Tag Archives: Non Fiction

May 12, 2023 · 2:08 am

Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie

Biographical graphic novel about famous crime fiction novelist

I picked up this book at a Lifeline Bookfair, I think. I haven’t read much of Agatha Christie, but a lot of my family members enjoy her work, especially her books about the Belgian detective Poirot. A graphic novel sub-genre I’ve enjoyed previously is graphic novel biographies with one of the best being “Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Graphic Biography” which includes the incredible story of her father Otto Frank. I must have picked this one up some time ago, and decided to read it during my Short Stack Reading Challenge. I actually had a lot of trouble getting the right photograph for this review. I’ve been in the UK and Belgium, and tried to take photos at a library hotel, a comic book museum and even a comic-themed hotel. I’m not really happy with any of them (and was disappointed I didn’t see any Poirot statutes or anything in Brussels) so I’ll just include them all and be done with it.

Photo is of “Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie” by Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau and Alexandre Franc, and translated by Edward Gauvin. The paperback book is resting in front of windows made of carved stone. The cover is of a red-haired woman looking out at a city nightscape with a pen to her mouth. There are searchlights in the sky.

“Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie” by Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau and Alexandre Franc, and translated from French by Edward Gauvin is a biographical graphic novel about the famous crime fiction author Agatha Christie. The story opens with Agatha’s mysterious disappearance in 1926 and the grilling of her husband by police. The story then turns to Agatha’s childhood to follow the journey of how she became a bestselling writer and the events that led up to her disappearance, discovery and life afterwards.

Photo is of “Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie”. The paperback book is sitting below a striped wall with illustrated photoframes that have cartoon portraits inside.

This is an interesting presentation of a biography that takes some creative liberties to share Agatha’s story in a unique way. The art style, while simple, is easy to follow and captures the mood and key details of the era Agatha lived in. Agatha’s life is depicted as colourful and rich, full of inspiration for her stories. The authors made the interesting narrative choice to have Agatha converse with her character Poirot throughout the book: sometimes seeking creative and emotional support, sometimes using him as a soundboard, and sometimes arguing with him about his own character arc.

Photo is of “Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie”. In the background are comic books, out of focus, suspended from a ceiling.

I think while in many ways it is an original way to tell a story, I wasn’t sure that Agatha and Poirot’s conversations always added to the overall story. I appreciate what the authors were trying to achieve but I felt that their characterisation of Poirot, someone very invested in his own story, didn’t really match with Agatha’s own characterisation. The simplicity of the art style and the limited colour palette did make it difficult at times to distinguish between the characters.

A quaint and engaging way to present a biography and one that has inspired me to read more of Agatha Christie’s work.

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March 6, 2022 · 12:32 am

The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire

Non-fiction true crime book about the Black Saturday bushfires

Content warning: fatal bushfires, arson, disability, bullying, references to child pornography

The Black Saturday bushfires were a horrific collection of disasters with an enormous cost that still reverberates across Australia today. Although I wasn’t in Victoria at the time, the most destructive of the fires was right next to where I grew up and right next to the town where several members of my family live. After the fires, when lots of locals who had lost their homes were trying to rebuild, my family’s book charity opened its doors to help replace the books people had lost as well. I have to admit, I didn’t follow a huge amount of the news at the time, I think to be honest it was a little too close to home. However, when I heard about this book and that it covered the trial and conviction of a man found to be responsible for one of the fires, I thought that now, more than a decade later and after the 2019-2020 bushfires, I was ready to listen.

Image is of “The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire” by Chloe Hooper. The audiobook cover is beige with yellow, orange and red watercolour paint bleeding from the top like flames.

“The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire” by Chloe Hooper and narrated by Sibylla Budd is a non-fiction true crime book about the Black Saturday bushfires. The book opens with a harrowing account of the experiences of many Victorians in the fatal Churchill fire complex, including those who lost their loved ones and the detective who begins investigating the case. As the story unfolds, it appears that the fires may have been lit deliberately by someone, and one too many coincidences suggests one major suspect.

