheelchairs, the single mums. Their shirts hung out, their hair was not perfect, their skin was more leathery than Mum’s. But their shoes were now our shoes. The paperwork they filled out was the same as the sheets that lay on Mum’s lap. Their fates were linked to our fate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Drummond isn’t casting himself as a hero. He’s clear he is one of many coping with systemic prejudices and inadequate governmental support, helping to make up the “we” who are relegated to the end of the line. His opposite, the “they” who don’t even need to be in the line, are everywhere – even (and especially) in his friendship circle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mum came in with a large plate of bread, jam and cream. He looked at the creation with an air of distrust. “What is it?” he asked.<br>
<br>
“Bread, jam and cream. It’s like scones, just with bread.”<br>
<br>
He ate a slice but stayed silent, shifting awkwardly at my feet. […] He had entered my world and I knew it was vastly different from his world of books and fruit and dinner at the dining room table. I had come to accept the differences. It was nice to be in the same world during school hours, but I would never have his life and I had to be okay with that, even if it made him sad or uncomfortable. […]
<br>
I turned back to the little pink telly.<br>
<br>
Mum came in and sat at the piano, looking wistfully at its closed cover.<br>
<br>
“Mum!” I yelled. “Can I have some more bread, jam and cream?”<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s the mother and the piano again: the foundations of his “we”. </p>
<p>In terms of showing the differences and similarities of the haves and haves-not – the “we"s and "they"s – Drummond’s book ticks all the necessary boxes. </p>
<p>But unlike The House With All The Lights On, Broke is not an unconflicted love letter to family. Drummond’s portrait of his mother is in the <a href="https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/edward-hoppers-women/">Edward Hopper style</a>: a tired woman carrying a bucketful of woes, who, at the end of the day, is lonely. His subject, however, doesn’t feel centred: she’s often hidden by the clutter of too many items in the room.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209989/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Taylor Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jessica Kirkman introduces readers to her Deaf grandparents’ experience – and to Deaf culture – in her memoir. And Sam Drummond recalls growing up with pseudoachondroplasia (a form of dwarfism) in his.Heather Taylor Johnson, Adjunct Research Fellow at the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114292023-09-17T20:00:21Z2023-09-17T20:00:21ZSubstack newsletters are a literary trend. What’s the appeal – and what should you read?<p>Every week since August 2021, Australian author Bri Lee has released a regular weekly Substack newsletter, <a href="https://newsandreviews.substack.com">News & Reviews</a>, to thousands of paid and unpaid subscribers. </p>
<p>The “news” offers commentary on current events and Lee’s particular interests and knowledge areas. “Reviews” can be of just about anything, ranging from books and articles to film and television, or fashion, architecture, events and miscellaneous “fancy things”.</p>
<p>The writing is erudite and well informed, but also very personal. The newsletter has been successful enough to support the launch of a monthly “magazine” edition of News & Reviews, featuring work from a range of other writers, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/stella-prize-shortlist-2023-your-guide-to-6-gripping-courageous-books-202958">Stella Prize shortlisted</a> graphic novelist Eloise Grills and playwright and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/news/a-u-new-imprint-joan-curated-by-nakkiah-lui">Allen & Unwin publisher</a> Nakkiah Lui.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547709/original/file-20230912-18248-qa221i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eloise Grills is one of the writers who contribute to Bri Lee’s Substack publication.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eloisegrills.com/">Oscar Miller</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Newsletter publications like News & Reviews are becoming increasingly popular outlets for writers at all stages of their careers. <a href="https://www.asauthors.org.au/news/monetising-your-newsletter-bri-lee-shares-her-experience-using-substack-to-supplement-her-income/">Lee notes</a> it provides a useful way of generating regular income between her longer form, traditionally published writing. It also allows her a level of direct connection with her audience, without the algorithmic “flattening” of social media. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/big-beautiful-females-and-familiar-dystopias-new-graphic-nonfiction-interrogates-21st-century-life-182224">Big beautiful females and familiar dystopias: new graphic nonfiction interrogates 21st-century life</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How Substack works</h2>
<p>Lee was also drawn to the convenience of Substack itself. Newsletters can be managed from a simple dashboard on the platform and start-up costs are virtually nonexistent. </p>
<p>Rather than charge writers a fee, Substack takes a cut of revenue generated by reader subscriptions. Free and paywalled content tiers can be easily included in each newsletter. </p>
<p>Substack and similar platforms allow readers to directly support writers they care about. And writers are free to pursue niche topics and areas of interest, targeting smaller, more invested audiences.</p>
<p>Early adopters of Substack, like <a href="https://sinocism.com">Bill Bishop</a> and <a href="https://tsa.substack.com">Kelly Dwyer</a>, were largely journalists and media commentators who had already established a dedicated readership via news sites. In recent years, however, they have been increasingly joined by literary authors like <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com">Mary Gaitskill</a>, <a href="https://cheeseburgergothic.substack.com">John Birmingham</a>, and <a href="https://salmanrushdie.substack.com">Salman Rushdie</a>, among others. </p>
<p>This comes at a time when it’s arguably <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjQn7H5iaKBAxXOk1YBHe4zAKkQFnoECBcQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.canberratimes.com.au%2Fstory%2F8009112%2Fthe-free-market-is-tough-on-australian-writing-does-the-country-need-a-national-publisher%2F&usg=AOvVaw03ogJJkekvCPI9WEK6OIXO&opi=89978449">much harder</a> to publish literary fiction – and author incomes from conventional publication are <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-thirds-of-australian-authors-are-women-new-research-finds-they-earn-just-18-200-a-year-from-their-writing-195426">often unsatisfactory</a>.</p>
<p>Might Substack newsletters emerge as a viable alternative to print and digital books, and the conventional model of literary publishing?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-salman-rushdies-decision-to-publish-on-substack-the-death-of-the-novel-167530">Is Salman Rushdie's decision to publish on Substack the death of the novel?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>New writing by leading authors</h2>
<p>This seemed like a possible direction in 2021, when several prominent authors began to publish their new fiction through the platform. <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-salman-rushdies-decision-to-publish-on-substack-the-death-of-the-novel-167530">Salman Rushdie</a> and <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/87409-chuck-palahniuk-to-serialize-a-novel-on-substack.html">Chuck Palahniuk</a> were among the early adopters. </p>
<p>Both Rushdie and Palahniuk were deliberately courted via the <a href="https://on.substack.com/p/why-we-pay-writers">Substack Pro program</a>, which incentivises successful writers to publish content on Substack by offering them advance funding. This initiative has been a source of some <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/substack-backlash/">controversy</a> because Substack does not generally disclose which writers are on the Pro program, nor the size of the advances they are paid. </p>
<p>However, literary authors are not really using Substack as a replacement for conventional books. Rather, Substack publication can provide their subscribers with a kind of “early access period” for forthcoming works. </p>
<p>Palahniuk completed the serialisation of his novel Greener Pastures in 2022, and the novel is now <a href="https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/closed-for-renovations">due for publication</a> with Simon and Schuster next year. </p>
<p>Similarly, UK author Hanif Kureishi is reworking his Substack reflections on his experience of being paralysed into a memoir, Shattered, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/18/hanif-kureishi-to-publish-memoir-about-accident-that-left-him-paralysed-shattered">also due to be published</a> in 2024. It may be fair to say Substack operates more as a supplement to traditional literary publishing than as its alternative. </p>
<p>Often authors are using Substack for forms of writing that wouldn’t always be viable in other mediums. Since the last instalment of Greener Pastures, Palahniuk’s newsletter, <a href="https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com">Plot Spoiler</a>, has largely focused on personal reminiscences and updates, as well as curating new short fiction from himself and his writing students. </p>
<p>Mary Gaitskill was invited to the platform in mid-2022 as Substack’s “writer in residence”. Since then, she has delivered a brilliant series of <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com">fortnightly essays</a> on wide-ranging topics. She has shared her thoughts on the <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/two-minutes-of-hate">Depp-Heard trial</a>, the <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/incels">“incel” movement</a>, and the handling of public <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/writing-about-rape">sex abuse scandals</a>. This is interspersed with insightful reviews and interviews with other writers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547714/original/file-20230912-21-g6jjky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Gaitskill was invited to Substack as ‘writer in residence’ in mid-2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/4984681833/sizes/o/in/set-72157624812563361/">Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, George Saunders’ Substack, <a href="https://georgesaunders.substack.com">Story Club</a>, has more of an explicitly educational focus. It offers guided, page-by-page readings of classic short stories, often combined with associated prompts and exercises for aspiring writers. </p>
<p>Saunders uses the newsletter format to make rigorous, textually focused literary criticism more accessible. According to Saunders, discussion of the mechanics of writing and narrative construction should not just be confined to creative writing classrooms. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gut-punches-and-belly-laughs-in-george-saunders-dark-flights-of-fantasy-theres-the-gleam-of-something-precious-191347">Gut-punches and belly laughs: in George Saunders' dark flights of fantasy there's the gleam of something precious</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Immediacy and intimacy</h2>
<p>The appeal of author newsletters has probably come to reside more in the immediacy and intimacy of these kinds of writings, rather than the prospect of an advance look at forthcoming or developing fiction. </p>
<p>The novels will arrive eventually, but until then it can be enjoyable to find out what is on an author’s mind in any given week, through pieces like Salman Rushdie’s <a href="https://salmanrushdie.substack.com/p/movie-nights-1">brief, withering assessment</a> of Denis Villeneuve’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/">Dune</a>.</p>
<p>Australian authors who have taken to Substack have followed some similar trajectories. </p>
<p>For the award-winning memoirist Maggie Mackellar, her <a href="https://maggiemackellar.substack.com">newsletter</a> is a weekly impetus for work that may go into a future book, as well as the chance “to write exactly what I want and not have to fit into a magazine’s agenda”. Mackellar’s Sydney Review of Books <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/mackellar-newsletter-curious-experiment/">essay</a> on the merits of the newsletter as a literary form is worth investigating. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547717/original/file-20230912-3061-pg6s6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Maggie Mackellar’s Substack is a weekly prompt for work that may go into a future book.</span>
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<p>Other writers, like YA authors <a href="https://emilygale.substack.com">Emily Gale</a> and <a href="https://liliwilkinson.substack.com">Lili Wilkinson</a>, use Substack newsletters to engage their readers by offering tips and advice for writing, insights into what they’ve recently been reading and pop-culture commentary. </p>
<h2>The Paris End</h2>
<p>More recently, a new publication from Melbourne writers Cameron Hurst, Sally Olds and Oscar Schwartz follows the magazine-like Substack model explored by Bri Lee. <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com">The Paris End</a> typically delivers two to three long-form essays each month (illustrated by cartoonist Aaron Billings) and a bi-weekly review section covering trends, books, dining and more. </p>
<p>The Paris End is hyperlocal in its focus and very conversational in style. Its writers are dedicated to reviving “the art of reportage”: they get out into the streets of Melbourne to interview locals and explore issues and events firsthand. </p>
<p>It aims to move away from the trend towards removed and highly reflective online writing on current events and controversies. By contrast, the Paris End writers get involved – they put themselves into the stories. </p>
<p>So far, they have covered <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com/p/whos-afraid-of-the-green-haired-girls">gender studies controversies</a> at the University of Melbourne, the <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com/p/design-files-mindset">Nightingale apartment project</a>, the revival of <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com/p/mass-appeal">traditional Catholicism</a>, the (second!) <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com/p/the-tote-autonomous-zone">campaign to save </a> historical Melbourne music venue The Tote, Jordan Peterson’s <a href="https://theparisend.substack.com/p/reply-guy-resurrected">recent Melbourne visit</a>, and more. </p>
<p>The pieces are characterised by a sense of genial curiosity and open-mindedness. While the authors are forthright about their own positions, they are generally willing to give space to contrary voices in their pieces and entertain alternative points of view. </p>
<p>As a model, the Paris End writers <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/culture/art-and-design/melbourne-meets-the-new-yorker-the-bold-new-magazine-reviewing-the-city-20230725-p5dr21.html">are drawn</a> to the wry, gossipy voice of the early New Yorker, which flourished in the early 20th century when there was still a sense New York was just “a big country town”. </p>
<p>It’s a term that no longer fits New York, but possibly applies to Melbourne today – and the awkward meeting point between booming big city populations and lingering small-town mentalities The Paris End’s editors aim to capture. </p>
<p>The Paris End is like the New Yorker if the entire magazine consisted of feature-length “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/talk-of-the-town">Talk of the Town</a>” pieces. It feels distinct and unique, and it is difficult to imagine it being delivered through any other medium. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/substack-isnt-a-new-model-for-journalism-its-a-very-old-one-151245">Substack isn't a new model for journalism – it’s a very old one</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Is it sustainable?</h2>
<p>The growing volume of author newsletters on Substack and other platforms is already starting to feel overwhelming for some, however. After making a few well-intentioned subscriptions, my inbox is now starting to fill with unopened newsletters. They are in good company with the unwatched shows on my Netflix list, and the unread books on my shelves. </p>
<p>While there are benefits to the regular writing habits demanded by the newsletter model, it may not always be sustainable. Mary Gaitskill, for instance, has <a href="https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/just-stepping-out-for-a-bit">just announced</a> a lengthy break, so she can concentrate on fiction writing: “I’ve been trying to work on fiction and do SStack and for right now it’s not working.” </p>
<p>For some authors, the income stream it generates may help to support longer writing projects. For others, the grind of generating enough weekly or fortnightly content to retain paid subscriber bases may not be worthwhile or workable. </p>
<p>One issue is that Substack users will typically need to have a preexisting readership and established networks. In most cases, writers will need to also be publishing material through other outlets to establish and maintain an audience for their newsletters. </p>
<p>Substack has recently attempted to make it easier for writers to promote their work directly on the platform. They have launched the Twitter-like <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/5/23670452/substack-notes-tweets-posts-twitter">Notes</a> for shorter content, and added the ability for readers to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/5/23670452/substack-notes-tweets-posts-twitter">follow</a> writers’ profiles and updates before they subscribe to their newsletters. </p>
<p>These developments are moving Substack more in the direction of conventional social media, and it is not yet known whether they will help writers to establish or build audiences. </p>
<p>Despite these efforts, X (formerly Twitter) remains an important promotional tool for Substack writers. Strong engagement on the platform is often indicative of success on Substack (and has been one of the criteria used to recruit writers to Substack Pro). </p>
<p>This dependence is not always beneficial, however. In April of this year, links to Substack content were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/11/row-between-twitter-and-substack-ends-with-uneasy-truce">temporarily prohibited</a> on Twitter. At the time, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk had publicly objected to the similarities between Substack Notes and Twitter. </p>
<p>The matter now appears to be resolved, but it demonstrates how the current volatility surrounding X can impact Substack writers.</p>
