Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

2.11 Pat Lowe and Jimmy Pike, Yinti, Desert Child (1992)

2.12 Pat Lowe and Jimmy Pike, Desert Dog (1997)

2.13 Pat Lowe and Jimmy Pike, Desert Cowboy (2000)

These children's books are told by Pat Lowe and based on the experiences of Jimmy Pike in his childhood as a hunter gatherer in the central desert. He came in from the desert to a station in the 1950s, one of the last groups to do so.

*Yinti, Desert Child* describes his childhood and his first trip in to see relatives on a station in his adolescence. *Desert Dog* is a story about his mother's wonderful hunting dingo, Spinifex, who comes in with him to the station and then runs away back to his mother in the desert. *Desert Cowboy* is is the third part of the biography. It charts Jimmy’s permanent move in to working on stations in the Kimberley. I was particularly interested in how he adjusted from a hunter gatherer life to the whitefeller idea of ‘work’ and ‘pay’ in order to stay on the country.

The books are written by Pat Lowe, who is white, but I have included them here as the illustrations are so integral to the stories. Pat Lowe's introduction says she has sometimes altered Jimmy Pike's stories for ease of understanding. This is always the tricky part of having someone else write for you - but perhaps in this case it was a particularly tight collaboration as they are a married couple.

My two and three quarter year old daughter really liked Jimmy Pike’s illustrations. The bright colours (I think textas?) and straightforward pictures of horses and men and cattle are just right for her. The stories are, of course, far beyond her, being aimed at perhaps seven to ten year olds.

Narelle McRobbie, Bip the Snapping Bungaroo (1990)

Bip the snapping bungaroo loses his snap. It’s obviously a children’s story, but probably one aimed at kids at little older than mine.

She really liked the illustrations of the turtle, especially when his head went in and out. The pictures are by Aboriginal illustrator Grace Fielding.

The Art of Sally Morgan, Intro by Jill Milroy, 1996

This is a compilation of Sally Morgan's art from the period 1986 to 1995. Her art is a beautiful example of contemporary Aboriginal art. The art is two dimensional and uses a bold palette of mostly primary colours. She works mostly in acrylics or screen printing.

Some of her pictures are obviously political, such as *Another Story* (1988) which shows a squatter's house at the top, with the bones of Aboriginal people in the ground. But, when you look at them thoughtfully, they all deal with the distribution of power in some way (surely the most meaningful way of considering politics). Take *Dancing Women* (1988), a black and white print of dancing women with stars. The image of women together recurs in her work, referring to her own female-headed family and her belief in the strength of Aboriginal women in maintaining Aboriginal culture.

Really beautiful art that considers contemporary Aboriginal and non-Indigenous issues in Australia.

# 40 Gracie Green, Joe Tramacchi and Lucile Gill, Tjarany Roughtail (1992)

I found this in the library discard pile - what a bargain at 50 cents! But then I read it and it's quite disappointing. Worth my 50 cents, no doubt, but not great.

It is a collection of traditional Aboriginal stories from the Kimberley, told in English and Kukatja. There are quite a lot of anthologies like this available now, but this was a quite early one - 1992.

Perhaps this early publication date explains the odd decision to include a six page guide to kinship rules which was so complicated that I found it difficult to follow (and I have read these guides to skin groups before). I can't believe that even the most motivated child reader - and the book was placed in junior non-fiction - would be able to wade through it. Likewise the guide to pronunciation.

Tjarany Roughtail was shortlisted by the Children's Book Council of Australia and it won the Eve Pownall Award. This surprises me as usually these are good indications of quality, age-appropriate material.

# 37 From Little Things Big Things Grow, lyrics by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, illustrated by kids from Gurindji, with paintings by Peter Hudson (2008)

This is a really fabulous children's book which gives the lyrics of Paul Kelly's famous song *From Little Things Big Things Grow*. This story - for the benefit of non-Australians - tells the story of the strike on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory (on Gurindji country). This culminated in both wages for workers (previously paid mostly in rations) and a massively significant grant of land rights to the Gurindji people in 1975.