This is a thoughtful, considered book that carefully steps through the events of the bushfire with a strong focus on the stories of the people involved. I think the strongest parts of the book were the stories Hooper told about the people most directly affected by the fires. I don’t think I will ever forget the story of the man who lost his wife before his eyes, or the teenager who texted his father goodbye. I think Hooper did try to take a balanced approach to the book by providing a lot of background about the life of prime suspect Brendan Sokaluk and how he spent his days, and acknowledged the uncertainty around intent, capacity and guilt.

However, in some ways this book reminded of “Joe Cinque’s Consolation” and while I think Hooper was more sympathetic to Sokaluk’s background, disabilities and mental health issues than Helen Garner was, I similarly found her coverage of the investigation and trial a bit uncomfortable. One of the things that Hooper talked about at length was Sokaluk’s diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although she did focus on the ways that ASD may have impacted Sokaluk’s ability to understand police interviews, court proceedings and engage with his peers socially, I really felt like she speculated far too much about how his ASD diagnosis led him to set the fire due a particular theory that people with autism who set fires are “mesmerised” by the flames.

I listened to the audiobook so I wasn’t able to tell whether there was a bibliography or not, but Hooper was critical of a psychologist who was a court witness for not telling the court “that psychologists often [emphasis added] separate autistic fire-setters from others who deliberately light fires because some neuro-atypical people find the flames not just mesmerising, but soothing”. In somewhat of a contrasting view, a 2019 paper titled Firesetting and arson in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic PRISMA review noted that relatively little research has been conducted to date exploring firesetting or arson in individuals with ASD. While the paper did conclude that there may be some ASD symptomology that may contribute to arson, the paper did stress that there is no empirical support for an association between ASD and criminality, and that studies have found that people with developmental disabilities may be more likely to be victims of crime.

After listening to this book, I went back and checked the publication date (2018) because of my surprise at some of the language used. Several times Hooper refers to “Aborigines”. I note that IndigenousX states that this term “has largely disappeared in favour of Aboriginal people/s (except for a few older people who haven’t kept up with the times and a few racist commentators trying to make the point that *checks notes* they are cartoonishly racist)” and that the Australian Government Style Guide acknowledges this term can be offensive and discriminatory. Hooper also several times repeats the slur r*tard as it had been used against Sokaluk. These are words that editors and publishers should really be checking for prior to publication.

I know this review is getting a bit long, but I did want to make a quick mention of the narrator, whose familiar and rather comforting voice initially reminded me of SeaChange actor Kate Atkinson, but was familiar because she is the actor who played Gabby in the Aussie drama The Secret Life of Us. Budd has a very clear, empathetic way of speaking but occasionally I wondered if it was her tone or the text of the book that occasionally felt a little too simplistic.

An important book that provides a lot of insight into one of the multiple factors behind the Black Saturday bushfires and that eloquently and with empathy tells the stories of those whose lives were lost. However, a book that I felt went too far in some of its conclusions and that could have used more rigorous editing for respectful language by the editors.

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April 14, 2021 · 9:10 pm

Growing Up Disabled in Australia

Non-fiction anthology of essays and memoir by people who grew up disabled in Australia

Note: in this review I used the terms disabled person and person with a disability interchangeably to reflect that some people prefer person-first language and some people prefer identity-first language

Content warning: bullying

I received a copy of this eBook courtesy of the publisher. I was really excited to receive a copy of this book because I had read another book in the excellent “Growing Up” series. I also read the editor’s memoir and was very confident that this was going to be a well-curated collection.

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Image is of a digital book cover of “Growing Up Disabled in Australia” edited by Carly Findlay. The cover is white text on a background of blocky paint strokes in pink, yellow and turquoise.

“Growing Up Disabled in Australia” edited by Carly Findlay is an anthology of short autobiographies by 47 disabled people. The contributors, who come from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, have a very diverse range of disabilities and perspectives. There are some well-known people including Senator Jordan Steele-John, and plenty of people who are not so well known but whose stories are just as important.