<p>These concerns aside, Substack is still arguably the most prominent and accessible email newsletter platform available. Its rapid adoption by both local and international authors has resulted in the creation of fascinating and innovative new content.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Novitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So many authors are creating Substack newsletters – from Bri Lee’s magazine-like News & Reviews, to George Saunders’ writing tips and Hanif Kureishi’s reflections on being paralysed. But can it last?Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2094962023-09-12T04:39:12Z2023-09-12T04:39:12ZA memoir of sleeplessness posits making peace with our ruptured nights – but risks becoming an exhausting read<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544944/original/file-20230828-188700-5uoiq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C47%2C7880%2C4261&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Annie Spratt/unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My relationship with sleep is fraught. For me, the journey towards sleep is a precarious one, relying on a shifting portfolio of mental states, and an irritating need for silence.</p>
<p>When I finally sink into oblivion, my rest can be shattered by the sound of my partner breathing, or a hoon tearing down the road at the top of our driveway. Once broken, sleep lies around me in sharp, little pieces, jabbing with the promise of a difficult day ahead.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia – Marie Darrieussecq (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When did this start? Was it the heated anxiety of menopause, the interrupted nights of early motherhood, the wide-awake longing for home after moving halfway round the world? When did sleep become so elusive? </p>
<p>I became sensitive to noise in London. I was a music journalist in the 1990s, but sometimes even <em>I</em> needed to sleep and this could be hard with paper-thin walls and drunken neighbours. But did the trouble start even earlier, in adolescence or childhood, I wonder, remembering the volatility in my first home. Did I ever sleep like a baby, even when I was one? </p>
<p>In her new book, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/sleepless-a-memoir-of-insomnia">Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia</a>, French writer Marie Darrieussecq embarks on a similar investigation into her own struggle with sleep. Through a hybrid of personal narrative and meditative essays, Darrieussecq contemplates the curse of insomnia with unusual scope. But while she writes like a dream, her work is thrown out of joint by its ambitious scale. Her exhaustive project risks becoming an exhausting read.</p>
<p>Beginning with a tour of literary perspectives and a brief history of barbiturates, Darrieussecq examines the connection between creativity and hyper-vigilance. </p>
<p>Proust and Kafka lead the canon here, and the stories of addiction to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbital">Veronal</a> (a powerful barbiturate) and accidental overdose are both fascinating and shocking. But the references rush in thick and fast, and I struggle to keep pace. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-i-stop-my-mind-racing-and-get-some-sleep-207904">How do I stop my mind racing and get some sleep?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A global industry</h2>
<p>The hunt for sleep has become a global industry. Psychologists, doctors, yoga teachers, meditation and breath-work practitioners ply us with sleep apps, mindfulness routines, prescription drugs and natural remedies. Columns and articles clog up the media with tips on How To Sleep, recycling age-old advice in jazzed-up terminology. </p>
<p>At least we have something to occupy us in the small hours.</p>
<p>Herbal teas and melatonin help me drift off, but when I wake up at 2am or 3am, resignation and a book work best. According to my London herbalist, the trick is to break the pattern. With this in mind, he once prescribed me <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621465/">datura</a> a potentially deadly narcotic. Entranced, I left his basement practice with strict instructions and a tiny dark glass bottle. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It worked, but only for a while. </p>
<p>Perhaps my own struggles with sleep are why no matter how much I appreciate the scholarship of Darrieussecq’s impressive project, I’m most interested in her personal quest. Her desperate encounters with pharmacology, alcohol, and eventually a somnologist (sleep psychiatrist) are the ones that resonate. The love and torture of childbirth and breastfeeding, the problem of the study-bedroom, the relentlessness of the 4.04am waking hour, all have me bristling with recognition and relief. </p>
<p>I Google one of the alluring sleep aids she describes, I’m curious about the sleep test, a polysomnographic examination which involves being fitted with a network of electrodes by a sleep technician, and I’m moved by her account of her addiction to sleeping pills. But these personal vignettes are brief. She opens up pockets of her life, only to shut them back down again, leaving me intrigued and a little dissatisfied.</p>
<p>I want to know more about her childhood, about being born in the years after her brother who did not survive. I wonder if her mother was unable to sleep, due to grief and fear of losing another baby. There doesn’t seem to be an endpoint to this story, which I don’t mind at all because that’s the whole point with insomnia. But I would like to know what happened in the beginning. </p>
<p>A trained psychoanalyst, Darrieussecq is understandably careful. When she walls off her narrative, it’s with a firmness you might expect from someone whose work depends on boundaries. As a qualified psychotherapist myself, I appreciate and respect her need for containment. But as a reader, I prefer it when she’s visible.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-whats-the-link-between-insomnia-and-mental-illness-49597">Explainer: what's the link between insomnia and mental illness?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Eluding the page</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542725/original/file-20230815-18-ckj7p6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Dancing on and off the page, appearing, disappearing, and re-emerging throughout her book, Darrieussecq spins a heady web. Intoxicating and disorientating, her style works perfectly when she writes about the spiralling anxiety of insomnia, and the dizzy voids of sleeplessness. It lets her capture the internal cacophony, the sense of isolation and the tide of dread that destabilises those of us who battle for sleep. </p>
<p>Elsewhere this fragmented approach threatens to collapse the insomniac’s voice into a guidebook to sleeplessness. Depending on what you want from a memoir, maybe this doesn’t matter. Darrieussecq’s writing is faultless, however you look at it. But the question of structure is worth considering.</p>
<p>Memoirs have enjoyed increasing popularity for the last 20 years or so, and there are many ways to write one. Essentially, a good memoir takes us out of ourselves while inviting valuable connection with the author. When countered with intellectual ideas and reflections, memoir can offer valuable, wider context for personal stories, but achieving this balance is a delicate act. </p>
<p>With this in mind, the strongest sections of Sleepless are when Darrieussecq positions herself within a manageable network of references, and keeps herself clearly in the picture. </p>
<p>She does this when investigating the ruptured sleep of the homeless, politicising insomnia, but personalising the narrative with recollections of restless nights in hotels. And again, when she considers the impact of social inequity and modern technologies on our ability – as well as our basic human right – to sleep, while charting her adventures in Southern Cameroon. She had gone there to solve her writer’s block, to finish a novel about a woman who follows her lover into the Congo, but the inspiration she found in the forest was marred by sleeplessness.</p>
<p>These personal snippets add a necessary touch of individualism to this impressive enquiry. Engaging, brave and funny, they render Darrieussecq’s dazzling treatise into something more relatable. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/having-trouble-sleeping-heres-the-science-on-3-traditional-bedtime-remedies-150360">Having trouble sleeping? Here's the science on 3 traditional bedtime remedies</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Insomnia vs creativity</h2>
<p>On finishing Darrieussecq’s book, I return to the beginning, to where she writes of the hunt for the killer of sleep, and states a brutal truth: <em>Nothing prevents the insomniac from not sleeping</em>. There is a mythological quality to these words that bears little relationship to the more familiar grind and drudgery of not sleeping. But Sleepless is an attempt to coax something meaningful from long, empty wide-awake nights. </p>
<p>So, how do you make sense of insomnia? How do you reconcile yourself to lying awake night after night, within the threat of tomorrow’s awful haze? Despite her tiring search, Darrieussecq claims no answers, but by the end of her book, she’s stopped fighting for sleep. </p>
<p>Instead, she settles on changing her perspective of insomnia altogether. Turning back to Kafka and Virginia Woolf, she weaves in the rhythms of nature, drawing on the cycles of plants and planets, animals and trees to reimagine a new relationship with shadows. In this way, she hopes to “find insomnia without fatigue”, and to try and find a way of remembering “nights as a dimension of days”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544950/original/file-20230828-27248-5uxzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Should insomniacs try to remember nights as a dimension of days?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Arzu Sendag on Unsplash</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>It’s a beautiful move, and typical of the psychoanalytic mind which enjoys finding new angles on questions far more than contriving neat answers. So while I don’t feel I’ve got a better grasp on who my narrator is, when I finish her book, I am refreshed. I have a different way of relating to the night.</p>
<p>This morning, I woke at 3am. My mind was quietly busy, rustling away in the pre-dawn hours with songs of work and murmuring concerns about unfinished tasks. So I rose and settled by the fire with my books, returning to bed two hours later with a hot water bottle, looking forward to the task that prodded me awake.</p>
<p>We may not be able to cure our insomnia, but, heeding the final chapter of Darrieussecq’s book we might be able to make peace with it. Consenting to a creative impulse at an unsociable hour might sound impractical, but I’ve had a productive day. And who knows, I may even sleep tonight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209496/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The hunt for sleep has become a global industry, with apps, drugs, self-help remedies. In a new book, author Marie Darrieussecq contemplates the curse of insomnia.Liz Evans, Writer, Author, Journalist, Associate Lecturer in English & Writing:, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115062023-09-04T02:35:55Z2023-09-04T02:35:55ZHow diving as a boy took Tim Flannery on the trail of the megalodon in all its ‘terrifying glory’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545437/original/file-20230830-39956-lsjhr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C11%2C3886%2C1970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tim Flannery with a model set of jaws of a megalodon at the Australian Museum, and, on right, a megalodon tooth.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photos: Text Publishing, Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9224104/">Meg 2: The Trench</a> currently showing in cinemas – its eponymous star looking unhelpfully like an oversized great white shark – megalodons are having another pop cultural moment.</p>
<p>Cinema-goers may, justifiably, have questions about the accuracy of this latest representation of these prehistoric creatures. The good news is that Tim and Emma Flannery have written a book that will both thrill and inform such curious readers.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Big Meg: The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator that Ever Lived – Tim Flannery and Emma Flannery (Text Publishing)</em></p>
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<p>Megalodons had cartilaginous structures, rather than the bony skeletons of the dinosaurs. While dinosaurs roamed Earth during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (from 252 million to 66 million years ago), it is believed the megalodon emerged a mere 23 million years ago. </p>
<p>Megalodons had big, serrated teeth that could cut through large marine animals. When they became extinct, about 3.6 million years ago, palaeontologists were left only with remnants of their toothy smile from which to unpick the story of these sharks.</p>
<p>A palaeontologist by training, Tim Flannery’s prolific literary output has contributed both to academic debate and general awareness-raising about the nature and needs of the planet we continue to dominate. In this latest book, he has combined forces with his daughter, Emma, a scientist and explorer in her own right, but this is very much his story.</p>
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<p>Text Publishing’s edition advertises Big Meg as: “The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator that Ever Lived”. While these words are intended to excite readers, scientists have not yet assigned a definitive shape or weight to the megalodon. How sure can we be that it was the largest predator? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livyatan">Livyatan</a>, for instance, a prehistoric sperm whale, was an estimated 17.5m long and sported the largest teeth of any known creature. </p>
<p>At any rate, Tim and Emma Flannery approach the mysterious megalodon with imagination and intelligent speculation. They draw on what is already known of other species of sharks, while accepting this one could have been quite different.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-megalodon-super-predators-could-swallow-a-great-white-shark-whole-new-model-reveals-188749">Ancient megalodon super-predators could swallow a great white shark whole, new model reveals</a>
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<p>The book begins with an account of Tim as a teenage fossil-hunter in western Victoria. After unprecedented floods in 1973 expose a fresh layer of fossils for exploration, he finds a large megalodon tooth. From this moment, his passion is fired to find out more about this mysterious creature.</p>
<p>At the Museum of Victoria, Tim finds a curator who becomes his lifelong mentor. Tim had already found bits of a fossilised seal at Melbourne’s Beaumaris beach, so his mentor employs him to look for the rest of it on the understanding he must hand over anything he finds. On his first day’s dive, Tim discovers a beautiful, large, green megalodon tooth. He agonises over parting with it.</p>
<p>More than four decades later, he finds closure when he revisits this tooth at the museum. (Ironically, his mentor tells him: “I would have been happy for you to keep it.”) As he once more holds the tooth in his hand, reflecting on its rightful place in the museum’s collection, he realises he “had finally grown up”.</p>
<p>Throughout the book, Tim and Emma explore this tooth’s place in Earth’s emerging environments with an ease that comes with extensive knowledge of the subject. Drawing on comparative examples of fossilised prey, they imaginatively recreate the megalodon’s life in the ancient oceans as an apex predator. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545440/original/file-20230830-30-9kn3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tim and Emma Flannery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Kate Holden</span></span>
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<p>Exactly when the megalodon became extinct remains a mystery, but several reasons are offered as to why it did – including, perhaps, that the food required to sustain such enormous creatures was running low during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene">Pliocene</a> epoch (5.33 million to 2.58 million years ago). With fierce competition from sharks such as great whites, the supposedly bigger female megalodons, in particular, may have been just too large for the oceans to sustain the needs of any more than a small population. The species, write the authors, “may have always lived on a knife edge”.</p>
<p>As we follow this toothy tale, we learn of the cult of collectors, some of whom will go to extraordinary lengths, diving to dangerous, pitch-dark depths, to acquire a much-prized tooth. </p>
<p>Megalodon teeth vary considerably in appearance because of the absorption of particular chemicals in rocks and sediment in the many locations where they have been found. The authors describe the beauty of some of the teeth they have seen – jewel-like, variously coloured and patterned – pointing readers towards some of the likeliest sites for successful fossil-hunting. The US east coast (especially North Carolina) is a particularly rich hunting ground.</p>
<p>However, they point out that hunting is not without its dangers. Amateur fossil excavation can also risk disturbing valuable sites.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meg-2-the-truth-about-the-extinct-mega-shark-and-why-even-this-ridiculous-film-could-inspire-future-palaeontologists-210751">Meg 2: the truth about the extinct mega shark – and why even this ridiculous film could inspire future palaeontologists</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Truth in a tooth</h2>
<p>In the absence of a fully fossilised megalodon discovery that might reveal its shape and likely weight, it seems there is still a lot of truth in a tooth. The largest megalodon tooth yet found is “18cm from base to tip” and “almost certainly came from an individual that exceeded 15m in length”.</p>
<p>The shape of the tooth and its serrations confirm its job was to kill other marine mammals. The tooth’s marks on ancient bones or positions within them can reveal what the megalodon ate, while its colour, pattern and lustre can reveal the location of the creature when it died. </p>
<p>The authors acknowledge that the megalodon is not the ancestor of the great white shark – but analogies are made with this shark to allow the reader to get some sense of the kind of creature the megalodon might have been.</p>
<p>Two chapters, “Shark Eats Man” and “Man Eats Shark”, are almost entirely taken up with accounts of great white sharks, tiger sharks or bull sharks, either attacking humans, being attacked, or otherwise being used by humans to feed their desire for shark deities, shark trophies or shark fin soup. All of this rather distracts from the otherwise entertaining and informative story.</p>
<p>There is real passion in this story, but also horror and terror. Given the frequent analogies made with much oppressed, present-day sharks, more moderate language might have been used. The poor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark">Greenland sharks</a> are gruesomely described. The great whites and others become the stuff of nightmares. Readers who will never experience the beauty of these elegant and inquisitive creatures in their own environments may well associate these sharks with the imagined meg, a “terrifying”, “horrifying” “monster”, with “razor-sharp teeth” that is the star of this book.</p>
