I am so proud of us!!!!!
Thank you Sue for suggesting such a great variety of books for our list.
I am looking forward to reading "the Secret River"and reading your comments and ideas.
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Hello ladies,
ReplyDeleteFirstly thanks Sue for the book choice I would never have read it otherwise. I have tended to steer clear of early colonial stories as they featured heavily in both my and my children's schooling, but... while I can't say I enjoyed The Secret River{I spent most of the time feeling sad or waiting for the next tragedy to occur} there were parts of it that held great significance for me. I grew up on a great river,not the Hawkesbury, but my childhood was spent in dingys on the tributaries and creeks of the Clarence River. The isolation and peacefulness and the feeling of belonging to the land doesn't have to be based on race.We fished and crabbed and ran wild just like my father did when he was a child. Your sense of place and sense of belonging is a powerful thing, so I can only try to understand, and Kate Grenville describes it very well the sense of displacement that Will and Sal felt when they first were uprooted to Australia and try to understand the outrage the Aboriginal people would have felt when their land was invaded.
My sister-in -law lives around the area that the book is set in Australia, in fact Mrs Herring's Cateye Creek runs through the lower part of their property, I don't go down there because there are still too many black snakes.Kate Grenvilles descriptions of the landscapes are very beautiful and very true. It always makes me sad to read and contemplate the inhumanities we can perpetrate on each other whether through fear,ignorance or evil and how generations later we are still trying to come to terms with and somehow fix an unfixable situation.
Happy New Year to us all
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t agree with you more about "The Secret River", Nancy. It was deeply depressing. Sorry to have put you through it. Why the school curriculum’s obsession with early Australian history? Does it encourage nationhood/patriotism through the recognition of such appalling beginnings and such successful outcomes? Are there the same curriculum concerns in America, Katie?
As someone who has lived out of my country for nearly 30 years, I found the concern with sense of belonging and one’s sense of place very interesting. Sal’s homesickness for a city in which she, and particularly her husband, had been so badly treated, Thornwick’s determination to establish his own place and the situation of the Aboriginals was described with awful vividness. The details of London poverty (peeing for warmth) and the injustices and brutality in the class ridden English society transferred to Australia, were shocking.
It certainly highlights the terrible consequences of Empire at the personal, environmental and systems level (and no doubt many other levels besides). “The Secret River” suggests we’ll be generations getting over it. As I said, deeply depressing. Unquestionably well written, though – the descriptions would not have resonated with me the way they did with you, Nancy, but I did feel I was living on Thornwick’s land. Sadly, it was not a place one wanted to be, and the constant sense of threat, the awareness of impending tragedy, made it a real struggle to continue reading.
On the bright side, it has provided me with lots of food for thought about a sense of place, sense of belonging. After all, Jay is now living in a foreign land!
This book was a little difficult to get into. While the imagery was wonderful, the hardships and sorrows the Thornhills faced was disheartening. In most novels once the protagonist makes it to his triumphant end, you are left with a sense of empowerment. Even though Thornhill got his dream land, with a mansion house, the road he took to get there does not seem worth it. It doesn’t leave the reader with that success feeling. He achieved his desires but at the suffering of others. I found it frustrating to read each situation where Thornhill could have helped the Aboriginal people but didn’t. First there was the Aborigine woman whom Smasher was hold prisoner and raping. Then there was the little Aborigine boy dying alone. Finally Thornhill stood by while his friends slaughtered all those help innocent people.
ReplyDeleteSue, never in any of my education have I learned about the colonization of Australia. This book was like a history lesson to me. Although I knew nothing about the colonization of Australia I am hardly surprised by it occurrence and how it occurred. In the States, we study a different though similar history: How the colonial people dealt with the Native Americans. Similar atrocities were inflicted upon the Native Americans. How do those of Abroginal descent act to those past travisties today, Nancy? Are they addressed or acknowledged by the Australian government or people? Do they still live in reservations as some sects of Native Americans still do?
Despite, the depressing read, I do feel like I learned a great deal from reading the Secret River. I never knew anything about the colonization of Australia short of the fact that it was once a penal colony. I found it very interesting to learn what became of the “convicts” after they had completed their sentences and became “free”. I had no idea how their system worked.
Happy New Year!!!
ReplyDeleteFirstly I would like to make 2 new book
suggestions to add to our list?
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, this was suggested to me by my friend Marianne who has been reading our blog and would like to join us in some discussions.
The Tigers Wife by Tea Obreht is the other . If you would like to read the reviews and let me know if you would like to add them to our list
Wow,you guys posted some interesting questions for me to offer my opinions on!!
My own schooling was mainly focused on the plight of the convicts and settlers and the hardships they overcame in a strange and hostile land. The rags to riches story I guess so to a degree it was supposed to instill a patriotism and pride in the hard won struggles. It was sadly lacking in information about the Aboriginal people and the hardships and atrocities that befell them because of colonisation. Now as my kids have just finished their schooling there has been a complete turnaround in curriculum and it is dominated by Aboriginal studies. They are not left with any feelings of nationhood, patriotism, instead they feel guilty and powerless to change the past and unsure of how their generation can ensure some genuine change for the better.
I can only speak personally of the aboriginal people that live in my area I have no personal experience of the people that live in the outback or the North of Australia where I understand from news reports that their situation is dire.
Most idigenous people live in missions in my area in housing supplied by the government,these housing estates have endemic alcoholism, domestic violence and large scale unemployment the situation is critical. The wider community live in fear of being stolen from and violent attacks on businesses in town is quite common. The very sad and unjust thing is the government keeps pouring money into projects that don't seem to be making a difference and contributing to racial unrest . What use is money to a people who have had their very culture taken from them? How can ,money replace someones sense of self value and self worth? I don't know what the answers are but I think it will be many more generations yet until we have equality. In saying all this I do believe there is a certain amount of self responsibility required of both indigenous and non indigenous Australians to improve relations and conditions. The Australian government and Aboriginal Elders talk alot about reconcilliation, but the conditions and distrust on the ground seem as unchanged as in Thornhill's time.
By the way, I love your little profile photo Katie , You look beautiful and very much in love
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not have much knowledge of the plights of the Native American people, I have read that many of the indigenous people of the U.S. fall victim to similar social issues. I’ve read that alcoholism and continued discrimination is high among the Native Americans. I can’t speak on any personal experience since I haven’t even met anyone of Native American descent. I’ve read that various reforms and legislation, in favor of the native people, are still being passed today. Talk about slow progress. We’ve only been destroying their ways of life since 1492.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the new curriculum in Australia will instill in the younger generations a sense of activism. Maybe you’ll have more citizens fighting for equality and justice for all people living in Australia. It would be a more hopeful outcome for the youth of Australia. But I can understand how they could feel discouraged. How does one make right the wrong doings of their ancestors
Thanks Nancy! We're still waiting for the wedding photos to come in, that's just one from someone at the wedding. I was going to suggest The Tiger's Wife for a future read, I'm glad you suggested it too. I was also going to suggest: From The Land of the Moon by Milena Agus and The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The second suggestion maybe a little too religiously based. If neither of you is interested, we don't have to read it.