This is a really well-rounded collection that showcases the myriad of experiences people with disability have in this country. Disabilities can affect mobility, senses, learning, mental health, chronic health and cognitive ability. They can be caused by genetics, illnesses or injuries. Something that I think a lot of people don’t consider is that people may have more than one disability, and I thought that Dion Beasley’s piece To Lake Nash and Back about growing up Aboriginal, Deaf and with muscular dystrophy in the Northern Territory surrounded by love, family and dogs particularly captured this intersectional experience and the importance of accessibility and community. C. B. Mako uses free verse poetry in December Three to succinctly how a person with two disabilities who is also a carer, a parent and a member of the migrant community can be excluded from all of those identities.

This book is full of exceptional creativity and I really enjoyed the variety of styles each piece was presented in. Kerry-ann Messengers two poems ‘Life Goes On’ and ‘The Blue Rose’ explored the depth of emotional reaction, positive and negative, that people have towards her as a person with Down Syndrome. Tim Slade’s poem A Body’s Civil War explores the sense of destabilisation living with auto-immune conditions where your body attacks itself. I really loved Sarah Firth’s comic Drawing My Way which gave a practical example of alternative ways information can be presented to assist people with learning disabilities like dyslexia.

Although there each contributor’s experience is unique, nuanced and impacted by other factors such as race, gender, class and cultural background, there were common themes that wove their way through the book. I was surprised at how many contributors wrote about the significance of animals, particularly dogs, in staving off feelings of isolation and loneliness (though I particularly enjoyed Iman Shaanu’s subversive piece Blurred Lines where she writes “For the record, I hate dogs and would prefer a guide cat if that was a thing”). Hippotherapy by Alistair Baldwin was a particularly wry piece about the ubiquitous experience of horse-riding as an activity for disabled kids. At a time when everyone is talking about vaccinations, it was really poignant to read about two contributors, Gayle Kennedy and Fran Henke, who each wrote about the lasting impact of contracting polio, a disease that has been eradicated in Australia through vaccination programs but that continues to affect people of older generations.

However two of the common themes that were the hardest to read about were bullying and lack of accessibility. Jessica Newman-Marshall’s piece Dressing to Survive describes the cruel judgment and bullying she received as a person with a disability that affects not just mobility but causes her to have a very low BMI in a world that constantly scrutinises women for their weight. Kath Duncan, writes in Born Special about the prejudice and bullying she experienced growing up with missing limbs and reclaiming the word ‘Freak’ for herself.

However not everyone with a disability is bullied. Belinda Downes, in writing about her facial difference and disability in Having a Voice, reflects on how it is not her appearance that has made things most difficult for her, but rather people in her life deciding on her behalf what is best for her in terms of corrective surgery and accessibility needs. In Forever Fixing, El Gibbs writes about living with the chronic skin condition psoriasis and how learning about the social model of disability helped her to find a community and see barriers to access, rather than herself, as the problem.

There are a multitude of other things that I could write about this book, but I will finish off to say that this is an incredibly important work that highlights the fact that there is no single disabled experience and that the biggest barriers for people with disabilities are systemic.

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April 9, 2021 · 11:04 pm

One Small Island

Illustrated children’s book about Macquarie Island

I mentioned in my previous book review that I recently went on a hike in Tasmania. There were lots of fantastic things about this hike, but there were two things in particular I really enjoyed: the collection of books at each hut and the lovely and enthusiastic ranger on our first night who told us about this book.

Image is of “One Small Island” by Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch. The cover is of an island in the distance with an ocean below and the aurora australis above. The book is resting on a handrail with bushland, ocean, coastline and mist in the background.

“One Small Island” by Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch is an illustrated children’s book about the history and biodiversity of Macquarie Island. In particular, the book explores the impact of humans on the island’s delicate ecosystem and the battle to undo the damage done by invading species.

This is a beautifully and intricately illustrated book that captures the dramatic landscape and fragile wildlife with its vivid language. Not only is this a story about a critical environmental issue, the destruction of native flora and fauna due to introduced species, it is also a story with a beginning, a disaster, a challenge and a resolution.

An excellent book for children and adults alike with a keen interest in natural history.