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<span class="caption">Man Eating Shark. Two chapters of the book focus on human-shark interactions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sculpture and Photo: Dave Williams</span></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-meg-is-a-horror-story-but-our-treatment-of-sharks-is-scarier-100886">Friday essay: The Meg is a horror story but our treatment of sharks is scarier</a>
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<p>In a final chapter, the authors return to the megalodon. Cryptozoologists, who search the planet for signs that creatures believed to be extinct are still alive, are on the trail of the megalodon following <a href="https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2017/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-megamouth-shark/">the discovery by a US navy ship in 1976 of a supposedly extinct megamouth shark</a>, a contemporary of the megalodon.</p>
<p>Tim and Emma doubt megalodons are still out there. The sharks would hunt, they reason, where they would be seen by us and there have been no traces of even parts of a megalodon washed ashore, as in the case of other large and mysterious creatures.</p>
<p>However, they’re optimistic that further scientific discoveries will reveal more about the true shape and size of the creature. </p>
<p>If a complete set of teeth could be found – exactly as they lay in the mouth – this would reveal how the jaws worked, how many teeth there were, and what megalodons primarily hunted. If enough of a fossil was found to indicate the length and shape of the fins, we might learn more about the megalodon’s swimming and hunting strategies.</p>
<p>In 1988, the fossil of an extinct cartilaginous shark (<em>Carcharodon hubbelli</em>) was <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/science/whos-your-daddy-great-white-sharks-parent-found">unearthed by an olive farmer</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco_Formation">Pisco Formation of Southern Peru</a>.</p>
<p>Tim Flannery suggests that if a megalodon fossil were to be found, it would most likely be in the Pisco Formation “where the ancient sea floor, miraculously preserved, is laid out in exquisite detail”.</p>
<p>For now, the creature, whose arrowhead tooth once sat in his youthful hand – pointing him to the path of palaeontology – exists largely in his imagination: the “megalodon in all its terrifying glory”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vivienne Westbrook has been the recipient of many international research funding institutes, though is not presently being funded by any organisation.</span></em></p>Megalodons are having a cultural moment. What do we know about them? And might further scientific discoveries reveal more about the true shape and size of these creatures?Vivienne Westbrook, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Oceans Institute, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116822023-08-30T20:36:30Z2023-08-30T20:36:30ZWord games, wit and the pleasure of annoying people: a daughter’s memoir sheds new light on the notoriously private John Clarke<p>Not long after John Clarke died in April 2017, his elder daughter, Lorin, attended a children’s birthday party where she found herself standing alone. </p>
<p>A woman came up to pass on her condolences. Another woman, a stranger, overheard and squealed. Your dad was John Clarke? “Are you serious? I <em>love</em> him!” Trying to go along with it, Lorin replied, “I love him too”. </p>
<p>The woman looked at her sharply and Lorin thought she was about to be admonished for her dark humour. Instead, the woman leaned in and said: “I don’t think you understand. I <em>grew up with him</em>”.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Would that be funny? Growing up with John Clarke – Lorin Clarke (Text)</em></p>
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<p>I know what she means. Along with countless others in Australia and Clarke’s birthplace, New Zealand, I fell in love with his humour, first in the form of Fred Dagg, a gumbooted clodpoll who commented on current affairs in the idiom of the agrarian sector and with a dust-dry, nasal delivery.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, as part of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086721/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Gillies Report</a>, Clarke created the mythical sport of Farnarkeling, featuring the very dextrous but disaster-prone Dave Sorensen who could “arkle from all points of the compass” even while inadvertently backing into a small ice-flattening machine during a lapse in concentration.</p>
<p>He then discovered numerous well-known poets had mythical antipodean counterparts such as Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow, Sylvia Blath and R.A.C.V. Milne, who he wrote up in <a href="http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/australian/completeozverse.html">The Complete Book of Australian Verse</a>. </p>
<p>Ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Clarke and Ross Stevenson created <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165024/">The Games</a>, a mockumentary about an Olympics organising committee forced to admit it had built a 100 metres track that was not actually 100 metres long.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-good-was-john-clarke-some-reflections-on-his-poetics-of-tinkering-120227">How good was John Clarke? Some reflections on his poetics of tinkering</a>
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<p>He was perhaps best known for the mock interviews he did with Bryan Dawe. Begun in print in the late 1980s before running on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair between 1989 and 1996, they aired on ABC television from 2000 until his unexpected death aged 68 while bush-walking with his partner of 44 years, Helen.</p>
<p>Clarke never made any effort to impersonate the politicians and celebrities he satirised. Instead, he fielded questions from Dawe, as himself, while maintaining deadpan that he was someone else. The initial surprise at seeing a middle-aged, balding man wearing no make-up or wig speaking as if he was (then) Prince Charles or actor Meryl Streep was funny itself, especially when the latter engaged the interviewer in chit-chat about the “natural” colour of her/his hair and whether “Meryl” would wear a wig for her role as Lindy Chamberlain in the film, Evil Angels.</p>
<p>More importantly, though, the decision not to impersonate the subjects prompted the audience to focus on what they were actually saying. And that was when the mock interviews transcended pratfalls of the politician-slips-on-banana-peel variety to become a genuine satiric enquiry into the gap between what politicians say and what they do.</p>
<p>Clarke’s work was popular and so was he. His blue eyes and mischievous smile endeared him to many who had never even met him. Patrick Cook, a fellow writer on The Gillies Report, described him in a radio documentary as a living treasure who appeared to have been descended from dolphins.</p>
<p>Into this picture comes Lorin Clarke’s memoir. It’s a tall task to write about someone so beloved and she does it well. Cover blurbs can be puffery but the one provided by Kaz Cooke, a decorated cartoonist/writer herself, is apt: “This beautiful memoir honours love, grief and riotous fun”.</p>
<p>It does indeed. First there is Lorin’s shock at losing a fit, healthy father at such a comparatively young age and the quick realisation just how many people knew and loved him. When she went to pick up letters and periodicals from his post office box, “a drifting tide of Australia Post staff” moved toward her. They all knew him. “Dad knew the names of the woman at the next counter’s kids” and asked about them every time he went in.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/talking-to-john-clarke-a-friend-and-biographer-reflects-76786">Talking to John Clarke: a friend and biographer reflects</a>
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<h2>Letters and leckies</h2>
<p>John Clarke was notoriously private, shunning the inanities of red-carpet theatre and giving away little in the media interviews he did over the years. Clarke’s memoir offers a portrait of what she acknowledges is an “almost offensively idyllic” childhood in the bush-fringe outer Melbourne suburb of Greensborough for her and her younger sister, Lucia.</p>
<p>They had a father whose work meant he was around a lot and was every bit as funny as you might imagine. Their mother was an art teacher, later a respected, boundary-pushing art historian, and through their house flowed a stream of interesting, creative people who sang and socialised late into the night. This enabled the sisters to talk in their bedroom after they’d been put to bed. </p>
<p>It was a family that loved words and games. Lorin Clarke reprints excerpts from the Clarke/English dictionary. A “leckie” was “the process whereby a (usually male parental) person holds court on a topic for an extended period” while “the Abe” was the ABC. No one in the family ever said the sea was cold, opting instead for James Joyce’s “snotgreen” or “scrotum tightening sea”.</p>
<p>They wrote each other letters deploying a range of argots. John might convert the lyrics of the Beatles song, “All you need is love”, into a news item while Lucia would send a legal letter from a Mr A Garfunkle in which he purported to be acting for his client, Mr Paul Simon. </p>
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<p>I understand that you act for <a href="https://genius.com/Simon-and-garfunkel-cecilia-lyrics">Cecilia</a>. I am instructed that your client has broken the heart of my client.</p>
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<p>By the time Lorin and Lucia were teenagers and the family had moved to the inner-city suburb of Fitzroy, they self-identified as The Sisterhood and began to notice how irritating it was when their father would launch into a surgically precise demolition of their favourite television program, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108894/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Party of Five</a>.</p>
<p>For Lorin, torn between wanting to enjoy her show and sensing the critique might have merit, this was infuriating. But Lucia had his number. Knowing that the Bledisloe Cup was an event before which her father genuflected, Lucia would look up from the couch and say, “faux-thoughtfully, ‘I didn’t realise the Bledisloe Cup was an intellectual pursuit’”.</p>
<p>John Clarke hated the “capitalist taste-makers colonising our television screens” while Lorin thought he couldn’t see grey areas or accept the show on its own merits. Later, she discovered he had sometimes listened to her when she overheard him arguing her point to someone on the phone. When she asked him once what he thought of Malcolm Fraser adopting more progressive political views as he got older, John Clarke replied, “Daughters. The man has daughters”.</p>
<p>Over the years several profile-writers have commented on the sparkle in John Clarke’s eyes. The Sisterhood were quick to remind him if was a bit grumpy round the house. “How’s your sparkle this morning, Dad?”</p>
<p>Beneath the sparkling eyes, Clarke railed about the absurdities of anything with a whiff of bureaucracy, an abiding theme in his life as well as his work. Lorin Clarke recalls a flurry of correspondence with the local council over the “final notice” for a parking fine when her father complained he had never received the original notice.</p>
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<p>The council explained that since he could not prove that he did not receive the letters, there was nothing the council could do about that. He asked the council to prove they had sent the letters […] Finally, the council received a letter from Dad that included a cheque for the parking fine amount, plus the late fee amount, plus $17.90 ‘so that you can purchase a dictionary, in which I suggest you look up the word “extortion”. Also, please find enclosed my rates’. The council wrote back thanking him but saying they did not receive the amount for the rates. He then wrote back, assuring them he had sent it.</p>
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<p>Once, though, Clarke found a bureaucrat with a sense of humour. He engaged in another lengthy bout of correspondence with the local council over its sub-contracted street cleaning company’s inability to actually clean the streets despite raking in plump annual profits. </p>
<p>He complained that he needed to clear the blocked drains in front of his house on numerous occasions and that he might need to request a new garden rake and broom as, “My own, which I have happily supplied along with my labour and time, are showing signs of wear and tear”.</p>
<p>Soon afterwards, the doorbell rang and a man in high-vis handed John Clarke an industrial-strength broom. “From the mayor,” he said cheerfully and left. As Lorin notes, no further correspondence was entered into.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/farewell-john-clarke-in-an-absurd-world-we-have-never-needed-you-more-76015">Farewell John Clarke: in an absurd world, we have never needed you more</a>
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<h2>Father and son</h2>
<p>All this is marvellous stuff. What Lorin also sheds light on is the unhappiness her father experienced as a young child after his parents’ acrimonious divorce. John’s father, Ted, appeared for no good reason to blame his elder child (John had a younger sister, Anna) for his unhappy marriage and tormented him psychologically as he grew up.</p>
<p>Ted’s politics were deeply conservative and he presented himself as a “posh British gentleman” even though his son later discovered he was actually “the bastard son of a socialist single mother in Ulster”, Ireland.</p>
<p>It is not clear whether Ted and Neva (John’s mother) were ill-suited or whether, like many, they had been affected by their experiences during the second world war. Ted did not like to talk about it with his granddaughters and only late in life did Neva reveal she had been sexually assaulted by soldiers.</p>
<p>Ted hated the character of Fred Dagg who was the polar opposite of how he presented himself to the world. He refused to attend any of his son’s performances even when the character became prodigiously popular in New Zealand in the 1970s. </p>
<p>“It doesn’t take Freud peering over his glasses to suggest this might not have been an accident,” notes Lorin Clarke. Her “conflict-avoidant” father didn’t think he’d invented the character to annoy his father, but John did admit, once, that he liked annoying certain people, “because if they didn’t like it, it was a sure sign it was working”.</p>
<p>Late in life, though, father and son reconciled. When Ted was incredulous that his son actually earnt a living from his “clowning”, John Clarke took him along to the filming of one of his mock interviews for television after which Ted said, “I get it now. I can see what you do”.</p>
<p>This is a memoir to be grateful for. Lorin Clarke is a talented writer. Well, der, look at her parents, you might say, but being the daughter of an almost universally admired writer is daunting and before this memoir she had already forged her own path. She has numerous credits as a children’s television screenwriter, script-edited a series of the comedy, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0934744/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Librarians</a>, and wrote an award-winning ABC radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries.</p>
<p>Apart from anything else, Would this be funny? sends you back to John Clarke’s comedy, much of which can still be found <a href="https://mrjohnclarke.com/">here</a>. One of my favourites is a lesser-known series of newspaper articles from the late-1980s entitled “The Resolution of Conflict” about the never-ending negotiations parents engage in with their children. </p>
<p>They are written in the form of a news report, with headlines like “Industrial Unrest Crisis Point”. Here’s a sample:</p>
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<p>Wednesday saw the dispute widen when an affiliated body, the Massed Five Year Olds showed their hand by waiting until the temperature had built up and management had about a hundredweight of essential foodstuffs in transit from supermarket to transport and then sitting down on the footpath over a log of claims relating to ice cream. The Federated Under Tens, sensing blood in the water, immediately lodged a similar demand and supported the Massed Five Year Olds by pretending to have a breakdown as a result of cruelty and appalling conditions.</p>
<p>The problem had been further exacerbated by a breakage to one of the food-carrying receptacles and some consequent structural damage to several glass bottles and a quantity of eggs, the contents of which were beginning to impinge on the wellbeing of the public thoroughfare.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lorin Clarke confirms in her memoir that she was indeed a card-carrying member of the Federated Under Tens. As Fred Dagg would say, I’ll get out of your way now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lorin Clarke’s account of growing up with her famous father is a loving, often funny portrait.Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2071462023-08-22T20:05:27Z2023-08-22T20:05:27Z‘Religion would take my life’: two women testify to enduring and surviving harm in evangelical Christian communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543872/original/file-20230822-31888-w6jk3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3994%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steph Lentz (left) and Rachel Louise Snyder (right).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Sayles/Pexels (cross), Nikko Tan/Pexels (background pews)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I grew up in evangelical churches where “telling your story” or “sharing your testimony” was a method of converting others. </p>
<p>I understood a personal testimony to be a powerful thing. I was told no one could question your personal story, your testimony. Which in hindsight is odd, because it turns out when women share stories of harm – including religious harm – they will, in fact, often be questioned. </p>
<p>As Julia Baird <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/when-women-are-believed-the-church-will-change/9782184">notes</a>, after she and Hayley Gleeson wrote about instances of intimate partner violence <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-to-husbands/8652028">in Christian communities</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-18/shattering-silence-surviving-domestic-violence-in-church/8788902">shared the testimonies</a> of Christian victim-survivors, “a volcano of comment erupted”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Women We Buried, Women we Burned – Rachel Louise Snyder (Scribe); In/Out – Steph Lentz (ABC Books)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I sit here with two memoirs full of women’s experiences. They’re each, in their own way, a testimony. Not testimonies of conversion <em>to</em> Christianity, but testimonies to surviving religious harm. </p>
