NAIDOC? Wha’ the?

English: aboriginal site, australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Australia has some great festivals and days of celebration. ANZAC Day, the Woodford Folk Festival (Qld), Moomba (Vic), Melbourne Cup (everywhere) – (NB I’m deliberately avoiding Australia Day for reasons I’ll explain in a minute – bear with me). There’s nothing we Aussies like more than an excuse for a long weekend and a barbie. NAIDOC week should be one of those great festivals. For what it represents it should be celebrated widely on a national scale, but unfortunately it isn’t mainly because not enough of the general population know about it.

National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) has a long history. It started as a ‘Day of Mourning’ in 1935, but dates back as far as the 1920’s & 30’s when groups of Aboriginal people organized formal boycotts of Australia Day, and with good reason. Let me explain.

Imagine how you’d feel if Australia was invaded tomorrow by a swarm of people who saw us as little better than pigs and killed most of us, pushing us out of our homes and off the land we believe we have a right to live on. These people then changed everything about the way we lived. They now control where we go, who we hang out with, who we marry, what happens to our children, where we live, what we eat. We are no longer allowed to speak English or sing Ke Shan or dance like idiots to Midnight Oil. All the festivals we look forward to every year are banned. No more barbies or long weekends. These people, after murdering and separating us from our families, and putting us to slave labour without payment, then announce a national day of celebration – on the very day they first landed here and took everything away from us. Not happy, right? Do they care? Nope.

Just imagine that then goes on for decades and decades, so all the generations that follow us, knowing what has happened to our ancestors as a result of the invasion, must face this national outburst of pride by the invaders, without any apology or acknowledgement of what it means for us as a race, every punishing year. As a day of celebration of all that is Australian, it kind of loses its appeal, doesn’t it?

NAIDOC week (always held in early July) has its roots in the political, in the celebration of survival of Aboriginal culture – that doesn’t mean just a handful of songs, stories, and rituals. Culture defines who you are. Think about it. What nationality do you and your family identify with? What does it mean for you, as a person, to identify with that nationality? It means language – how you express yourself and your feeling and ideas. How do you communicate if you’re not allowed to speak your language? It means rituals and holidays you take for granted – like Easter and Christmas – even if you are not a practicing Christian, growing up in a Western culture means these holidays are part of your family life. It means ways of being and behaving that you simply don’t think about until you are immersed in a different culture and your uniquely Australian cultural characteristics become obvious.

Given Australian Aboriginal people are part of the oldest (that’s 60,000 years compared to the measly 220 years the non-Aboriginal ancestors have been here) living culture in the world – you’d think the entire nation would enthusiastically celebrate its survival wouldn’t you? I mean, that’s really something worthy of a big celebration, don’t you think? But do we embrace it as our own? Nope. It’s a fringe festival, celebrated by those who’ve made personal or professional connections with our Aboriginal community. And yet, there’s a lively and ever-growing calendar of events organized each year by Aboriginal organizations (and lots of other public and private organizations) that anyone can attend. So why don’t many of us go?

Simple. Most of us don’t know about it, and many that do think of it as an Aboriginal festival, not a national one, and I think that’s a shame. As Australian’s we should be so proud of the original culture, and the complex and fascinating history of the land we walk on every day. Our Aboriginal people have survived a terrible and dark history, but the culture born in this country is being preserved and passed on to younger generations. This history, this story of survival, is something worth celebrating – vigorously and on a national scale.

NAIDOC hasn’t reached the mainstream yet – but it’s getting there. Each year it gets a little bigger. This week, all over Australia, Aboriginal people are celebrating their strengths in all kinds of ways. Art exhibitions, musical performances, elders breakfasts and lunches, the NAIDOC ball, flag raising ceremonies, speeches. Everyone is welcome to join in. It’s a warm and welcoming atmosphere with community at its centre. It’s just the kind of festival Australian people love to love. So what are you waiting for? It’s not too late. Go celebrate.

NAIDOC Victorian calendar of events

Related articles

• NAIDOC week (derbypubliclibrary.wordpress.com)
• ABC Radio to celebrate indigenous talent in week long broadcast (mumbrella.com.au)

Beware the price of dreams

I dreamed for a long time, before I started writing seriously, what it would be like to get a publishing contract. I imagined the moment vividly (as only writers or filmmakers can) – leaping around the house punching the air, doing the electric boogaloo, squealing with joy.