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April 5, 2021 · 9:27 pm

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

Content warning: drug use, mental health, sexual harassment

I first really heard about this book when I heard Reese Witherspoon’s”excellent speech (transcript here) about her film production company that produced an adaptation of this book. I have read quite a few books now that have been adapted by Witherspoon’s company (“Gone Girl“, “Big Little Lies” and “Little Fires Everywhere“), and this one has been on my list for a while. My friend lent me her copy quite some time ago, and for a while I though I had accidentally Marie-Kondoed it. When another friend invited me to go on a three night trek in Tasmania recently, I felt like it was the perfect opportunity to finally read this book. I had a better look and found it tucked away in my non-fiction bookshelf.

Image is of “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. The cover has a single hiking boot on a white background. The book is placed between two grey and mint coloured hiking boots, in front of a large blue backpack in front of scrub in the Tasmanian wilderness.

“Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” by Cheryl Strayed is a memoir about Cheryl, a woman in her early 20s who is spiralling. In the wake of her mother’s death, a broken marriage and a heroin addiction, Cheryl realises that something needs to change. After spotting an innocuous guidebook about the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl is galvanised by the goal to hike it alone. With an overweight pack, little experience and only the hope that her pre-packed supplies arrive at post offices along the way, Cheryl is pushed to her absolute limit. Completely alone for a significant part of the journey, she must reckon with her life so far and how she can keep putting one foot in front of the other in the direction she needs to go.

If you ever find yourself on a hiking trip, this is the perfect book to pack. Strayed is an honest and raw writer whose vulnerability and determination make for a compelling mix. While I frequently talk about how I struggle with memoir on this blog, this is the kind of memoir I really enjoy. It reminded me a lot of “H is for Hawk“, blending trauma with literature and a very narrow yet fascinating topic. Although a lot of the book is spent hiking by herself, it is the characters Cheryl meets along the way who really make this book. There is a particular section in the book where Cheryl has overestimated her access to water and is then approached by two terrifying men which was chilling.

When I was on my last day of my hike in Tasmania, I had developed some pretty impressive blisters on the soles of my feet and in between my toes. Although wearing two pairs of socks, taking some anti-inflammatories and applying band-aids liberally had helped, walking was quite painful. Reading about Cheryl’s (much worse) ordeal with feet rubbed raw by ill-fitting boots and her resilience helped me realise that I could get through it too and complete every last kilometre of the walk.

A great companion for hiking that, unlike Cheryl, I declined to burn once finished.

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January 17, 2021 · 12:27 am

Why We Swim

Non-fiction book about the history and psychology of swimming

I came across this book on Twitter a few months ago when the author ran a contest for World Swim Day. I didn’t win, but I was intrigued by the book. I don’t think I have ever been tempted by any book remotely resembling sports biography, but this book hooked me. I was a keen swimmer as a kid and every year trained for months in the lead-up to the inter-school swimming carnival in my local area. I’m a strong swimmer, if not a particularly fast swimmer, and after years of not winning any ribbons in high school I was thrilled to get 2nd place in a race in my last ever swimming carnival. Over the years since then, I’ve come back to the pool again and again and I can still easily swim 1km. A couple of years ago my partner bought me a set of swimming headphones and I even have an aquatic-themed playlist I listen to when I swim. There’s something that draws me to the water, and I was interested to see what drew other people as well. I saw that it was available as an audiobook, so I bought a copy to listen to.

Why We Swim cover art
Image is of a digital book cover of “Why We Swim” by Bonnie Tsui with one arm cutting through water against a navy background

“Why We Swim” by Bonnie Tsui and narrated by Angie Kane is a non-fiction book that blends memoir, journalism and anthropology to explore what it is that draws us to the water. Tsui provides a brief overview of swimming throughout human history using a few modern day examples, and then interviews extreme swimmers including a man who survived freezing Icelandic waters, a woman who smashed international distance swimming records while training to regain mobility and a man who started a swimming school for beginners in a war zone. Alongside this, Tsui shares her own experience as a swimmer and how the joy of swimming connects her with her family.