<p>Rachel Louise Snyder, author of <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/women-we-buried-women-we-burned-9781922585363">Women We Buried, Women We Burned</a>, grew up in Pittsburgh and Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. Her childhood appears clouded by grief, upheaval, family violence and the overbearing religiosity of adults: a religiosity she never shared. </p>
<p>Steph Lentz, on the other hand, was a committed Sydney Anglican. She grew up in the 1990s, fully absorbed <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/joshua-harris-and-the-cruel-optimism-of-christian-purity-culture/11369762">evangelical purity culture</a>, and became an accidental “teenage fundamentalist” who, despite having crushes on girls from age nine, married her husband at 23. </p>
<p>In October 2020, Lentz – now 30, divorced, and out to “close family members and a few trusted friends” – told the Christian school where she was a teacher that she was gay. She was fired. She tells her story in <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780733342974/inout/">In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling into Love and Out of the Church</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543665/original/file-20230821-29-gz6yys.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Steph Lentz was fired when she told the religious school she worked at that she was gay.</span>
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<p>I still believe sharing a personal story can be a powerful, almost magical thing.</p>
<p>Marta Scrabacz <a href="https://overland.org.au/2016/09/this-is-not-a-memoir-the-c-word-in-womens-writing/">says</a> when we read of women’s experiences in works of narrative non-fiction and memoir, “it allows us to share our experiences with each other”. She suggests “women write such stories for two reasons – firstly, to stop feeling alone and find women like them and, secondly, to stop the past from defining them”.</p>
<p>These memoirs are, at first glance, worlds apart. But both appear to narrate their past in order to be free of it. Synder and Lentz bring us into their personal and intimate stories. Religion is a “character” in both their books. Though the role religion plays varies, religious harm seeps through. </p>
<p>A sense of searching or longing – perhaps for answers, or justice, or maybe freedom – carries these memoirs forward. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-womans-fleshy-feminist-spiritual-pilgrimage-is-a-warning-against-religious-coercive-control-185388">Holy Woman's fleshy, feminist spiritual pilgrimage is a warning against religious coercive control</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Stories of death and new beginnings</h2>
<p>Snyder’s memoir is framed by a story of new beginnings – and a story of cancer, loss and death. </p>
<p>She opens with a memory that would return to her “through the years and then the decades”. An uncle has helped fund a place on a floating, world-travelling educational program, Semester at Sea. On the ship, watching the night sky, Snyder sees day and night split across the horizon. She is in her early twenties. Looking back, she calls this moment a “reset”. It becomes her “origin story”. </p>
<p>The “reset” is a glimmer of future freedom, but we must wait for it. It will be 180 pages before Snyder takes us back to it. In the meantime, it’s overtaken by a second story.</p>
<p>Snyder swiftly moves us back in time. She is an eight-year-old child. Her mother has just died. Her mother’s death, though natural, appears as a violent interruption. It fractures her father’s life: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Her death was the one story that nothing in my dad’s life had prepared him for. And in that story, the loss of her, something of him – that gregarious, smiling, warm man beloved by strangers and family alike – disappeared too.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This death and disappearance double-act is the story at the centre of Snyder’s memoir, one that flows into the unravelling of Snyder’s family, her home, her life. </p>
<p>We make sense of ourselves and our worlds with stories. Stories can sustain us. But they can also be a source of unravelling. Sociologist <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo9471242.html">Arthur Frank</a> puts it this way: “stories have the capacity to deal with human troubles, but also the capacity to make trouble for humans”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-empathy-or-division-on-the-science-and-politics-of-storytelling-176679">Friday essay: empathy or division? On the science and politics of storytelling</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Making trouble: religious harm and family violence</h2>
<p>When Snyder’s father finds a new beginning in a Christian community, the reader is forewarned: “Cancer took my mother. But religion would take my life.” Snyder’s story unravels into loss, grief, family violence, running away (again and again) and homelessness. </p>
<p>Through childhood and adolescence, religion would be used against Snyder. It’s a weapon in her father’s hands. He justifies his physical violence by retelling a story that will, unfortunately, be common to many: obedience to a parent is a sign of obedience to God, discipline is an act of love, violence is an act of love. Snyder recalls:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He’d hit us ten times, a dozen, however many it took until he felt he’d broken us down enough to be truly repentant. And then we three would pray together and repent for my sins. We’d hug. Cry, because at the end of the day it was necessary to see how all this was done out of love. God’s love and my parents’ love.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Discipline that does harm, whether in the home or in the church, can never be loving. Feminist theorist <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780060959470/all-about-love/">bell hooks</a> writes: “Love and abuse cannot coexist.” Love, according to hooks, is “the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth”.</p>
<p>There is little love of that kind during Snyder’s adolescence. </p>
<p>Snyder is kicked out of high school. At 16, she and her older siblings are kicked out of their parent’s home. She takes a string of low-paid jobs and lives in insecure housing. Her grandmother sends her to a “finishing school”, which is followed by a stint as a band manager. A music industry lover prompts her to go back to school: she gets her GED, starts college at the age of 19, and becomes “consumed” by education. </p>
<p>Education, particularly reading and writing, becomes a pathway to possibility and growth. Snyder “began to understand that writing […] was an empathetic exercise in which to examine the complexities and seeming contradictions of people”. </p>
<p>We have arrived at the moment where Snyder’s story is “reset”: on board that ship, aged 23. Writing and travel come to “define” Snyder’s world. This is her fourth book, following two works of investigative journalism and a novel.</p>
<p>Later, as a journalist living in Cambodia, Snyder reflects she was on a “sacred pursuit: to learn as best I could how different lives could be lived, different belief systems understood”. Far away from the American evangelicalism she grew up with, there is peace. </p>
<h2>Doing damage</h2>
<p>On the other side of the world, in Sydney, the stories of evangelical Christianity also make trouble for Lentz.</p>
<p>While Snyder slowly walks her reader through her life, to places of pain and harm <em>and</em> to places of personal and spiritual growth, Lentz starts by recounting her picture-perfect Sydney Anglican life. Against this backdrop, she takes us to the point where the glue holding together her belief system, her marriage and her world come unstuck. </p>
<p>Synder begins with a world unravelling; Lentz is on her way there. A third of the way into In/Out, Lentz reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With my husband of five years by my side, via an old school friend, on the day a new church was born, I met the woman at whose hands I would, over the next three years be taken apart. That day snagged the thread that unravelled my world, and hers. One year on from that day, my life would be unrecognisable. Two years on, I would be on my way to the bottom of the pit I had to walk through. Eventually, I would begin to rebuild. The process would be excruciating and ludicrously slow. It remains a work in progress. But first, I had to do some damage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lentz declares she will do damage – and yes, we could count an affair, a divorce and fractured friendships as damage done by her. But the church culture she grew up in, which taught her homosexuality was sinful and incompatible with Christian faith, had already done damage of its own.</p>
<h2>Christianity, sexuality and religious harm</h2>
<p>Religiously informed LGBTQ+ change and suppression practices <a href="https://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1201588/Healing-spiritual-harms-Supporting-recovery-from-LGBTQA-change-and-suppression-practices.pdf">cause harm</a>. This is not only true of intentional activities – such as praying for a change in sexuality – but of communities, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-anglicans-say-same-sex-desire-an-inclination-toward-evil-20230816-p5dx1o.html">including the Sydney Anglican Diocese</a>, that teach homosexuality is wrong, evil or sinful. Simply hearing that message is harmful. </p>
<p>Continually telling a story that places queer people outside faith communities causes <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-will-never-be-considered-human-the-devastating-trauma-lgbtq-people-suffer-in-religious-settings-176360">harm and trauma for queer people</a>. And it renders queer religious people <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/religious-discrimination-debate-and-spiritual-harm/13747818">invisible</a>.</p>
<p>In/Out was written after Lentz lost her job. She boldly invites the reader into her experience of religious harm. She provides an intensely personal, intimate account of the way Christian culture – and religiously informed stories – can both inform and limit how we understand ourselves. </p>
<p>For Lentz – as for many people – Christianity’s place in her life is complex. Through her teenage years, church life was experienced as a welcoming refuge, providing a secure identity and place in the world. </p>
<p>Yet belonging to an evangelical community is often contingent on the “right” expression of gender and sexuality. For Lentz, it was a harmful space that prohibited her from understanding her own sexuality. Lentz’s writing excels when she begins to grapple with how the church, as an institution, stretches into her personal life:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My own marriage had a lot to do with churchmen’s fear about the collapse of patriarchy; my sense of self was shaped by a hierarchical institution ruled by a text covered in the fingerprints of the men looking to keep control.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The legacy of those fingerprints is sexism, exclusion and gendered harm.</p>
<p>For those who have been harmed, or who are still in a place of harm, Lentz’s book may remind them they are not alone. It may give permission to read the Bible differently and to seek welcoming, inclusive communities where they are free to do gender, sexuality and religion (if they want) in a way that honours the complexity of their identity. This is a good thing.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/were-told-pentecostal-churches-like-hillsong-are-growing-in-australia-but-theyre-not-anymore-is-there-a-gender-problem-199413">We're told Pentecostal churches like Hillsong are growing in Australia, but they're not anymore – is there a gender problem?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A scandalous story</h2>
<p>In/Out is positioned by its subtitle as a “scandalous story”. In this regard, Lentz delivers. She recounts in detail what it was like to finally let herself fall in love with a woman. She shares the thrill and the mess of that relationship. We share in her emotional ride. We are with her as she discovers sexual intimacy, as she expects to feel guilt, but feels calm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was committing the sins of adultery and lying and homosexuality […] I waited for the sense of wrongness to kick in. I waited for God’s judgement to fall upon me in some manner or other. But nothing happened. If anything, I felt closer to God: finally, neither of us was pretending I was that good Christian woman anymore. Instead of condemnation, I experienced deep calm.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We are also with Lentz when she attends an affirming church and is welcomed – but no longer feels at home in Christian spaces. </p>
<p>We are with Lentz when she meets with her school principal and HR manager. Here she tells “the story about my dawning of awareness of my sexuality”. And in telling this story, she sets in motion a conversation with the school which would lead to her being fired: “As letters went back and forth betweeen the school and me, it became clear the Board did not see a future for a gay teacher among its staff.” </p>
<p>Given the school understood homosexuality <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/steph-lentz-was-sacked-this-year-for-being-gay-it-was-perfectly-legal-20210809-p58gzv.html">to be a threat to salvation</a>, the risk of keeping Lentz on staff was too high.</p>
<p>Sure, there is some sexy content in the pages of Lentz’s memoir, but perhaps the real scandal is the mess of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-debate-about-religious-discrimination-is-back-so-why-do-we-keep-hearing-about-religious-freedom-169643">state and federal discrimination laws across Australia</a>, which continue to frame religious freedom and LGBTQ+ rights as in competition. Those laws risk failing those who most need protection. </p>
<h2>‘The goal is simply to endure’</h2>
<p>Lentz races through her book. She gives the reader few moments to pause. Perhaps she is still searching for a place to pause, to start again. I found myself hurriedly turning pages, wanting to know about the process of recovering from religious harm, or of what trauma theologian <a href="https://scmpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334060932/the-dark-womb">Karen O’Donnell</a> calls post-traumatic remaking. </p>
<p>While some people may seek recovery from religious and spiritual trauma, others know they can never recover the person they were before. O’Donnell explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the experience of the trauma survivor is not a simple wiping clean of the self from the experience of trauma but rather a more complex and arduous work. […] what is the goal of the trauma survivor in this aftermath? It is not transcending trauma, nor finding solutions to the dilemmas of survival. The goal is simply to endure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Snyder’s memoir is a masterful case study in endurance and survival. As a reader, there is time to sit with child Rachel in her sadness, and with teenage Rachel in her confusion, anger and despair. In the midst of pain, there are beautiful and tender moments. </p>
<p>After crying through her father’s second marriage, Snyder is embraced by her grandfather: “I felt my grandfather’s hand on my head. He didn’t say anything. He just held his hand there on me in stillness.” </p>
<p>This stillness embeds in my mind. I feel I am there in the basement of the church, feeling both the anguish and the comfort. I can pause, exhale. I can start again – and again – with Snyder, after every loss, every setback. Snyder’s writing is consistently measured, yet deeply moving.</p>
<p>Snyder also holds out glimmers of hope. On the cruise, at the moment of her “origin story”, she learns a lesson about death. It’s a lesson that resists shallow causality (your mum died so that you could …). Actually, it’s a lesson on how to live. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My mom’s early death had been a warning shot, a directive about life itself […] it wasn’t a betrayal to her memory to seek a life in which joy was deliberate. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Do we know how to deliberately seek joy? To allow ourselves to be joyful? Maybe we are always in the process of learning these sorts of lessons.</p>
<p>Lentz closes her book saying she’s “growing up all over again, learning who I am, learning to choose”. </p>
<h2>Freedom from the past</h2>
<p>Freedom from the past comes from being able to narrate our stories truthfully. </p>
<p>Lentz finds freedom “Closer to the chaos at the heart of living”. She reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was not a freedom like the one that had been sold to me, squashed into a small box of constrained choices and limited options. […] It was freedom to be patient with mystery.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Snyder, freedom is knowing she doesn’t have to say her parents “did the best they could under the circumstances with the resources they had”. Freedom is knowing this isn’t true. And so, Snyder can say: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I gave myself the freedom to live with a different historical narrative. And in the strangest way this lifted my anger. […] I would no longer carry this burden. They could view our collective past through whatever lens they wanted, but I was going to free myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can’t undo what was done. None of us can. But in holding and telling your story truthfully, you can recover your agency and sense of self. In this, there is hope. Your story may or may not be a method for converting others. But the opportunity to tell it can be freeing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Clare is a feminist researcher interested in religion and gender. She grew up in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, and recently completed PhD research focused on the lived experiences of Sydney Anglicans. </span></em></p>New memoirs by Rachel Louise Snyder and Steph Lentz chart the territory of being shaped by an ill-fitting version of strict Christianity – and their struggle to free themselves.Rosie Clare Shorter, Research fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107022023-08-15T01:48:07Z2023-08-15T01:48:07ZAmid dreadful sexual abuse, sport brings grace in a school memoir that resists easy judgement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540385/original/file-20230801-15-ewgsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C3817%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A friend likes to remind me about the one time I attended an Ashes test in Melbourne, Boxing Day, 1974. The crowd was waiting, excited, to watch the English team, and Dennis Amiss particularly, front up to the wicket. On he came, bravely facing just eight balls. Then he was caught out, having scored a paltry four runs. I cried. How humiliating and soul-shrivelling for him, I thought. But my Australian (male) friends couldn’t understand at all. Crying? For an Englishman!</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Empty Honour Board: a school memoir – Martin Flanagan (Viking)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Then there were all those years growing up with a father who insisted on watching <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine%27s_Wide_World_of_Sports">Wide World of Sports</a> every Sunday at lunchtime. The kitchen table would be carried in to the TV and we were made to sit in religious silence, eating our roast, watching grown men hand-balling through a hole in the wall, and rehashing the events/scores/heroes of the previous day’s matches. </p>
