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50books_poc"Who Am I?: The Diary of Mary Talance" is part of the "My Story" series of historical fiction for late primary/early high school readers. Books in the series are written by a wide range of authors. "Who Am I?" is written by Anita Heiss, a Wiradjuri woman from south-west NSW.
Mary Talance was once called Amy Charles, but at the age of five she was removed from her parents and placed in an Aboriginal Children's Home. In 1937, at age ten, she is fostered by a white Catholic family in Sydney. She is told by her foster parents, her teachers, and the matron of the Children's Home that she has to forget that she is Aboriginal: she is "fair-skinned enough" to grow up white. This is a story from the Stolen Generations.
I don't know why I chose to start 50books_poc with this particular book. Possibly because I figured it would be a rare quick read (and it was: 2 1/4 hours from start to finish), and it was one where I have no definitional issues to deal with. Because it's YA lit, written with a specific educational intent, I can't be very surprised that it's didactic at times: it's written after all for an audience that are a good fifteen years younger than me.
I found it particularly interesting that Mary is adopted/fostered (the legalities are never made clear) by a Catholic family, given that in the 1930s there was still discrimination against Catholics (which is a passing point in the book). Mary is luckier than a lot of indigenous children, in that her foster family do care for her: she and her foster sister eventually find commonalities, and she even, by the end of the book, has started to occasionally refer to her foster parents as Ma and Pa, without adding their surname after it.
Although little of what Mary goes through at school or in her various homes was particularly new to me, the stupidity of her teacher and the ingrained-ness of the attitudes got to me, even though intellectually, I recognise them. I love Mary's moments of amateur theology, and I'm glad that most of the Australian church has (although not quickly enough) caught up to her thinking.
Mary's conclusions at the end - "I'm not gunna let people tell me no more that I have to be a white person, cos that's not being true. I reckon I'll even tell Ma B cos if she really does love me like a daughter then she has to love who I am. Right? And I'm Aboriginal and I'm proud" - made me smile and also tear up. Poor Mary - I suspect her life would have been a little more difficult than her January 27th 1938 optimism will allow.
Mary Talance was once called Amy Charles, but at the age of five she was removed from her parents and placed in an Aboriginal Children's Home. In 1937, at age ten, she is fostered by a white Catholic family in Sydney. She is told by her foster parents, her teachers, and the matron of the Children's Home that she has to forget that she is Aboriginal: she is "fair-skinned enough" to grow up white. This is a story from the Stolen Generations.
I don't know why I chose to start 50books_poc with this particular book. Possibly because I figured it would be a rare quick read (and it was: 2 1/4 hours from start to finish), and it was one where I have no definitional issues to deal with. Because it's YA lit, written with a specific educational intent, I can't be very surprised that it's didactic at times: it's written after all for an audience that are a good fifteen years younger than me.
I found it particularly interesting that Mary is adopted/fostered (the legalities are never made clear) by a Catholic family, given that in the 1930s there was still discrimination against Catholics (which is a passing point in the book). Mary is luckier than a lot of indigenous children, in that her foster family do care for her: she and her foster sister eventually find commonalities, and she even, by the end of the book, has started to occasionally refer to her foster parents as Ma and Pa, without adding their surname after it.
Although little of what Mary goes through at school or in her various homes was particularly new to me, the stupidity of her teacher and the ingrained-ness of the attitudes got to me, even though intellectually, I recognise them. I love Mary's moments of amateur theology, and I'm glad that most of the Australian church has (although not quickly enough) caught up to her thinking.
Mary's conclusions at the end - "I'm not gunna let people tell me no more that I have to be a white person, cos that's not being true. I reckon I'll even tell Ma B cos if she really does love me like a daughter then she has to love who I am. Right? And I'm Aboriginal and I'm proud" - made me smile and also tear up. Poor Mary - I suspect her life would have been a little more difficult than her January 27th 1938 optimism will allow.
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