In truth, the reality was far from that. Publishing contracts don’t just materialise in your letterbox one day with a big fat cheque attached and a ‘please sign here’ tag. Publishing contracts take time to eventuate and they don’t always come with money. Mine took about six weeks and I will have to wait about ten months before I see a dime. By the time it actually materialised in my letterbox a funny thing had happened. I’d already gone through a kaleidoscope of emotions, and while I was darn excited to finally see the thing in black and white with my name in big bold letters on the front, I was pretty worn out with anticipation and another surprising emotion – fear. In the weeks following the verbal confirmation that I was the recipient of a publishing contract I found myself utterly paralysed with self-doubt.

I reckon people who get close to achieving big dreams will understand this. It’s a double edged sword, longing for something so much, because when it finally arrives you’re not really prepared for the anxiety that comes with it. It goes something like this:

Oh my God. This is real. Somebody’s expecting something of me now. Can I do this? What if I fail spectacularly? I’ve dreamed of this all my life. If I screw it up what will I do for the rest of my life? How will I get up in the morning? What will I have to aim for?  I HAVE to produce something good now, and keep producing something good, because if I don’t, this dream is dead and then what? But what if I succeed? They’ll expect more and more of me. Have I got it in me to keep producing quality stuff that people will want to read? Will I meet their expectations? What if I disappoint them? Will I become a laughing stock?

Now, to writers who haven’t achieved their dream of a publishing contract, this probably all sounds pretty narcissistic and lame – and it is. BUT – my point is I think it might be normal to feel this way when we finally grab a hold of something we’ve spent years and years longing for. The reality of a dream is rarely what we imagine it to be. Our dream job has boring tasks and a crappy manager, our soulmate doesn’t want to live our dream life with us, and our publishing contract comes with a load of expectations we just hadn’t thought about until it arrived.

Fortunately, thanks to the wisdom of some very good friends who are a few steps ahead of me on this publishing train, I know what’s coming. The first set of edits the publisher returns on your first book (that you thought was near perfect when you submitted it) are horrifying – in a B-grade horror movie kind of way. There are many surprises that look a lot nastier than they are. But you get over it, the edits get done and the thing gets published.

Then there’s the publicity of the first book – terrifying – in a waking-up-naked-in-the-middle-of-a-city-street kind of way. As a first time writer you feel exposed to a public you don’t know. These are your readers and potential readers. You desperately want them to like you, but they don’t see you as you, they see you as a ‘WRITER’ – one step above an ordinary person. But you do the talks and book signings and discover that people want to love you and if you make a mistake you’re so unknown at this point you can put it down to experience and just pretend it never happened.

And then there’s the ugly subject of the second book. I’m in a fortunate position here. I’ve been contracted to write two novellas (about half the size of an average novel) within fairly tight timelines. I will have finished them both by the time the first one is released – which relieves me of the curse of the second book syndrome. This is where many emerging writers stumble and with good reason. Where they may have taken years to write and craft their first masterpiece, number two has to be written usually within 12 months. In between they have to promote the release of the first book, blog, twitter, facebook, prepare a proposal for subsequent work, and do the edits on number two. Believe me, this is an avalanche of work – particularly for a new writer who still has to work for a living (because there ain’t no money in writing books folks – unless you’re Jodie Picoult or Bryce Courtney).

Knowing all this awaits me in the future is more than helpful. It’s a vast reality check. Only the bold and the truly committed would tread the path of a writer. It’s not easy on families, incomes or sanity. It’s a hard thing to come at, realising that achieving what I’ve always wanted may require sacrifices from my family and a lowering of living standards. (Something’s got to give and it’s usually housework. My house is terminally filthy I’m afraid.)

Dreams are a funny thing. They get us up in the morning. They sustain us, make us strive, learn, stretch, become. But don’t be deceived, they always come at a price. Nothing is truer said than ‘nothing in life is free’. Dreams are no exception. They exact a price from us – time, energy, love that could have gone elsewhere. Be warned lovers of dreamers – the price may be paid by you.

What price have you paid for other people’s dreams? What price have you asked others to pay for your dreams?

UBUNTU – a way of life

In a world driven by greed (I’m talking at you, Gina Reinhart), where competition is everywhere and Darwinism (survival of the fittest) is rife, I am both reassured and deeply unsettled by this blog post.