<p>These anecdotes are not random. They were part of my personal mythology, my long dislike of the Australian religion of sport. Back then I saw it all as being at the expense of, say, literature, or intellectual debate, or spiritual depth. </p>
<p>I am deciding in later life that pitting sport against culture, or intellect, or spirituality is not a very productive idea. That kind of oppositional mentality chisels down your options and your enjoyments. I have writer Martin Flanagan to thank for shaking my narrowness. He hasn’t completely set me free (I’m sure that wasn’t his aim); but life, and sons, and what Flanagan in his memoir <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-empty-honour-board-9780143779131">The Empty Honour Board</a> describes as “the athletic grace” of sport and sportspeople, have contributed to my education.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Flanagan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This book, described by Flanagan as “a school memoir” is that, and much more – spanning the 1960s of Flanagan’s childhood to the present. </p>
<p>The famous Flanagan sports-writing flair is given plenty of scope; but at this book’s centre are stories from a boy’s world: the Tasmanian Catholic boarding school he attended as a child in the 1960s and ‘70s, the priests who taught there, and the camaraderie of boys who felt themselves constantly under threat from male violence (regular canings, bashings, enforced piety, touchings, and full-on abuse).</p>
<p>From 1966 to 1971, from the ages of 10 to 16, Flanagan went to this school, not named in the book for privacy reasons. Many boys – Flanagan to a minor extent – were sexually abused to differing degrees. Others were bullied and traumatised at this school, which has since been disbanded. </p>
<p>As the violent, dreadful stories of sexual abuse are slowly told in the book, often in ragged, little images that say it all, we are also given many sports stories, and wider Flanagan life experiences. They made this reader listen, these stories of on-field valour and sporting prowess of the past. Playing football and cricket was the escape and joy of many boys, as sport became a free space:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this grey world, I discovered sport… Sport, unlike school and religion, had <em>life!</em> I discovered sport like others I have read discover theatre - as a magical space where aspects of humanity otherwise kept hidden away come out to play. For the first time I saw grace … athletic grace that took my breath away, acts of skill and daring that imprinted themselves indelibly on my brain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Empty Honour Board is also a book about the way memory and the past and one’s boyhood passions and nightmares can collide, often unexpectedly, later in life, resulting in new readings of the self. We see that for Flanagan “the self” is a hard-won, self-questioning and restless entity. One memory, retrieved in later life by the author, is startling in its openness about the struggle for self:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the end, one hot day I was standing beside a Blackwood tree in the paddock beside our little home, when a shadow hurried across the grass towards me. With it came a great fear that I was about to be extinguished or swallowed up, and I cried out: ‘I have a right to be!’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This memory is told in a straightforward, non-self-dramatising way, not blaming any one person for “the negative imprint of those early years”, but registering the life-long impact nevertheless. It is the act of writing, we are told, which gave (and gives) Flanagan his “sanity”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flanagan writes of the breathtaking athletic grace of sport,</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Morgan Hancock/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-believe-or-not-to-believe-child-witnesses-and-the-sex-abuse-royal-commission-55561">To believe or not to believe: child witnesses and the sex abuse royal commission</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pity for the loneliness of priests</h2>
<p>Flanagan the writer emerges with many selves: poet, passionately non-Catholic thinker (despite his mother’s desires), journalist of eclectic scope, traveller, and most interestingly, perhaps, someone who refuses to be judgemental even in the face of awful and dire life situations.</p>
<p>Yet we are given plenty to judge: a full blast of life as a child from a Catholic family landed in a boarding school from the age of 11, where multiple forms of violence are always hovering, and where religious faith is not experienced as real for the boy. </p>
<p>However, this doesn’t turn into a story of victimhood. The boy (and the man) does not resent his parents for sending him away, but remembers feeling ready to face the freedom of being out of home. He doesn’t even despise the priests who inflict such violence on the boys in their “care”. There is more a sense of pity for the loneliness of such priests.</p>
<p>In the words of “celebrity barrister” Geoffrey Robertson, at the time of the 2019 trials of several of the priests, (quoted by Flanagan), most accused priests</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] are not even paedophiles, but rather sexually maladjusted, immature and lonely individuals unable to resist the temptation to exploit their power over children who are taught to revere them as agents of God. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is more pity than judgement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is more human pity than judgement informing this stance. For Flanagan, judgementalism is usually produced by simplistic thinking, in the “current realm”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] now termed binary thinking where issues about deeply sensitive subjects like race and sexuality and gender are reduced almost immediately to black-and-white terms […] So much contemporary media – particularly social media – reduces human dramas to scenarios in which the forces of darkness are pitted against the forces of light. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flanagan’s expressed wish in this book is to be “uplifting”. He sees himself as an optimist, and asks humbly, from the wells of his human experience: “Whose light didn’t come with a shadow?” </p>
<p>As the book proceeds to unpack the offences and trials of the different priests from his school, placing his narrative in the larger context of sexual abuse allegations surrounding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/30/george-pell-returns-to-rome-after-acquittal-on-child-abuse-charges">Archbishop George Pell</a> and others, Flanagan maintains both his pity, but also his sense of justice.</p>
<p>He continued to like some of the priests who later turned out to be abusers, but still delivered “my testimony hard and exact”, 30 years later when he agreed to testify in court about abuse in the school. </p>
<p>As Flanagan narrates, in straightforward, factual prose at the beginning of the book: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Three of the 12 priests on the staff when I arrived have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed while I was there, and allegations have been publicly directed against others. Further sexual abuse cases occurred at the school after I left, so that as it now stands six former staff members have been sent to jail. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Spiritual depth</h2>
<p>The last section of the book is poised between pity and optimism, with a straightforward, straight-talking sense of realism peeling back to reveal the brutishness of which humans are capable. Placing his work in the context of literature and the genre of boyhood education – Lord of the Flies, Tom Brown’s School Days, Huckleberry Finn – is helpful for readers thinking about what kind of text this is.</p>
<p>There are many heroes named along the way. Flanagan never exaggerates his own personal story of abuse, but bullying and cowardice and outright violence were the air all the boys breathed at the school. Yet there is also hope, with moving tributes made to heroes. These tributes buoy up Flanagan’s memoir with grace and strength, embodying what is possible beyond the shabbiness of predatory human actions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many figures stand out as cherished influences in Flanagan’s story, some of them beacons of hope: Indigenous leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Dodson">Patrick Dodson</a>, Martin’s wife Polly, his brothers, especially Tim, his parents, writers such as Howard Goldenberg, George Orwell and William Golding, musician Archie Roach, and a long, long roll call of sportsmen, and fellow students who bravely rode the waves of the dark world that was school life: Paul and Steve O’Halloran, Rinso, Peter Rowe, and others.</p>
<p>Finally, there is one subtext of this memoir which needs highlighting: Flanagan’s broken, often angry, but ongoing relationship with spirituality. When it boils down to the institution of the Catholic church – its priesthood, schools, rituals and disciplines – there is little warmth. And who can blame him? </p>
<p>But in his honouring of people’s warmth, his tributes to the church’s joyful priests, its service to the marginal, its rituals of memory, Flanagan is still alive to the need for spiritual depth. </p>
<p>He finds this depth in Aboriginal spirituality and the example of Pat Dodson. And as he tells us, when meeting the late <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu">South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a> and hearing his “raucous cackle”, he asked him “Does God laugh?” Flanagan reports Tutu’s response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He took my forearm solemnly in his hands and said slowly and with emphasis: ‘Yes, my friend. God laughs – and God cries,’ and I saw within him, as deep as a mine-shaft, where despair has taken him … In South Africa I got seriously scared by the evil of torture and in South Africa I saw that hope, like love, can be made. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This nonjudgmental equanimity crowns Flanagan’s memoir. He tells a bleak set of stories, but the volume is indeed uplifting in the face of so much darkness. I’m even tempted to seek out some more of his sports writing.</p>
<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of this article mis-spelt the name of the barrister Geoffrey Robertson. It has now been corrected.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyn McCredden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Martin Flanagan’s school memoir describes bullying, male violence and abusive priests. But rather than a story of victimhood, it explores the grace and release of sport, finding hope amid darkness.Lyn McCredden, Personal Chair, Literary Studies, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2075832023-08-02T17:13:56Z2023-08-02T17:13:56ZFive must-read summer non-fiction books – reviewed by our experts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537339/original/file-20230713-21-e1od0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=871%2C0%2C5119%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/young-girl-reading-magazine-on-picnic-1653591187">PayPau/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Looking to expand your horizons this summer? We’ve asked our experts to review some of the biggest non-fiction books released this year so far. There are books to expand your knowledge of environmental collapse, others that will give you an insight into the work and lives of creatives like artist Leonora Carrington and actor Elliot Page, and books that offer advice on living better.</em></p>
<h2>1. <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com/surreal-spaces-the-life-and-art-of-leonora-carrington-9780500025512">Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington</a> by Joanna Moorhead</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover featuring black and white photo of a woman sitting on the floor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534037/original/file-20230626-15-dc7lhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thames and Hudson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Joanna Moorhead’s study of the pioneering surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) captures a wave of fascination for surrealist women artists. Carrington’s zest, her intellectual curiosity and her defiant pursuit of personal autonomy and uncompromising artistic authenticity dazzle at every turn in this evocative, deeply-felt study of the spaces and places of the artist’s life and work. </p>
<p>An exquisite contribution to art history and visual culture studies, this cultural geography of the life and the work of the artist and author complements the work of Whitney Chadwick’s book (<a href="https://thamesandhudson.com/women-artists-and-the-surrealist-movement-9780500296165">Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement</a>), positioning Carrington as a seminal surrealist and celebrating a remarkable life in art and ideas. </p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Susan Harrow</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/six-must-read-summer-fiction-books-reviewed-by-our-experts-207690">Six must-read summer fiction books – reviewed by our experts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hal-hershfield/your-future-self/9781668626856/">Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today</a> by Hal Hershfield</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book featuring a bird escaping an egg." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537325/original/file-20230713-17-stl6ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hachette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hal Hershfield’s well-researched and fascinating book has strong echoes of the practice of “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/horizon-scanning-programme-a-new-approach-for-policy-making">horizon scanning</a>”. Particularly, that it is important to avoid transplanting who and what we are now into the future, but instead to consider the context of the future. Hershfield suggests not just thinking of ourselves as wrinkly, older versions of who we are now, but as people who have taken a full journey of time and experience.</p>
<p>Hershfield explains that we often view our future selves as strangers and are consequently prone to making decisions against our own long-term interests. He gives excellent examples of how we can improve our decision-making through visualisation and by writing to and from our future selves to refine our choices. </p>
<p>Hershfield recommends that we instead attend to the needs and wants of our contemporary selves, so we are not mortgaging ourselves to our futures. Your Future Self includes curated highlights at the end of each chapter to drive home the key lessons. A well-balanced and thought-provoking book.</p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Robert Dover</em> </p>
<h2>3. <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453797/pageboy-by-page-elliot/9780857529282">Pageboy</a> by Elliot Page</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A book featuring a man in jeans and white vest on cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537326/original/file-20230713-21-p04z0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453797/pageboy-by-page-elliot/9780857529282">Penguin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new memoir from actor Elliot Page’s (best known for <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/">Juno</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1312171/">The Umbrella Academy</a>) explores his experiences of queerness, gender and stardom. Page’s honest and vulnerable text includes insights into his complicated childhood in Nova Scotia, his early closeted queerness and his recent gender transition. </p>
<p>The book is poignantly raw, but Page also offers gentle levity through his encounters with love and sex. In places, Page links his difficulties to the broader transphobic narratives that are harming trans people across the world. In contextualising his stories as part of a wider social current, Page’s work becomes doubly compelling. </p>
<p>Page is reflexive in acknowledging some of his privileges as a white celebrity with greater access to financial security. Alongside this, he is mindful in quietly recognising ongoing and historical LGBTQ+ activism, making this a remarkable memoir – honest, engaging, melancholic, yet heartening. </p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Rosie Nelson</em> </p>
<h2>4. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/earth-transformed-9781526622587/">The Earth Transformed</a> by Peter Frankopan</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover featuring two sides of a globe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536841/original/file-20230711-29-exw7up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/earth-transformed-9781526622587/">Bloomsbury Publishing</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Earth Transformed traces humanity’s relationship with the environment from the planet’s earliest life to the present day. The focus is on societies that build cities and support them with intensive agriculture, modifying their environments in the process. Through this lens, the book charts how responses to environmental challenges are generally shaped by political factors.</p>
<p>Human progress, it seems, is largely a scaling up of the same flawed approaches of governments, while, over millennia, voices speak against the exploitation of nature, but never achieve a lasting victory. </p>
<p>Frankopan synthesises a large, interesting body of research to tell a story of crucial importance for today’s world. What’s missing is a penetrating analysis of the forces that have held (some) humans to this course and how to escape them. His discomfort with environmental factors as historical agents means that the book sometimes undersells the potential of these approaches to rewrite the story of past and future.</p>
<p>However, the book will give readers plenty to think about and many new insights into how we’ve got to where we are. </p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Amanda Power</em></p>
