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Title: My Place by Sally Morgan ISBN: 0-949206-31-8 Publisher: Fremantle Arts Center Pr Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A woman's journey of discovery to her aboriginal heritage.
Comment: Imagine growing up and not being aware that you were part aboriginal until the age of fifteen, having been told by your mother that the reason your grandmother was black was because she was Indian. Sally Morgan grew up in Perth, Western Australia in the 50s and 60s, and this is the story of how she eventually went back to discover her grandmother's origins in 1982, and thereby found her "Place". A moving and enriching book, which will have you in tears one minute and laughing the next
Rating: 5
Summary: An amazing personal history of one woman's maternal family
Comment: Sally Morgan writes from the heart as she explores her family's hidden Aboriginal history in a book that spares no punches. My Place is all about identity and what racism and prejudice can do to a people. The white settlers who colonized Australia have systematically tried to bury the Aboriginal people and their way of life but somehow against all odds they have survived, and people like Sally Morgan are standing up to be counted as the descendants lost tribes of mixed race people who were never given a chance to choose who they wanted to live with. Sally Morgan writes with startling clarity as she describes her childhood with her half Aboriginal Grandmother who would never admit to being native, and often told her Grandchildren to lay claim to an Indian heritage rather than admit the truth. Sally's Grandmother's fears lay deep within her own childhood when she was taken away from her mother, and it was this fear she passed onto Sally's mother who was three quarter's white. Both women were terrified of white authority and the power it had to tear families apart. My Place is a haunting, true story of one woman's search for her roots in a country that saw Aboriginal blood as a taint rather than a celebration. We need more books like this on our bookshelves, and even more people to read them...
Rating: 3
Summary: Poorly written but interesting
Comment: Reading the other reviews on here, I find it interesting to note that just about everyone gives it either 5 stars or 1 star, but there's almost nothing in between. It's quite true that it is a poorly written book - the writing is dull and prosaic, and there's little to recommend it from a literary point of view. Had I not had to read it for a class, I doubt I would have bothered finishing it. The narrative of searching and redemption which runs throughout is so predictable and cliché that I have the feeling that if this had been an American story it would have been snatched up by Oprah's Book Club long ago. Having said that, however, I think there are some important things about this book that probably need consideration.
More than the book itself, what I find interesting is that this was a huge bestseller in Australia. And I mean HUGE. She may well be the highest grossing Indigenous author in the country, although I'd be guessing. The fact that so many people read the book says something about the mood of White Australia over the last twenty years, with this country trying to come to grips with its shameful past. I've inclined to believe that most of this is an attempt to ease collective white guilt than actually taking steps to reconcile and compensate for over two centuries of oppression. Sally Morgan's book is popular, I think, because she doesn't actually challenge her audience to move much beyond their comfort zone, and the construction of Aboriginality that she presents is quite problematic, stereotypical, and firmly entrenched in the past.
The book has attracted quite a lot of controversy in Australia, mostly in academic circles, but occasionally this rears its head in the mainstream media (for example, the issue of the Drake-Brockmans demanding DNA testing to prove Morgan is not descended from their ancestors). The idea of the 'truthfulness' of the book is largely a question of genre more than anything else: is it an autobiography or a non-fiction novel? 'My Place' raises a lot of questions about how we define these categories, and about the nature of history and memory work.
People might be interested to know that the book also attracted a considerable amount of backlash from the Aboriginal community itself: she is often criticised for asserting an Aboriginal identity that, by her own admission, she did not grow up with. Unaware of her Indigenous origins for most of her youth, she claims her Aboriginality without ever having lived with what it really meant to be Aboriginal in the 1950s-70s. Because she has fairer skin than the stereotypical Aboriginal person, she had the luxury of pretending to be of a different nationality - an option simply not available to many Indigenous Australians - and was thus not subjected to the same level of prejudice which she might otherwise have been.
If you're interested in Australian history and Aboriginal issues you should probably read Sally Morgan's 'My Place', not because it's good writing, but because it has certainly been a landmark in the recent history of Australian literature. However, I also suggest trying to lay your hands on some of the material which critiques Morgan's work in order to gain a more balanced perspective of Indigenous Australia. Alternatively, for an all-round better account of what is now known as the Stolen Generation, try Doris Pilkington's 'Rabbit Proof Fence', or the film by the same name. If read with a critical mind, 'My Place' is worthy of a look, but it is highly problematic taken at face value.
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Title: My Brilliant Career (Angus & Robertson Classics) by Miles Franklin ISBN: 0207197245 Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Remembering Babylon : A Novel by David Malouf ISBN: 0679749519 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin ISBN: 0140094296 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Bone People by Keri Hulme ISBN: 0140089225 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1986 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Rabbit-Proof Fence : The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time by Doris Pilkington ISBN: 0786887842 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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