Tsui is a spirited writer who curates remarkable stories of swimmers who defy the limits. I particularly enjoyed the story of Guðlaugur and the speculation about prisoners who escaped Alcatraz by swimming. I was also fascinated by the history of different strokes and the different types of swimming that emerged through Samurai culture in Japan. The exclusivity of swimming and swimming clubs in relation to gender, race and class in the United Kingdom was also very interesting. There was recently a controversy here in Australia very recently about a women’s swimming pool in Sydney that stated in its policy that only transwomen who have undergone gender reassignment surgery would be able to use the pool. The policy didn’t go into detail about how exactly staff would be checking this, but understandably there was considerable community concern and the Association responsible for managing the Ladies’ Baths has updated their website in response.

In addition to some of the social issues surrounding swimming, Tsui spends quite a bit of the latter part of the book on research about the impact that swimming has on our bodies, and the physical, emotional and social benefits of swimming which really resonated with me. I also found Tsui’s reflections on her own family’s experiences with swimming really touching, especially how the skill and affinity for swimming is being passed on to her own children. Kane was a clear narrator who was easy to listen to.

While this book certainly explores swimming around the world, it definitely has an American focus and a particular interest in exceptionalism. I was probably a little less engaged with the story of a swim school for beginners in Baghdad set up by an American soldier and stories about record-breaking swims than I was some of the others. I was really fascinated by some of Tsui’s writing about human swimming ability and physiology that makes us suitable for swimming, and although it is certainly an extremely contentious theory, I was surprised she didn’t mention the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis just for interest’s sake.

A thought-provoking book that has reignited my enthusiasm for swimming and inspired me to look into distance swimming here in Australia.

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November 24, 2020 · 10:33 pm

The Porcelain Thief

Family memoir about lost wealth and retracing history

I can’t quite remember where I found this book, but I certainly bought it secondhand. Although I often struggle with memoir as a genre, there is a very niche subset of memoir that blends personal history with actual history like “H is for Hawk” and “The Hare with Amber Eyes“. When I picked this up, I remember being intrigued by the premise. As I draw to the end of 2020 and the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge, I thought it would be a really good time to read this book.

Image is of “The Porcelain Thief” by Huan Hsu, a hardcover edition pictured on a wooden table next to a Chinese style white and blue bowl, a ceramic spoon and a chopstick rest

“The Porcelain Thief” by Huan Hsu is a memoir about American journalist Huan who decides to finally take up his uncle’s offer to work in his Shanghai company. However, Huan’s decision is not fuelled by a desire to carry on the family legacy but rather a desire to trace his family’s history and the stories of his great-great-grandfather’s buried porcelain collection. However, once he arrives in Shanghai, things are not so straightforward. Stymied by his patchy Mandarin, close-lipped relatives, family hierarchies and a culture that, after growing up in America, is indecipherable to him, Hsu will have to take some real risks if he is ever going to find out whether the stories about the buried porcelain are true, and whether or not he has a shot at finding it himself.

This is a complex and challenging book. Through Huan, we see that navigating family history is indistinguishable from navigating family. Despite Hsu’s excellent research skills honed through his career as a journalist, this book is at heart about relationships and identity. Hsu is unflinchingly honest in his writing, especially about himself, the criticism levelled at him by his relatives, and the mistakes he makes in his quest to return to his ancestral home. Some of the most powerful parts in the book were the clashes Hsu has with local Chinese people in which American-born Hsu is certain of his cultural and moral superiority. It was interesting seeing this approach mellow as the book progresses and Hsu realises that if he wants to succeed, he will need to befriend more locals and defer to their cultural expertise. Another powerful part of the book is the rift that forms between Hsu and his very elderly grandmother over her reluctance to discuss what happened after the family fled their home, and the way it mirrors the rift that formed between his grandmother and her own grandfather, the patriarch of the family, so many years earlier. I really enjoyed reading about how his grandmother and her sisters and cousins got an education, and the generally good-natured feuds between his uncles and between himself and his own cousin.

This is a well-researched book and Hsu weaves family history with China’s history. Understandably, among the relatives and old neighbours that Hsu interviews there are significantly differing accounts of the family history, the character of his great-great-grandfather and the stories of the lost porcelain. To try to make sense of the different histories, Hsu traces each relative’s story from the source: his great-great-grandfather. While this structure had logic behind it, it made for difficult reading. It felt like Hsu was rehashing the same experiences over and over from slightly different perspectives, muddling the central narrative which I think should have been his own experience. I completely understand the desire to show off all the research that he did, but I think a book like this needs to be really carefully curated. I was hoping that everything would come together in the end, but the ending itself was a bit disappointing as well.