<h2>5. <a href="https://www.heathbooks.co.uk/product/the-human-mind-a-brief-tour-of-everything-we-know/paul-bloom/9781847926951/">The Human Mind: A Brief Tour of Everything We Know</a> by Paul Bloom</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Book cover with writing and coloured squares." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536838/original/file-20230711-21-kqk57d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bodley Head</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This book is a flashback to my undergraduate psychology classes, where we learned about B.F. Skinner’s <a href="https://braintour.harvard.edu/archives/portfolio-items/skinner-and-behaviorism">behaviourism</a>, Jean Piaget’s <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html">stages of development</a> and Sigmund Freud’s <a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/freud-and-unconscious">unconscious mind</a>. It is an excellent book for anyone who wants a brief tour, as the title suggest, of these important basic concepts in psychology.</p>
<p>The book offers readers examples of these psychological concepts set in the contemporary world. Bloom uses Pokemon to describe parents’ influence on their children, discusses biases through eBay and gives an example of living in a penthouse in Manhattan as a metaphor for a cognitive map. His stories are sometimes surprising and made me laugh out loud, which made this book enjoyable to read.</p>
<p>At the same time, I would have liked to see more up-to-date research in the book, especially in the context of positive psychology, which is my specialism. In a happiness chapter, we get a reductionist perspective on wellbeing, which can be misleading to readers. Overall, however, a very enjoyable read.</p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Jolanta Burke</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From new writing on art to books on how the world got to where is politically and environmentally.Susan Harrow, Professor of French Language and Literature, University of BristolAmanda Power, Associate Professor of Medieval History, University of OxfordJolanta Burke, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Positive Health Sciences, RCSI University of Medicine and Health SciencesRobert M. Dover, Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University of HullRosie Nelson, Lecturer in Gender, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065182023-07-10T02:06:18Z2023-07-10T02:06:18ZFat people are taught to hate themselves – but Kris Kneen’s intimate book could create change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535263/original/file-20230703-241360-p21iwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5539%2C3479&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman relaxes in the pool: in their memoir, Australian writer Kris Kneen describes the freedom they find in the water.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Allgo An App for Plus-size People/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I was a child, the water was a place of freedom. I remember throwing my body around with abandon, revelling in the joy of handstand competitions and long games of mermaids or lifeguards with my sister and cousins. </p>
<p>I’ve swum for most of my life, finding joy in the quiet of the water and the way I can move my body without straining my joints or passing out from trying to exercise in the heat. </p>
<p>But my relationship with the water changed as my body did. To get in the water, to swim, was to strip down to a bathing suit and gave me nowhere to hide. As my breasts grew, hips widened, belly expanded, it got harder and harder to find my freedom in water, unless I was alone. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Fat Girl Dancing – Kris Kneen (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In Kris Kneen’s latest memoir <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/fat-girl-dancing">Fat Girl Dancing</a>, they describe a similar freedom in the water and the aloneness they find there:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes when I am swimming, I feel safe. It is as if the weight I am carrying has been cancelled by the lift of the water. If I’m alone, if there is no one else in the pool to judge me, maybe then I can feel okay about my body.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Feeling okay about your body as a fat person is difficult and complicated. Writing about it can be even harder. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535257/original/file-20230703-268647-shqtv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kris Kneen writes about their complex relationship with their body in Fat Girl Dancing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Gilligan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fat bias</h2>
<p>The world is completely biased against fat bodies. Fat people face myriad challenges in their day-to-day life, from the well-documented discrimination on airline travel and public transport, to the size bias from clothing manufacturers. There’s scrutiny over groceries, eating in public, working out, not working out, being visible. </p>
<p>It can be extremely difficult for fat people to access health care where their weight doesn’t become the only thing that doctors focus on. And when they do, tables and blood pressure cuffs and testing machinery are not built with every body in mind. Kneen explores these experiences in her book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My arm was too big for the cuff. I could tell, but they didn’t seem to notice. I told them it hurt but they just nodded and said it was supposed to be a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It hurt, and because it was a machine that repeated the reading on a regular basis it continued to hurt again and again and again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thin bodies are held up as the ideal: they are the bodies of social media, movies – and as Kneen (who has written erotic memoirs, fiction and poetry) explores, porn and erotic stories. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535255/original/file-20230703-255984-ovj9iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Society’s anti-fat bias is so pervading, fat people are taught to hate themselves and crave smaller bodies. We fantasise about the thin people shown to us in the media: we have, as Kneen says, become “a part of this system that hates fat women”.</p>
<p>There are also intersections within the fat community, which means that while I consider myself a fat person, I am a straight-sized fat or “a small fat”. </p>
<p>This means I can shop off the rack in many stores, can fit into shoes and chairs, and face less daily scrutiny than many fat folks. I operate in a more privileged subject-positioning: while I face some of the discriminations all fat folks face, I can never understand the full extent of what other, fatter people face. </p>
<p>Understanding is important. And in this memoir, Kneen invites readers into their life and feelings in a way that’s deeply intimate – a way that somehow feels even more intimate than their earlier writing about sex and desire. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-big-fat-fight-the-case-for-fat-activism-7743">A big fat fight: the case for fat activism </a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Breaking down fatphobia</h2>
<p>I’ve been working hard at unpacking my own relationship with my body. I’ve found motivation and understanding in books like <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-fat-9780807014776#:%7E:text=In%20What%20We%20Don't,of%20plus%2Dsized%20people's%20experiences.">What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat</a> by Aubrey Gordon, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-body-is-not-an-apology-second-edition-9781523090990">The Body Is Not An Apology</a> by Sonya Renee Taylor and <a href="https://thefuckitdiet.com/book">The F-ck It Diet</a> by Caroline Dooner. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535252/original/file-20230703-267655-cyhffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kris Kneen’s self-portraits attempt to break down fatphobia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Mullins/Fat Girl Dancing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The books I’ve found in the body of fat writing use data and research, coupled with some anecdotes, to break down internal and external fatphobia. But Kneen writes using a mix of forms and structures. Direct essays, where Kneen unpacks an aspect of their life or an experience, are often followed by more “creative” chapters where the writing is more experimental. </p>
<p>Sometimes the reader is pulled right in close to Kneen’s feelings in these sections – and the affect is powerful. Their book does more than just share experiences, it leads the reader through a life: the good, the bad, the complex and the profoundly beautiful. </p>
<p>One of the most beautiful but also disturbing parts of the books is where Kneen goes swimming in Vanuatu and captures the attention of a dugong. Having lost his mate, the male dugong had become a danger to men swimming in the bay. When the dugong appears, he takes a liking to Kneen. At first it’s delightful, but then the dugong pushes them away from the shore. “It was funny and wonderful and terrifying,” Kneen says. </p>
<p>The dugong becomes a repeated motif in the book: why did he take such a liking to Kneen? What would have happened had they allowed themselves to be taken out to sea, to become the dugong’s bride?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I bobbed gently back to the cliff face and climbed up it, grinning, knowing the creature had identified me as something like itself, a great blubbery thing of the ocean. And feeling, for the first time, exactly the right size and shape.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the most stunning parts of the book is the way its chapters are punctuated by black-and-white photos of Kneen’s body, taken by their partner Anthony. They’re stunning naked pictures. Kneen says they “hint at the whole of my body without showing which bits we are looking at”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535253/original/file-20230703-269585-e2we55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The book’s photos of Kneen’s body, taken by their partner, are ‘stunning’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Mullins/Fat Girl Dancing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The intimacy of the book is at its peak here; readers are not just seeing Kneen’s body – invited to look upon it and think about it. We are seeing their body through their partner’s eyes, which is extraordinary. Looking at these pictures, then taking the invitation issued by the book to <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/fat-girl-dancing-photographs">view the high-resolution versions</a> of the images online, I found myself falling a bit in love with Kneen.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-fat-studies-63108">Explainer: what is fat studies?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Burlesque is (not) for every body</h2>
<p>The book isn’t without its issues, but they’re things I wonder if anyone else would notice. For Kneen, burlesque classes have helped them to be able to look in the mirror and like what they see. </p>
<p>But I am also a dancer in Brisbane and have misgivings about the place where Kneen dances: a place where I found the moves towards diversity and intersectionality <a href="https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/misfit-ballet/">felt forced and unnatural, particularly for people of colour</a>. These classes work for some, but <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w35e/performers-of-colour-deserve-more-from-the-adult-dance-community">not for others</a>.</p>
<p>The cover quotes are from impressive literary names, but no one on the list is fat. And in the mammoth list of follow-up books to read, there are typos an editor who was engaged with the fat community might have noticed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535254/original/file-20230703-264305-70lubj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burlesque has helped Kneen look in the mirror and like what they see.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Mullins/Fat Girl Dancing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s something interesting about the way Kneen tells their stories about hurt and discrimination. There are moments when they walk into their favourite store, excited to buy a new outfit, only to find the brand has changed patterns and they can’t fit the clothes anymore. There are conversations where well-meaning friends make horrific jokes about their weight, where their mother puts them on a diet. </p>
<p>I worry sometimes, with writing about the fat experience, that incidents like this stir the pities of thin people instead of the sort of empathy we need: empathy that would stir those people to think about how they behave around fat people and the ways they are perpetuating negative stereotypes. </p>
<p>It’s hard for me to say how thin people will read this book. But I think Kneen’s delivery is exquisite and emotionally balanced.</p>
<p>I can see this book creating change, because it is so personal. I found comfort in some of these shared experiences. And I found beauty in the large body – and joy in the way Kneen’s story joins the growing body of books about the fat experience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Saward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kris Kneen’s ‘exquisite’ memoir about living in a fat body is deeply intimate. It somehow feels even more intimate than their books about sex and desire.Melanie Saward, Associate Lecturer, Creative Writing, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2015712023-06-13T20:05:24Z2023-06-13T20:05:24ZBrenda Matthews was ripped from a loving family twice. But she was born too late to be officially recognised as Stolen Generations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531497/original/file-20230613-15-fmujwv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C80%2C1061%2C641&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brenda Matthews</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The woman’s face is in profile, her eyes looking into the distance – or the past, or the future. This is a quiet woman, a thoughtful one; possibly one who also carries sadness in her soul. This woman’s face is natural, a face with features as familiar as my own – a strong brow, deep-set and dark eyes, and full unvarnished lips set with an appealing cupid’s bow. Her hair is swept up, the background is purple-blue – evocative of a beautiful night sky. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531261/original/file-20230612-154575-laev6g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>I don’t know why it takes me the full read of her book before I see the photograph of two children superimposed on her right cheek: one child white-skinned with blonde hair, the other dark-skinned with dark hair. It’s a happy photo, as natural as they come. </p>
<p>Before this photograph of the children came into focus, my mind’s eye assumed it was white ochre, placed ready for a ceremony of some sort. The book, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-last-daughter">The Last Daughter</a>, recounts the woman’s life to a certain midlife point. It ends with insight into the making of a <a href="https://www.thelastdaughter.com.au/">documentary feature film</a>, released this week. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Last Daughter – Brenda Matthews (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The book is a ceremony of sorts: a bringing together of the woman’s story of families, Country, love, separation, heartache. And at its centre, a truth-seeking quest to right the wrongs perpetrated by a government hell-bent on doing “as they saw fit” when it came to Aboriginal peoples, with little regard for the consequences. The woman is Brenda Matthews, née Simon, born 1970.</p>
<p>This birth year renders her officially ineligible for being recognised as part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stolen-generation-redress-scheme-wont-reach-everyone-affected-by-the-policies-that-separated-families-166499">Stolen Generations</a>: the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Act was repealed and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-lived-history-of-the-aborigines-protection-board-while-we-still-can-46259">Aboriginal Welfare Board</a> abolished in 1969. She was removed from her family four years later, in 1973.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531508/original/file-20230613-29-fkv5cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Last Daughter ends with insight into the making of a documentary feature film, released this week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stolen, again and again</h2>
<p>Brenda was one of eight children, seven of whom were heartbreakingly removed from and then haphazardly returned to their parents, Brenda Simon née Hammond and Gary Simon. Brenda was the last to be returned home: after five years. She was two years old when she was taken and seven when she was returned.</p>
<p>She describes her mother’s memory of doing the household chores with a friend one day, “a few days” after she took her sick child Karla to the local hospital. “A car pulled up outside and two Welfare Department officers got out.” Her friend asked if they’d come to inspect the house. “Welfare officers were often inspecting Aboriginal homes to check if they were clean, which was often an excuse and a precursor to taking the children.” </p>
<p>But they had arrived “to take the kids”, on mysterious charges of neglect. Local knowledge about collusion between the local hospital matron and the Welfare Department does not escape mention.</p>
<p>After three months in a home, Brenda was fostered by a White family, who had a daughter of a similar age. “She is my younger sister and I love her,” recalls Brenda in the book. They believed they had adopted Brenda, and that a single mother had given her up. Five years later, she was returned home, with almost no transition. “I was ripped from both these families,” she writes later in the book, looking back.</p>
<p>This memoir reveals Brenda reconciling with this past, 40 years later, bringing her “Black family” and her “White family” together. The trauma impacts of these separations can be read through this life story, not least when 18-year-old Brenda tells no one she is pregnant and ends up giving birth alone in her bedroom: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think deep down inside, I’m scared of this baby being taken from me because I was taken away from my Mum and Dad. I don’t want history to repeat itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Baby Keisha enjoys unbroken bonds with her parents and both extended families. Later, she is joined by four brothers, then by four more siblings, through her mother’s marriage to stepfather Mark. By the end of this book, Keisha has two children of her own – who become central to Brenda’s commitment to her story, her families, and a future free from cruel intervention. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531506/original/file-20230613-15-wcvsxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brenda with her children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>History as told in The Last Daughter – family separation and its resulting trauma – does not repeat for future generations. But its effects continue to find sad reverberation in the life experiences of Brenda, her parents and her siblings. </p>
