I bought this book in the early nineties soon after it was published, as it was in the media a lot back then. I decided to pull it off my shelf, where it's been ever since, for the memories. Would it live up to the positive impression I'd formed? The answer is.... not really!
MY THOUGHTS:
Sally Morgan's autobiography merges into family history, because getting to the bottom of whatever happened to her mother and grandmother became a driving force in her own life.
It begins in the mid-1950s. Sally is the eldest of five children. Her dad (Bill) is a war veteran and plumber whose PTSD keeps him frequently hospitalized and out of work. Mum (Gladys) is the main breadwinner with frequent cleaning jobs, who later starts her own successful floristry business. Nan (Daisy) keeps house and cooks for the family. She's a chain smoker whose front hair is bleached yellow with nicotine. Nan also holds the distinction of wielding the longest cigarette ash in the neighbourhood, but she has an odd way of scurrying off whenever the kids bring friends around to play.
During their school years, Sally and her siblings suspect some family deception happening. Whenever their friends inquire where they come from, owing to their slightly darker skin tone, Mum and Nan mutter, 'Say you're Indian.' What's more, other adults, including school teachers, seem to disapprove of their family for some reason they can't comprehend.
Rumours reach Sally's ears that their origin is Aboriginal. In effect, Mum and Nan have been denying the children their right to know their heritage for the most well-intentioned reason, fear of social backlash.
When Sally makes it her business to find out whatever happened, her Nan in particular, is extremely sensitive to having the light of day shone on her past. Sally's gentle persistence takes years, but eventually she plumbs the personal histories of Nan, Mum, and Nan's brother, Arthur. Without getting too spoilerish, they've been victims of the Stolen Generation, in which young children were forcibly removed from their parents, supposedly for their own good. It was a disgraceful stage of our country's history which has left horrific scars on many Australian citizens.
This is a good book with some irritating bits. I feel the supernatural content is presented in a way to confuse rather than intrigue or enlighten spiritual seekers. Those parts are written in a fairly obfuscating manner. But for the main part, Sally Morgan has a good balance of comic nostalgia and poignant heartache.
I like her historical detail. For example, she recalls Australia's change to decimal currency on Valentine's Day, 1966, when many of us weren't even born. And even though I'm from a younger generation, Morgan's reference to show bags crammed with Smarties, Cherry Ripes, Samboy chips, and Violet Crumble bars stirs fond memories.
My main issue with this book though, is its rough presentation. Punctuation is all wrong and the typesetting is dodgy. Quotation marks are higgledy-piggledy and there are often single-line widows and orphans dangling at the tops and bottoms of pages. The font is crammed and the margins skinny.
My copy is an early one, so hopefully these issues have been fixed in more recent editions, considering this is quite a famous Aussie book that's been elevated to classic status. Once I might have brushed all this aside as having nothing to do with the story, yet this sort of thing is a big deal, when it comes to readers' subliminal impressions of Australians as a whole. It is exactly the sort of sloppiness that might give our national literature a reputation for being slapdash and rough around the edges. I blame the publishers for this. To consistently get details wrong which could've so easily been corrected is a vital oversight.
But on the whole, it was an interesting book to revisit.
🌟🌟🌟