A fascinating, touching and at time frustrating book that I think could have benefited from a structural reshuffle.

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October 11, 2020 · 6:57 pm

Singapore, very old tree

A collection of photographs and stories about the trees of Singapore

I first came across this project on Tumblr (remember Tumblr?) where I followed this great Singaporean bookshop called BooksActually that sadly this year transitioned to a fully online store. I spent a lot of time in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore growing up, and this celebration of South-East Asian trees and history really resonated with me. I ordered this beautiful pack that included a book, postcards and a poster back in 2016 but, like many of my books, it sat on my shelf waiting for the right time. After chatting to a friend online recently about banyan trees and thinking about how long it will likely be before I can go back to South-East Asia again, I figured now was the right time to read this book.

This photo was taken at the National Arboretum’s National Bonsai and Penjing Collection, and this particular Bonsai is a fig

“Singapore, very old tree” curated by Zhao Renhui is a collection of stories and photographs about trees in Singapore. The collection is inspired by a postcard dated 1904 and titled “Singapore. (very old tree)” with an enormous tree towering over a small figure. The photographs and accompanying stories highlight the relationship between individual Singaporeans and individual trees, and weave in themes of history, urban planning, environmentalism and horticulture. The contributors are represent a diverse cross-section of genders, race, age and class in Singaporean society united by a love for the trees that have given them shade, fruit, peace and comfort.

This is a beautiful project and book that I am so, so glad that I supported. It features 30 different trees, and the photographs are edited in a way inspired by the techniques used in the original postcard. The introduction to this project was really helpful to provide some political context for this project and Singapore’s own identity as a Garden City. However, this project also includes the real tension between maintaining this arboreal identity and the pressures of development, and the times where protests have saved trees through compromise. Many of the trees featured in this book are banyan trees, a species of fig that is great not only in size but in spiritual significance.

This is a beautiful collaboration and while the first edition of this project is now sold out, you can now order the second edition online. If you are looking for something incredibly soothing and beautiful to take your time over, I cannot recommend this project enough.

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October 10, 2020 · 11:39 pm

The Good Girl of Chinatown

Memoir about burlesque dancing in Shanghai

Content warning: racism, drug use, family violence

Three years ago I went to an event at Muse Bookstore where I saw this author speak about her new memoir. Even though it was a great talk and I was interested enough to buy a copy of the book for the author to sign, for one reason or another, this book has waited very patiently on my bookshelf since then for its turn. This year I have been making a bit more of an effort to get through my to-read shelves, and it was high time I read this book.

“The Good Girl of Chinatown” by Jenevieve Chang is a memoir about her experiences as a burlesque dancer in Shanghai, China in the late 2000s. After moving to the UK from Sydney to study dance, Jenevieve marries a man of Nigerian heritage called Femi. Although she envies his close-knit family, living with three generations under the one roof eventually becomes too much, and the couple jump at a job opportunity for Femi as a yoga teacher in Shanghai. Despite her family being from China, Jenevieve struggles to find a place in the performing arts scene in a city looking for Western faces. She mixes instead with an eclectic mix of “expats“. Her marriage slowly unravelling, when an opportunity comes up to star as a showgirl in a vaudeville, Jenevieve jumps at the chance. Cecil’s dreams of a club called Chinatown are intoxicating, and it’s easy to overlook some of the issues with payment, venues and transparency in the beginning. However, when things begin to really fall apart, Jenevieve is forced to face up to who she is beneath the costumes and performance and the traumas that ripple through generations of her family.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, memoir is a genre that I often struggle with. However, this was an excellent memoir. Chang is a natural storyteller blending hard truths and entertainment on every page. The structure of this book was very effective using three key perspectives: Chang in the first person, Jenevieve as a child in the third person and fictionalised accounts of family history. I think it is a really courageous thing to write about your family, and although Chang provides plenty of empathy and cultural and historical context, she does not shy away from writing about the impact of corporal punishment on her family. One of the most powerful parts of this book, after having learned as a reader about Chang’s grandparents being exiled to Taiwan after the fall of Kuomintang in 1949 and Chang’s own estrangement from her parents, was her connection with family who still live in China.

