Talking To My Country by Stan Grant: book review

Talking To My Country (2016) is a memoir, a ‘personal meditation’ on race and identity of an Australian man of Wiradjura and Irish heritage. Stan Grant, Wiradjura man and journalist since 1987, is better known as an international reporter with CNN from 2001-2012.

Grant begins his memoir with his son – taking him to the place he was raised, where his journey began – Poison Waterholes Creek. He then retraces his beginnings that commence with his grandfather in Belabula near Bathurst in Australia, and simultaneously in Moyne, County Tipperary in Ireland in 1810 with 17-year-old John Grant who is sent to Australia as a convict. Families eventually come together – a ‘forbidden love’ partnership of a Wiradjura man with a white woman.

He tells of his parents’ move to Canberra in the 1970s where he began his working life. He discusses his influences – the book that changed his life – the 1953 book, Go Tell It On The Mountain by American James Baldwin, as well as the American Civil Rights Movement, and Fred Schepisi’s 1978 film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith based on Thomas Keneally’s book – a true story about a Wiradjura man ‘like me’.

While ‘nothing was expected of me and I expected nothing of myself’ Stan Grant moved into journalism in 1981: ‘Journalism has been my salvation.’ He talks of his obsession with time, and working himself to the point of collapse until his ‘moment of reckoning.’ Although ‘liberated by the world’ he resigned from CNN and headed back home to Australia.

He discusses the Australian government policy of absorption and assimilation, of First Nations children being ‘christianised’ and ‘civilised’ and the notion of ‘self-determination.’ But moreover, he questions what determines identity – ‘identity is forever in flux’ – and what impacts the land, the family, and the traditions of culture have on a person’s identity.

He ends in 2015 in which he pens a message to Australia in an attempt to answer his own questions about race and identity.

Grant writes, not in anger or moral outrage, but with honesty and directness in his search for equilibrium and the factors that unify people. He writes about blood and bone, about kinship, his deep connection to country, of leaving home to find himself, and of coming home. But while he addresses his writing to ‘his country’ he is also writing to himslf, but most of all, to all of us. And we should all read it.

MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. ...

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass...

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing...

FEAST OR FAMINE

Search This Blog