The book is illustrated by kids from Gurindji and the profits from the book go to arts and literacy projects for kids on the lands. Plus it has gorgeous paintings of the country by Peter Hudson.

A friend bought a copy of this for my baby girl and then kept it because it is so beautiful. I completely understand this - it's a gorgeous book and I'm definitely getting a copy for her. Especially as - at thirteen months - she is not old enough to object to my somewhat off-key rendition of the song.

# 35 - Kevin Gilbert, Child's Dreaming (1992), photography by Eleanor Williams

Kevin Gilbert was self-educated in prison. He was involved in the Aboriginal rights movement from the 1970s and he initiated the idea of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.

He was the author of the first written Aboriginal play, wrote Living Black (which I've reviewed previously) and was awarded - and refused - the Human Rights Award for Literature.

This is a collection of poems for children. Mostly they are about animals and insects, written in a very straightforward way. The collection is illustrated with clear photos by Eleanor Williams. I think it would be a nice collection to read aloud to a child of say three to seven.

# 33 - Sally Morgan, Wanamurraganya: The Story of Jack McPhee (1989)

I was surprised to find this. I had honestly known only of Sally Morgan’s enormously famous *My Story*.

*My Story* is like the default Aboriginal autobiography. That’s a lot of expectation to hang on one solitary book. Every time I mention I am doing this challenge people say ‘Oh, I’ve read *My Story*. You should read it.’ Apparently I had also fallen into this trick of thinking as I had not realised she wrote another work.

Sally Morgan met Jack McPhee when she went to Pilbara, looking for people who might have known her own grandparents before they were sent down to missions in the south. He remembered them! She got to know him and wound up writing his biography.

Jack McPhee was born to an Aboriginal mother and a white father around 1905 in the Pilbara. As he says:

‘I see it as the story of a working man, and I think working me who read it will understand because they know the struggle. Then I also see it as the story of Wanamurraganya, the son of a tribal Aborigine. Then again, it’s the story of a man who is fighting with being black and white. A man who chooses not to live in the tribal way, but who can’t live the whiteman’s way because the Government won’t let him. I could go on and on, because what I’m really saying is, it’s the story of many people, and they’re all me!’

This means it is completely different to *My Story* which concentrates on Sally Morgan’s search for his identity. Jack knew who he was and where he came from (with a caveat I discuss below).

The focus of his story is on his attempts to negotiate living his life despite the constant interference of the Department of Native Welfare. You can hear his frustration at the need for permission to marry, the fact that he and his wife weren’t allowed to go to a station where his wife had family and where they had good economic prospects.

The other theme that recurs throughout the book is the importance of names as a means of negotiating between traditional and white cultures. This is implicit in the title which gives both his names. The first chapters consist of Jack naming his family: his mother Marduwanyjawurru (‘her white name was Mary’), his aunts Mugaari or Eve, Nyamalangu or Nellie, Yarriwawurru or Dinah, and Ngarlgaari or Fanny.

He met his wife while visiting relatives at Moore River Native Settlement. He says ‘I became serious about a girl named Susie Smith. She was from the Ashburton area... and her real name was Bessie Connaughton, but they changed her name when she was brought to the Settlement. Her Aboriginal name was Mularna, but no one called her by that.’

Names are very confusing things in this world. There is the Aboriginal name given at birth and then a name randomly assigned by white people when they met them. This could lead to much confusion as, for instance, when Jack met a pastoralist who was trying to figure out if Jack’s wife Susie was the girl he had known on his station.

He was interested in knowing because she had ‘been like a daughter to him’. This was often code for ‘this is my unacknowledged child’ but in this case seems to have actually meant ‘I knew her as a child’.

Jack had himself thought that one white man was his biological father (a man named Sandy McPhee who was fond of him and spent time with him before he died in World War One). As an adult he discovered that it was actually a different white man. This was essentially irrelevant as he had an Aboriginal father who took on the cultural role of fathering him. (This is the caveat I noted earlier).

This double vision stems from the constant negotiation between the black world and the white one. Jack McPhee always knows exactly who he is and where he comes from, u=but explaining it means a lot of extra information because it is quite complicated.

In short, an excellent book, a real surprise to me.