However, Chang’s experience as a burlesque dancer and “Chinatown Girl” was also riveting reading. Cecil is the classic charming con artist, winning supporters over with his plans for Chinatown as the next great thing while quickly succumbing to greed and siphoning invested money instead of paying staff and contractors. Despite little to no pay, the performers are whisked along on a journey of late nights, flowing champagne and many creative differences. There was a particularly striking part of the book where many of the performers are taking an experimental drug that just seems to be available all the time, and it is strongly suggested that whoever is providing it is using the performers as guinea pigs. A big turning point in the book is Chang’s realisation that the Chinatown concept is a nostalgic colonial fiction that bares no resemblance to her family’s experience of 20th century China.

This is a captivating memoir and a testimony to Chang’s flexibility as an artist. In a time where the possibility of Australians travelling to and living in Shanghai in the near future is extremely low, and anti-Asian racism is on the rise, this is an important book as well as a great read.

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August 22, 2020 · 2:55 pm

Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous women and feminism

Non-fiction book about the invisibility and dominance of whiteness in feminism

During National Reconciliation Week this year, while sharing recommendations of books by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, I came across this tweet:

I hadn’t even read this book let alone included it on my list, so I immediately bought a copy.

“Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous women and feminism” by Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a thesis on the whiteness of Australian feminism. Across six chapters, the book explores:

  • Indigenous women’s own life writings,
  • the representation (and invisibility as the “norm”) of white women in feminist theory,
  • representations of Indigenous women in white women’s ethnographic writings,
  • representations of Indigenous women in white Australian feminism,
  • white women’s self-presentation in white feminist academia, and
  • Indigenous women’s self-presentation within white Australian feminism.

Moreton-Robinson argues that because of feminism’s inherent but insufficiently examined white perspective, Indigenous women are excluded, minimised or merely tolerated conditionally. She argues that because race is considered to be something that is “other”, white feminists are unable to acknowledge their own race and associated privilege, their own role in perpetuating racial discrimination and are therefore unwilling to relinquish some of that power. Moreton-Robinson stresses that because of this, white women are unable to recognise that for Indigenous women, sexism is inextricably linked to racism, and that until racial oppression is addressed, sexism cannot be adequately dealt with.

This is a complex and well-researched book that highlights an enormous barrier to intersectionality in feminism: a lack of self-awareness among white feminists. Moreton-Robinson combined literature reviews, oral history, writing by Indigenous women and other women of colour and interviews with white feminist academics to produce this work. This is an original and critical text and even though Moreton-Robinson wrote this book 20 years ago, the messages are just as relevant today as they were then. The University of Queensland Press has just released a 20th Anniversary Edition which came out a month or so after I bought my copy, which I understand includes additional commentary by Moreton-Robinson that reflects on the book’s reception by white feminists. I’m tempted to buy a copy of that as well!

Although the book is not very long, it is not an easy read. Moreton-Robinson uses an appropriately academic tone to explore complex and challenging concepts, and asks the audience – predominantly white feminists – to critically examine their own assumptions, privilege and complicity in continuing to centre whiteness in feminism. For readers new to feminist theory, this book is a great starting point because Moreton-Robinson provides an excellent historical overview of feminism. However, although Moreton-Robinson is a succinct writer, it is a lot of information to take in and this book unearths some uncomfortable truths about the role white women have played in facilitating racial oppression in Australia, especially in relation to the removal of children and stolen wages. I think the most challenging parts for me were considering mistakes I had made in the past, the diversity of perspectives I surround myself in and roles played by myself and my ancestors in perpetuating racial oppression.

This is an extremely important book that is just as relevant (if not more so) today as it was at publication 20 years ago. I recommend white women reading this book with an open mind, an open heart and a willingness to commit to taking on board the lessons the book has to offer to improve feminist practice starting with acknowledging whiteness and its associated privilege.

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