One Bright Spot

ISBN-13: 9781403947444 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 281 str.

Victoria K. Haskins

Opis

For every Aboriginal child taken away by the state governments in Australia, there was at least one white family intimately involved in their life. One Bright Spot is about one of these families--about "Ming," a Sydney wife and mother who hired Aboriginal domestic servants in the 20s and 30s, and became an activist against the Stolen Generations policy--the removal of Aboriginal children by the Australian government. Her story, reconstructed by her great-granddaughter, tells of a remarkable, yet forgotten, shared history.

Recenzje

'Victoria Haskins' fine book fills a much-needed gap in our understanding of Australia's history. For too long we have heard the stories of one side or the other; colonised or colonisers. One Bright Spot delicately rounds out our understanding by revealing to us the complexity of the relationships that emerged through the cross-cultural interactions of the early part of the twentieth century. The evocative prose resists sentimentality and romanticisation and delights the reader with an exquisite novel-like writing style. At the end of it one is struck by Haskins' rare combination of scholarly rigor, passion and a personal connection, which she both embraces and critiques'. Professor Lynette Russell, Monash University

Spis treści

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction: More Than My Own Mother to Me PART I: MARY My One Bright Spot All Girls Shall Leave the Reserves If I Am Coming Back to You All Again PART II: ALMA So Desperately Hard to Understand A Better Chance PART III: DEL Was Fearfully Shocked This Afternoon A Perfect Farce She Loves Pretty Things and Knows How to Wear Them You Must Not Go Against These People There is a Lot of Dark Girls That Went Through It And So We Are 'Slave Owners' It Makes Me Rage A Devotion I Hope I May Fully Repay PART IV: PEARL GIBBS Just Ordinary Justice The Stone of Anthropology Miss Pink Wants My Help PART V: JANE A Free Australian Citizen The Bitter Disappointment of Trying to Help Then We Must All Be Insane Epilogue: She Learnt Her Lessons Well A Note on Sources Notes Bibliography Index

O autorze

VICTORIA HASKINS was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1967 and lived in the East Kimberley in Western Australia as a child, until moving to Sydney, New South Wales as a teenager. She was educated at Ku-Ring-Gai High School and the University of Sydney. Having worked in bookshops for many years, Victoria moved to the North Coast of New South Wales to run a travelling bookshop there, when she discovered the papers on which this book is based.
Later, Victoria worked as a curator of Australian Social History at the National Museum of Australia, in Canberra, before taking up a History lectureship at Flinders University in South Australia. Victoria now lives in Adelaide with her partner, Indigenous historian John Maynard, and their three children. This is her first book.