<p>Before her own children were “shoved” into a government car, Brenda’s mum had lived in fear of exactly this – as a teenager, she witnessed a cousin taken from her Aunty Greta.</p>
<p>Thinking about these removals under false charges, Brenda wonders what other lies are recorded as fact in government files about other family members, particularly after uncovering – with the help of historian and Wiradjuri woman Kim Burke – that Brenda’s maternal grandmother and great-grandmother were also stolen. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What chance did we have? Stolen, again and again and again. This is one family heirloom that didn’t need passing down, and the only blessing is that Mum was not stolen.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vince-copley-had-a-vision-for-a-better-australia-and-he-helped-make-it-happen-with-lifelong-friend-charles-perkins-192097">Vince Copley had a vision for a better Australia – and he helped make it happen, with lifelong friend Charles Perkins</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘This is real history’</h2>
<p>Members of Brenda’s White family are also left affected by the brutality of government policy: they provided a home to a little girl they fell in love with and whom their biological children considered a sibling. The youngest of this family, Brenda and Rebecca, are the girls on the cover image. And while there was nothing natural about how they became siblings, the love and joy between them is impossible to ignore. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531262/original/file-20230612-202521-sv7e7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This photo of Brenda with her ‘White sister’ Rebecca is part of the book’s cover image.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Brenda tells the story of reconnecting with her White family. The young ones – Mark’s daughters – prove pivotal in this; their internet sleuthing and Facebook friend requests prove the bridge to the reconnection. Kiara gets a notification ping while in class and her teacher “reminds her that she is in a history lesson”. Kiara replies, “this is real history”, as she walks out. Later, she is able to confirm with Brenda that her White mum wants to see her. </p>
<p>Brenda’s ability, with the help of her husband Mark, to blend a new family across culture and history – despite the intergenerational trauma – is another feature of this life story. </p>
<p>There are many moments in The Last Daughter that make a reader pause and reflect on the power of love and belonging. When Brenda and her mum uncover, with the help of historian Kim Burke, that they are Wiradjuri rather than Wailwan, it’s a difficult adjustment to make. But after much work, Brenda is now comfortable saying she is a proud Wiradjuri woman. </p>
<p>“I can see her wrestling with this new information and who she thought she was all along,” writes Brenda of watching her mother in their moment of discovery. “This is common for a lot of Indigenous people who were taken from their Country and placed somewhere else,” Kim tells them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531507/original/file-20230613-17-awxc1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brenda with her mother (centre left) and her ‘White parents’, Mac and Connie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reconnecting with Country and culture is part of Brenda’s story. She learns the ancient art of weaving and works with Mark running camps on Country, in northern New South Wales and South East Queensland (with the endorsement of influential Indigenous figure <a href="https://40stories.com.au/people/kyle-slabb/">Kyle Slabb</a> from Fingal). This informs and deepens Brenda’s strength of Aboriginality.</p>
<p>It is at one of these camps where Mark encourages Brenda to tell her story: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I walk up to the line that Mark has drawn in the sand where he’d like me to stand, and I rub it out with my foot, drawing a new one a bit further back where I’m more comfortable. I am about to tell my story to strangers for the first time in my life. I’m fiddling with my hands and fingers. I take a deep breath and as the words start coming out of my mouth, memories come flooding back, and tears roll down my cheeks.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531509/original/file-20230613-17-o7nsp1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Learning the ancient art of weaving has been part of Brenda’s process of reconnecting with Country and culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-we-are-the-voice-why-we-need-more-indigenous-editors-182222">Friday essay: we are the voice – why we need more Indigenous editors</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Countering lies and bearing witness</h2>
<p>Finding voice, being heard and validated, is part of the human condition. The Last Daughter expresses it so well.</p>
<p>Brenda tells her story simply, with nothing exaggerated for effect; known facts, recalled memory and renewed encounters are drawn together in spare, first-person prose. A memoir born from journal entries reproduced as exposition throughout, The Last Daughter is inspired by Brenda’s need to know and share the truth. </p>
<p>She is motivated to counter lies about her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents – recorded as fact in government files. In just one example, the files record Brenda’s mother requesting a photograph and progress report on Brenda while she was with her White family; it says these were supplied, but Brenda’s mother never received anything. Even the date Brenda was returned to her family was incorrect.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q29vqBO1CM0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Brenda Matthews’ feature film, The Last Daughter.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Brenda’s motivation increases when she and her siblings are excluded from formal recognition as being part of the Stolen Generations. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The letter leaves me feeling like a microcosm of this land. It has been declared <a href="https://theconversation.com/pastoral-ponderings-and-settler-politics-how-a-colonial-judge-and-poet-wrote-terra-nullius-into-law-199962">terra nullius</a> – empty land – despite my people living here. Now my emotions, my memories, my trauma don’t exist in the eyes of the government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brenda’s pursuit of truth is reflected in the difficult conversations she has with herself, and with so many others in her Black, White, own (and eventually blended) family. </p>
<p>I can’t fully imagine the courage, fear, heartache and dedication it took for Brenda to peel back the years and the layers to find truth for so many. The book is a project of love and reconnection. </p>
<p>Keeping everyone inside the warmth of that fire cannot have been easy. That fire and its warmth are offered with immense grace to readers – and now viewers – of Brenda’s story. It is up to us to step inside that embrace and bear witness. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>The documentary feature film, <a href="https://www.thelastdaughter.com.au/film/">The Last Daughter</a>, will screen in cinemas Australia-wide from 15 June 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Phillips receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Brenda Matthews’ story is a truth-seeking quest to right the wrongs perpetrated by a government hell-bent on doing ‘as they saw fit’ when it came to Aboriginal peoples, writes Sandra Phillips.Sandra Phillips, Associate Professor of Indigenous Australian Studies, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2031542023-06-01T20:00:20Z2023-06-01T20:00:20ZFriday essay: Private Leo, my imaginary father<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526165/original/file-20230515-19-8v1xwo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leo Brophy, on right, pictured in Darwin during the war. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My mother fell in love with my father, Leo, at a Melbourne suburban dance hall in 1946. He was 26, handsome, athletic, smart, a newly minted war veteran, and his grin was infectious. They were a dazzling couple, as their later wedding photos show. Many decades on my mother liked to tell of Leo’s mother warning her that he was going to prove a handful — and was she prepared for this? Possibly my mother told the story to let us know that her love for Leo could never be doubted. Or equally she might have been letting us know that she had no idea what a handful he would actually turn out to be.</p>
<p>In 2017, when Leo died at the age of 97, one of my brothers gave me a folder of papers. They were the documents of our father’s military service. I put them away with clippings, incomplete family trees, photos and birth and marriage certificates that constitute a patchy record of our unwritten family history.</p>
<p>Three years later, at the height of Melbourne’s extended lockdowns against a rising death toll from COVID-19, with time on my hands at home, I began going through the book shelves, throwing out what would never be read or consulted again, and culling papers accumulated through 40 years of writing and teaching. I found forgotten letters from past lovers and exchanges arising from past close friendships in whole series of letters, reminders that once I’d been a young man with hopes and ideals, but no idea what the future held for that young man. There were letters and notes from my father too, one of them dismissing me as a “receiver”. His disappointments in me were many. His letter explained at length what a receiver is on the football field and how team mates feel about such a cowardly player among them.</p>
<p>When I came across his war documents this time it was with a fresh curiosity about the young man who had been the subject of eight years of military clerks’ scribbled notes. I wondered how I might fit this record of him as a young recruit to the violent father I’d known. As his first son and second child I had swum in a world made of him, never wondering whether I really knew him but always feeling I knew him too well. Perhaps, I thought now, in these military records I might glimpse the youth he once was.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-reckoning-with-the-fact-of-ones-death-143822">Friday essay: on reckoning with the fact of one's death</a>
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<p>****<br></p>
<p>I can remember a line of white rime along the edge of his mouth as he beat me one night, seemingly unable to stop, my mother from the hallway saying over and over, “That’s enough, Leo.” What strikes me now is that I so neatly filed away this image of his lips during the terror of a beating.</p>
<p>Sometimes there were lucky escapes when he did hold himself back. We had a square wooden table painted blue that fitted in to a kitchen alcove. It was possible to scramble under this table as a small child and press myself against the far wall out of his reach, knowing he would refuse the indignity of getting down on his knees to crawl in after me.</p>
<p>Going through the papers of his war record I began to wonder if he was someone else as a young man — someone I would not have feared and might have even enjoyed knowing.</p>
<p>****<br></p>
<p>In his late teenage years, wiry Leo was a talented suburban cricketer, about average height, with a thin, straight nose and that handsome grin. His intense green eyes were too deeply set to ever give him an expression of openness, though in certain moods he would have been handsome and irresistible.</p>
<p>A week before turning 19, in the inner northern Melbourne suburb of Carlton, he enlisted in the Australian armed forces, signing an oath to “well and truly serve Australia’s Sovereign Lord the King” for the next three years. This was seven months before Australia joined with Britain in war. Too young for the army, Leo had enlisted in the mostly part-time Citizens Militia Force, a body meant to supply the army with trained recruits; and once war was declared in September 1939, 40,000 were immediately deployed from the militia into full service. Was Leo declaring himself keen to be part of that war once it got under way?</p>
<p>I don’t understand this enthusiasm to be absorbed into the military so early. Perhaps it was a way of putting distance between himself and his childhood family. Or something he did with his mates in a moment of shared restless ratbaggery. It might have been a sign of determination to show his older brothers he had become a man. Among them, Jim and Bernie did not enlist until 1942.</p>
<p>Leo was one of six brothers, and as it turned out he would be the only one among them not to achieve a professional education. Suddenly enlisting at 18 might have been the beginning of a series of impulsive decisions that so complicated his life it became impossible for him to stop improvising as he went, decade after decade, through the rest of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Not once did I hear from him a word of praise for England or the English. With an identity built upon Irish Catholic hatred directed at Great Britain, he could not have joined the military in the hope of being sent to Europe to defend the English.</p>
<p>But even so in November 1941 he signed a new form in Carlton to enlist as a regular soldier. One part he left blank, possibly as self-protection: What is your religious denomination? Control of what he considered personal information was always vital to him.</p>
<p>Less than a year later he signed a further attestation, this time from an office at Adelaide River, a hundred kilometres South of Darwin. He noted on this form that he had been serving as a Corporal at an Australian Army Bulk Issue Petrol and Oil Depot in the Northern Territory. He committed to serving the King “until the cessation of the present time of war and twelve months thereafter”. His Medical Examination Report is a quick handwritten note: “A1”. He left education and religion details blank. He was moved to Darwin.</p>
<p>He had been serving in the Northern Territory since the first week of April in 1942, and by then the Japanese air force had made ten raids on Darwin and across the Territory, including a bombing of Katherine, 300 kilometres inland. </p>
<p>Beginning in June 1942, the bombing raids over Darwin included low-level strafing by Japanese Zeroes. The long-range Zero fighter planes, stripped of armour and radios, were so lightweight, fast and deadly that pilots of the less nimble Australian planes each carried a pocket-map marking food caches buried along the northern coast in case they were shot down — as many were.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526134/original/file-20230515-20-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Oil tanks burning in Darwin in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
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<p>Much later my father recounted that the troops in Darwin became so familiar with the routines and flight paths of the Japanese bombing fleets that they knew what times were good for being out on patrol or out partying, and when to head for the bunkers near the beach.</p>
<p>There were <a href="https://avonmorebooks.com.au/?page=3&id=89">at least 77 raids </a>over the Northern Territory alone between 1942 and 1944. Nearly 200 Japanese airmen died as their planes were brought down, with many wrecks and bodies still not found today. By my count, my father was present for more than 30 raids during his 11 months in and around Darwin.</p>
<p>In his eighties he became somewhat deaf, and blamed this on the effects of being so close to exploding Japanese bombs. There were stories of him leaving a card game just before a bomb landed, and of raiding the liquor cabinets in abandoned suburban Darwin houses, wheeling out a piano to dance and sing in the empty streets between raids. When he was in his nineties, and I was spending time in Halls Creek, he said that if he had got there during his service in the north it would have been in the back of a military police truck under arrest since Halls Creek was the site of the army’s prison.</p>
<p>My impression is of a restless man moving step by step, oath by oath, deeper into the army, further from home, and closer to harm. He was never the kind of patriot to be proud of dying for his military leaders or his nation but perhaps he was the kind of young man who could not resist an adventure, a chance to prove himself, or a shot at being among the bravest. He could have remained safely a clerk at the Adelaide River Depot, but it seems he was determined to be in Darwin under those bombs.</p>
<p>**** <br></p>
<p>Leo had a younger brother after whom I was named; he was disabled by polio. I have seen a newspaper photo of the older brothers wheeling him on a portable bed to a VFL football game. His illness might have been rare bad luck, but not so rare then that the family felt singled out by a malevolent fate. He died aged 17 in 1940. There is one small, glossy snapshot of him peeking over the top of his wicker pram, head propped by a fluffed pillow, a confident smile across his thin face, his gaze direct. In this photo he looks as if he would take an interest in whoever stopped to talk. He looks well loved.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526411/original/file-20230516-19-q4r442.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Uncle Kevin Brophy in his pram. He died aged 17 in 1940.</span>
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<p>My father’s parents, Alice and Tom, were stalwart members of their community and their Catholic parish. Alice had been a school teacher. Tom was a local station master in the northern inner Melbourne suburb of Coburg after serving in country towns. He kept a milking cow on Crown land beside his railway station. In a surviving family photo he stands in railway uniform ramrod straight, unsmiling and clear-eyed in front of his extended family. My father never spoke about him except to tell the story of his death.</p>
<p>Tom died at the age of 66, in 1947, fallen from his bicycle in Princes Park on his way home from the Carlton football ground. That afternoon the Carlton team had made a grand comeback in muddy conditions from being five goals adrift of Richmond well into the third quarter. Carlton would go on to win the VFL premiership that year, with their centre-half-back Bert Deacon securing the Brownlow Medal.</p>
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<p>When Tom had failed to return, my newly-married father and one of his brothers went out looking through Brunswick and around Princes Park. Eventually they went to the Carlton police station where they were told that there was an unidentified body at the city morgue. The brothers late that night identified the body of their father. He had died of a heart attack.</p>
<p>I wonder about Leo as a 27-year-old identifying the anonymous body of his father only a few years after brothers on both sides of him had died, and himself a recent war survivor.</p>
