13.3.4 Non-Fiction
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This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.
13.3.4 Non-Fiction
* Bruce Chatwin, "Songlines": 'The Songlines emerge as invisible
pathways connecting up all over Australia: ancient tracks made of
songs which tell of the creation of the landi. The Aboriginals'
religious duty is ritually to travel the land, singing the Ancestors'
songs: singing the world into being afresh. "The Songlines" is one
mans impassioned song' Sunday Telegraph. [Highly recommended. AN]
* "My Place", by Sally Morgan. Modern Australian women writing about
life as an aboriginal woman. Sally Morgan has also written an award
winning play, and painted some canvases that imo are the best in the
WA Gallery (which is quite well stocked). [RH]
* Two books about early colonial women:
(1) "The Women of Botany Bay: A Re Australian Society", by Portia
Robin pp. $16.95 paper.
(2) "Life Lines: Australian Women's Lives 1788 to 1840", edited
by Patricia Clark and Dale Spender. Sydney, NSW: Allen and Unwin,
1992, 249 pp. @22.95 paper (US distribution: Paul & Co., PO Box
442, Concord, MA 01742).
* I recommend Paul Kelly's "The end of certainty" for a chronicling of
the relationship between economic and social policies in the Liberal
Party. It seems to Kelly that Howard was the one to try and introduce
social conservatism into the Libs to match the economic shift.
Hewson, it appears, is so narrowly focused on the economy (laser-like
anyone?) that this is now irrelevant. [PR]
Jack Davis, "A Boy's Life". An entertaining account of growing up
(Koorie)
Diane Bell, "Daughters of the Dreaming". Feminist Aboriginal
anthropology.
Jill Conway, "The Road from Coorain". Autobiography. In the tradition
of My Brilliant Career - a woman's exquisitely clear-sighted memoir of
growing up Australian. Jill Conway is a noted historian, specialising
in the experience of women in America and was the first woman
president of Smith College (a women's college in the USA).
*Hugh Lunn, "Over the top with Jim" (and the sequels) -- popular
autobiographies dealing with growing up in the '50s.
* Alan Marshall, "I can jump Puddles" (Story of writer Alan Marshall's
childhood, after he was crippled at a young age by polio. A classic.
He wrote several other autobiographical works, and a number of them,
including "I can ..." were made into a TV series by the ABC)
* Albert Facey, "A Fortunate Life". This is the extraordinary life of
an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with
simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started
work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as
an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of
his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in WWII and that of
his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet felt that his life
was fortunate. Facey's life story, published when he was
eighty-seven, has inspired many as a play , a television series and an
award-winning book that has sold over 1/2 a million copies. [Moving
and unforgettable.AN]
* Stan Arneil. "One Man's War". The diary of a young Australian army
sergeant, Stan Arneil, kept as a prisoner of war duing WWII. It
covers the entire period of imprisonment from the fall of Singapore in
1941 through the infamous Burma railway camps, his return to Changi
and his repatriation to Australia in October 1945. Winner of the 1981
International Pen Award for Non-fiction. After the war Stan Arneil
was active in welfare and church work. In the 1950s he established
the credit union movement and he has been awarded the Order of
Australia for his efforts in that field.
* Susan Mitchell. (1) "Tall Poppies". Nine Australian women talk about
women and success in Australia today. "The Matriarchs". Twelve
Australian women, from their sixties to their nineties, talk about
their lives, and about being alive today.
* John Pilger, "A Secret Country". John Pilger was born and educated
in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and
playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and
has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of Journalist
of the Year, for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. Among a number of
other awards, he has been International Reporter of the Year, and
winner of the United Nations Association Media Peace Prize. John
Pilger writes about his homeland with life-long affection and a
passionately critical eye. In A Secret Country he pays tribute to a
little known Australia and tells a story of high political drama.
-"Tenaciously researched, fiercely argued, both unsparing and
patriotic, A Secret Country presents a harsh narrative of class,
race and power; of the oppression and resistance, the betrayal
and amnesia, that lie behind the sunny illusions of the
Australian self-image" Robert Hughes.
-"A moving account of the abuse of human rights in Australia' Graham
Greene
- "This is a patriotic book in the best sense, written in the belief
that Australia deserves not old bromides and stereotypes, but the
respect of critical appraisal. With "The Fatal Shore" by Robert
Hughes, it is an essential text for anyone wishing to understand the
real Australia obscured by the advertising industry's image of a
nation of 'white Anglo-Saxon Crocodile Dundees with the wit of the
cast of "Neighbours"'. It is also a necessary book for those of us who
believe in the redeeming power of truth. Daily Telegraph, London.
-"He reveals a hidden Australia at once more ugly and more heroic than
the official history... Combining investigative journalism with
whimsical anecdote, it's a powerful critique of Australian society and
a bloody good read." Australian Tribune.
* Paul Kelly, "The Hawke Ascendancy" is the story of how the Labor
Party returned to power in 1983 after its crushing defeat in1975. It
is the inside story of three men- Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser and Bill
Hayden - and their unique power struggle. The account covers the full
eight years which began with Fraser's 1975 supremacy and closed with
Hawke's 1983 triumph and first year of office.
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