Mod post: theme suggestions

[damned_colonial]

Please suggest themes you'd like to see covered here! Cut and paste the following into a comment:

ETA: please put your theme in the subject of your comment!

Theme:
Are you prepared to run it? Yes/No
Suggested books, if you have them already:


What does it mean to run the theme?

1. At least one month in advance, you'll let everyone know about the theme and your suggested reading for it. You need to suggest at least 3 works of fiction.
2. On the first of the month, you will post a welcome/introduction/kickoff for the theme.
3. Throughout the month, you'll take an active part in discussion of the theme.

You do not have to be an expert on the theme to run it. You just need to have an interest in it.

Comments

Stolen Generations (Australia)

[damned_colonial]

Theme: Stolen Generations (Australia)
Prepared to run it: sure, unless someone better qualified shows up
Suggested books:

Doris Pilkington, "Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence"
Sally Morgan, "My Place"

Those are two Aboriginal authors. I wonder if we can find something from the POV of the white people running missionary schools etc?

Re: Stolen Generations (Australia)

[adelheid]

The only actually *fictional* account I can think of right now is Anita Heiss' "Who Am I?" which is part of the "My Australian Story" YA series, and probably impossible to get overseas.

I rather doubt any Balanda (non-Indigenous person) these days would dare write from the white pov on the Stolen Generations, although there are some older classics like Mrs Aneaus Gunn and the Billabong books (both of which are Station life rather than Stolen Generations.)

Re: Stolen Generations (Australia)

[damned_colonial]

Yeah, I was thinking of the Billabong books and stuff like that.

"My Place" and "Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence" are both fiction but based on true stories.

I'm just skimming through "We of the Never-Never" on Gutenberg and although it has a lot of stuff about Aboriginal people, they're not technically stolen generations.

Re: Stolen Generations (Australia)

[adelheid]

Having looked up cataloging data, I'll accept "Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence" as fictionalised but I'm really rather... iffy about saying My Place is fiction. It's classified as Biography, it's won prizes as biography, it's studied as biography.

I don't want to be troublesome, I just ... yeah. Sally Morgan's My Place is in NO WAY fictionalised. (Nadia Wheatley's My Place, published the same year, *is* fiction, but has no link to the Stolen Generations.)

Re: Stolen Generations (Australia)

[damned_colonial]

Oh, interesting! I bought a copy a while ago from the fiction shelves of a bookstore, not that that's definitive of course.

Looks like this might be a hard theme to find books for. That's a pity :(