<p>It was the death of the third son, Bernie, early in the battles of Finschhafen on the remote Huon Peninsula in the north of New Guinea that, I think, most deeply shook my father. Bernie died in October 1943 at the age of 26, one of 73 Australians to die in the first of those battles. The record shows my father was given a week’s leave without pay shortly after Bernie’s death, then a second request for another week of leave was rejected. A few months later he changed his “next of kin” notice on his military details from his mother to his father’s name. The telegram notice of Bernie’s death had been delivered directly to his mother, and I guess Leo understood that she could not have withstood another such telegram.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1258&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526410/original/file-20230516-17-nv7ksc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1258&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bernie Brophy’s grave at the war cemetery in PNG.</span>
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<p>In his last years my father asked to be taken to Papua New Guinea to visit Bernie’s grave at the Lae War Cemetery. No one in the family had been there, and as the last living brother his mind went to this unfinished business. But he weakened too much and too quickly for us to consider the journey.</p>
<p>His other older brother Jim flew bomber planes across Germany from Britain. Afterwards Jim kept his medals out of sight. Refusal to celebrate the war might have been a necessary family gesture of respect for the death of Bernie.</p>
<p>My father’s military mementos lived in the spidery stillness of a dim shed at the back of our childhood yard in Coburg. I remember a jacket with corporal stripes, a sheathed Japanese bayonet that I spent many hours polishing and marvelling over. And a gas mask of rubber and canvas that turned my brothers and me into monsters as we took turns trying it on.</p>
<p>****<br></p>
<p>On the eleventh of January 1943, Leo’s papers show he was demoted from Corporal to Private at his own request. He had joined the First Australian Parachute Battalion. Without direct combat experience, and by concealing a defect that would have excluded him, he had managed to be selected for the most elite fighting and flying unit ever formed in Australia. His defect was colour blindness. </p>
<p>His story was that he listened to a man in front answer the questions put on colour vision, memorised them on the spot, and repeated them back to the testing officer. Did he do this for a bet or just for the hell of it? Or was he caught up in some kind of trouble — and this voluntary demotion with a switch to the new paratroop battalion looked to be a way out? And if perception of colour might have meant the difference between life and death on the battlefield for himself and his comrades, why did he risk such disaster? His paths through the army and the war look to me to be erratic, impulsive, risky.</p>
<p>As a member of the First Parachute Battalion, newly Private Leo was being trained to make incursions into enemy territories. As well as airborne drills, the men were expected to learn guerrilla warfare tactics while carrying on their backs equipment weighing up to 30 kilograms. He qualified as a parachutist in December 1943, which meant he had completed at least seven successful jumps over ten months, a time cleaved by the death of his brother Bernie. Refusals to jump were not uncommon among trainees. Most often a refusal to jump occurred on a trainee’s third flight.</p>
<p>The explanation for this was that a first jump could be exhilarating, the second a return to reality, then at the third a man might come to understand the real dangers. These troops jumped without auxiliary parachutes on the reasoning that the auxiliary pack was too cumbersome, and in any case they were jumping at such low heights that if a parachute failed there would be no time to release an auxiliary.</p>
<p>Within the first year of the formation of the Parachute Battalion, five men had died in training mishaps and more had suffered broken limbs, concussion and other injuries. The parachutists soon won rights to extra pay in recognition of risk and danger. These superbly fit and now well-paid young men became infamous for excursions to whatever breweries, hotels and brothels were near their remote bush training grounds.</p>
<p>To be a paratrooper was to know that you might at any time be ordered to jump out into an enemy sky, an easy floating target for snipers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526153/original/file-20230515-25-cayjop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">At any time you might be ordered to jump out into an enemy sky.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>With one son dead in New Guinea, another training for high-casualty missions, and a third flying bomber planes over Europe, this family must have seemed set to pay much too high a price for any coming Allied victory.</p>
<p>In March, 1944 the Parachute Battalion underwent intensive jungle warfare manoeuvres, participated in dawn attack rehearsals over Wollongong, and were moved from the Blue Mountains to Mareeba in North Queensland not far inland from Cairns in preparation for a possible mission into New Guinea with American support.</p>
<p>It was during this month of feverish preparations for real engagement in the war that my father suffered injuries to his ankles in a jump. He was one of five injured in training jumps during that month. Leo was hospitalised at Concord on the Parramatta River where he was treated then discharged to the Lady Gowrie Convalescent Home. From April until July he was moved between hospital and convalescent home repeatedly. It seemed he was being invalided out of the army.</p>
<p>Somehow, though, and following his own brand of determination, he found his way back to the Parachute Battalion’s training ground in Queensland where he took charge of managing the officers’ mess. <a href="https://regimental-books.com.au/product/eagles-alighting-a-history-of-1-australian-parachute-battalion/">J. B. Dunn notes in his history of the paratroopers</a> that at this time Leo had earned the reputation of being “the most tight-lipped man in the Battalion”. </p>
<p>He had made his way back north, I imagine, because he had found for himself a place and a reputation among these paratroopers. Privy to information, accepted by this species of men, and probably at least on the fringes of whatever scams went on, Leo could be trusted to keep the truth close. This fits the man I knew. He loved to talk, and he could have his audience in his hands at the dinner table once he turned his talents to mocking our neighbours and friends. But when it came to business or money or murkier matters of sexuality he was either utterly tight-lipped or so meanderingly impenetrable in anything he said that I could not trust or follow his talk.</p>
<p>Operating from a zone of bluff somewhere between bully and charmer, salesman and commander, he never let up. I expect in business he wore people down. He was always looking to show us he was a man with the inside information, the man with a way through where others floundered. When he wanted one of my younger brothers to be privately tutored in mathematics he found a man a few doors away who was so smart “he could teach a cow to count”. </p>
<p>My brother was sent to him for lessons and I was encouraged to go there too to play chess with this apparently brilliant man. I don’t know why I agreed to go. A deep introvert as teenage years approached, I spent my days when I could with comics and books. Perhaps I went out of curiosity or most likely it was just easier to do what my father told me to do. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526139/original/file-20230515-23-ka4wer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">I was encouraged to go there to play chess.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>This amazing man my father had found lived in a small newly-built house with a young and beautiful wife. When we played chess his beautiful wife would serve us tea and cake, and he would say as she left the room that when he married her he thought he could teach her something, but that she had turned out to be plain dumb. She couldn’t learn anything and he couldn’t teach her anything. Had he made this confession to my father? Shocked that he would let his new, young wife witness him speak these insults, I was distressed. But I returned to the house many times. </p>
<p>I think I kept going back even when my brother’s lessons had ceased. I was half in love with his wife, and I hated him. He was large and pushy, his heavy eyes glistening with self-satisfaction. He liked above all to be able to impress a small boy with his big talk. After a while I thought I understood that in fact my father considered him a fool, and that I must be just as much a fool in my father’s eyes if I sought this man’s company.</p>
<p>**** <br></p>
<p>Perhaps it was some overly-rigid discipline adopted from his military years or an earlier implacable standard he identified with, for when leaving to go to school in the mornings it had to be with hair brushed, ties tied, caps and hats straight, and shoes polished. “You might be able to learn Latin but you can’t even learn to polish your shoes,” he would say to me. And in a bloody-minded way I became happy enough to construct a rough version of myself around that accusation. Perhaps the humiliation of it remains as a shadow, a provocation, and a point of pride for me. He held us close but he held us in contempt.</p>
<p>Does his silence about his father (and in fact his whole childhood), and that seeming eagerness to be gone into the army as a teenager, speak of damage done well before he became a soldier in a war? This would be another story, and much of it would have to be fiction.</p>
<p>The one value my father held to as a near-absolute was tribal loyalty. How could it be that we were Catholics (with the moral absolutes that came with that), but no matter how un-Christian or how “sinful” one of us might be, my father’s loyalty to family would come above all? And yet it was inside the family where he let his temper and venom loose. None of it made sense.</p>
<p>His obsession with sexual morality was equally intense. Politicians and public figures were judged on their fidelity in marriage. The increasing public disgrace of the Catholic Church for prolonged and incomprehensible abuse of children in their care confronted him. In the last year of his life my father did try to tell me something about his experience of abuse, perhaps impulsively as a plea for understanding, or more likely to prove some point important and urgent for him at the time. He talked of a family friend who used to visit their home and get drunk and stay the night. He said the man climbed into his childhood bed with him, so he understood what men could do to children. That was all. Perhaps he was showing me the world could teach him little he didn’t already know. He went on to some other topic, some other complaint. He had made his point — about vulnerability, knowledge, men’s evil, and even perhaps about the failure of parents to protect their children in his story that was so brief it was not even a story.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-church-is-headed-for-another-sex-abuse-scandal-as-nunstoo-speak-up-111539">The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #NunsToo speak up</a>
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<p>****<br></p>
<p>While working on this essay I have been reading, among a half-dozen other books, Jess Hill’s report on research into domestic abuse, <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/see-what-you-made-me-do">See What You Made Me Do</a>. I realise that my childhood home was sometimes a prison and sometimes a haven. Each day as I returned from school and each morning as I woke in that place I couldn’t be sure which it would turn out to be.</p>
<p>****<br></p>
<p>My father believed he understood men — a conviction that could bring you forcefully in under his orbit. As long as he could see you as a type, he had you, even if it took him a few wrong guesses to get you right. Then you were pocketed.</p>
<p>His best years were his time in business managing teams of hot-asphalt spreaders. The workers were mostly Italians who loved him and were devoted to him. In my last couple of years at school during the mid 1960s I did labouring work with them through the summer and they told me what a good boss my father was. They bestowed on me some of the affection and loyalty they felt towards him. I was in another world with them, a place where my father was trusted, where something like love passed between him and these men, a place where migrant families saw him as their avenue to success and dignity. I was proud to be the son of such a man — and upset at him for not bringing these qualities into his own family. What happened to him in our presence? What was it that brought out such desperate meanness when he was with us? There was something about family life that could turn him inside-out with rage.</p>
<p>Sometimes, though, he was that generous father I craved and imagined. He could take us into the countryside for hikes and picnics or to the beach in summer where he liked to swim out until he was a far smudge on the sea. For a while there were purple-eyed ferrets caged in the back yard. I remember going ferreting with him and his mates, setting the nets at rabbit-hole entrances across a paddock, then letting a ferret into a burrow and waiting for the rabbits to come racing in a panic up and out and into those nets where they would be easy to grab and have their necks wrung. </p>
<p>Sometimes, though, a ferret would settle with its catch inside a burrow, refusing to emerge. It was then that each person had to guard an entrance while someone began digging down to where the ferret was guarding its kill. It was chaotic, messy, hit-and-miss. But it did put rabbits on our table, and for a while we ate rabbit as often as people eat chicken now. I think it was at this half-wild life of mucking about in the open air with other men, making up the rules as you went, that my father found himself most fully.</p>
<p>****<br></p>
<p>In January 1945 his extra parachutist pay was cancelled, with a note on his file indicating he was unfit for marching or for long standing due to a “stiff foot”. Nevertheless, in October Leo managed to join a group re-assigned to embark for Singapore. They visited the Changi Prison and contributed a contingent of troops to a guard of honour for the official surrender. Until January 1946 they operated as local Military Police preventing looting while order was restored to Singapore.</p>
<p>Then on May 29, 1946, Private Leo was discharged without ceremony back into civilian life. He had been in the military for most of the first eight years of his early adulthood, and upon resuming his civilian status his home address was still his parents’ address in Coburg.</p>
<p>By September 1949 he would be married with a two-year-old daughter and me, his new baby boy. Seven more children would follow.</p>
<p>How unprepared was this erratic, restless young soldier for the life that he found himself choosing so soon after the war? In her chapter on the experiences of children in families where fathers are abusive, Hill writes of a form of post-traumatic stress suffered by combat veterans: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every time a potential threat arises a survival response triggers in the brain, motivating the soldier to act defensively — a reaction that can be the difference between life and death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This describes my father’s reaction when faced with a crisis or even a passing difficulty within the family. He could react as if his physical life depended upon him fighting his way through to an immediate victory — darkly red in the face, veins striking lines down his neck, green eyes alive with an animal urge to survive no matter what damage might be done to others. It was easy to be terrified of him at these times.</p>
<p>Was this reaction fixed in him by the cumulative terrors of the bombing raids over Darwin, the repeatedly suppressed panic he must have faced in jumping from planes, the shock of seeing mates die in accidents, the physical and psychological rigours of training among men renowned for their wildness — and by feelings of grief and guilt over the death of his brother Bernie? He kept a photo of Bernie on his desk all his adult life. How far beyond his temperamental limits might he have been tested during those shaping years of his early twenties? I suspect there was as much shame as pride for him in his war experience, and more confusion than purpose.</p>
<p>Larrikin or patriarch? Trouble-maker or law-giver? Working man or thinker? Tribal lord or obedient Catholic parishioner? Scheming insider or cynical outsider? Husband or knockabout? Survivor or warrior? He loved telling stories, and he was good at it, but some form of confused shame, I think, kept him from telling the stories that were closest to him, which were the ones I wanted to hear.</p>
<p>The almost daily violence at home continued through my childhood in part because we kept it among ourselves. There I was, silent, arriving at school of a morning shamed by bruised legs; and there were the teachers keeping their distance. The vicious dog our neighbour kept in his tiny yard was no less loud, mad and wrong than my father. But nobody complained about either of them. There might have been no words for what was happening. Now I write what I can in the hope of coming somewhere close to comprehending how my father might have been as a young man bursting with himself while struggling, as I imagine him, between recklessness and fear, cowardice and bravado, all the while desperate to keep himself intact as much as a green young man could in that war-time world. I am writing this with an eye out for the ways my imagined father might point me away from a shamed, inchoate privacy that can only make each of us diminished versions of ourselves.</p>
<p>There is a surviving faded black and white photo of him with a mate who remained a lifelong friend. They are in Darwin on the wharves, both dressed in loose-fitting tropics uniforms, helmets at cocky angles, my father’s arm over his friend’s shoulder as their bodies lean in towards each other. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526434/original/file-20230516-21-b7f2vs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helmets at cocky angles … Leo and a lifelong friend.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My father’s expression is easy, open, confident, untroubled. They look like men who have arrived in a place that suits them. This isn’t the man I remember. But it’s a man I’d like to get to know and spend time with. This is the man my mother must have loved so completely just a few years later. In the moment of the photo he appears supremely comfortable with himself and with the kind of friendship made possible in that war zone. </p>
<p><em>This essay was recently shortlisted for the <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-programs/calibre-prize/2023-winners-and-shortlist">2023 Calibre Prize</a> for an outstanding essay.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin John Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kevin Brophy grew up fearing his violent father. Going through the papers of his war record, he began to wonder if his dad was someone else as a young man — someone he might have enjoyed knowing.Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.