I spend half my week watching my fellow human beings push each other out of the way for something as simple as a seat on a train or the last discounted chocolate bar on the store shelf. We Westerners are grown up on a cultural diet of selfishness. We are taught entitlement from the moment we are able to talk. We know we must learn to be strong, to look after our own interests because (and how many times have you heard this in your life) ‘no one else will’.

The attitude of these African children is similar to the traditional attitudes of our Aboriginal people. Sharing and caring for community and culture are the core values that form the foundation of Aboriginal life.
As a culture, Australia has missed so many opportunities to become a unique culture. We’ve not only allowed our Westernism to dominate Aboriginal culture, tradition and knowledge, we’ve failed to recognise and integrate it’s strengths. We could have deveoped a completely unique Western culture in Australia. The opportunity was always there, may still be there, if we could stop competing with each other long enough to see it.

Comtemporary Australia has grown up alongside the oldest living race – and instead of listening, instead of discovering what we might learn from the wisdom that is right under our noses, we arrogantly keep trying to tell them our way of life is better.
How? No, really, I want to know.

There are some things that we do well. We build, we research, we do medicine and invent amazing things that help the unwell or the disable to have more free and comfortable lives. But we do so many of these things at a terrible cost – our humanity for each other.

What these African kids (kids, mind you) and our Aboriginal people teach us is that there is enough for all of us. We don’t need to be afraid of missing out. We don’t need more, we just need some, and so does everyone else. It isn’t about me. It’s about all of us, together. If all Australian’s could think like that, if we were less fearful and more generous, imagine what an amazing culture we could be.

A writer stripped bare

I am an unabashed fan of Nikki Gemmel’s writing. Her prose never fails to impress me with its fluid poetry and an inventive turn of phrase that is uniquely hers.

‘The golden thrum washes through you like liquid sun under your skin.’

That said, I don’t love every story she writes.

Nikki’s most well known claim to fame is ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’. It was first published anonymously (only for a week before she was outed as the author). Its salacious erotic content created quite a stir in the international publishing world. Was it a ‘serious’ book or just ‘literary porn’?  In the end it didn’t matter, the controversy was all she needed to promote massive book sales.

When I read it I found it to be both un-put-downable and annoyingly self indulgent. The whole book is written in second person (‘you sit down in a café – you look for him’) from the point of view on an unnamed main character. The sex is written interestingly, compellingly and sometimes veers into downright dirty. Nikki has consistently declared her aim was to write a really honest book about contemporary female sexuality – which I think she managed with Bride Stripped Bare.

Unfortunately I think she was preaching to the converted – women. We already know what we are universally missing in the sexual experience. Generally it’s blokes who remain (willingly) in the dark about what makes for great sex. And when it comes to books like these the vast majority of men skip through to the sexy bits and miss the educative bits inbetween.

With My Body has been touted as the ‘long awaited sequel’ to Bride Stripped Bare. It’s written in the same style – in second person, in the form of a diary of an unnamed character. It’s essentially a mid-life crisis story. Married, expat Aussie mum in her mid-forties bored senseless by relentless piles of laundry, a sexless marriage, and the social tensions of the English private school community, returns to her remote NSW home with her three boys for recovery, reconnection and respite. Here she revisits the blooming of her sexual self between the ages of 14 to 16 and in particular, an intensely adventurous sexual affair she had with some older man she discovers in a virtually abandoned mansion completely by accident.

This man introduces her to the art of love making – not just sex – but an exploration of desire and fantasy in a supposedly safe environment. The woman/young girl telling the story comes across as desperate for attention and this bloke provides it in spades.  She’s falling in love and he, well, we are never really sure where he’s coming from. There’s plenty of vivid description of what goes on as he pushes the sexual boundaries with her further and further, introducing silk blind folds, hand-cuffs and strangers (though we never know how many).

Having found myself compelled and annoyed by Bride, I was unprepared for how I would feel reading With My Body. I was irritated. I found myself wondering if this was a book Nikki was expected to write, had to write, rather than wanted to write. At times there was a sense of déjà vu and I wondered whether she felt compelled to make the sexy bits explicit because that’s what she’d done in Bride Stripped Bare.

I found the second person narrative a bit of a hurdle, especially in scenes where, as a reader, you’re looking for empathy with a very young character and can’t find it. There were moments when the prose glittered and I was drawn into the story, but more often than not I was unconvinced that this particular sixteen year old girl was really brave enough to allow a mature man to push her boundaries quite so far, given it was her first sexual experience.

Still, I might be wrong. I was pretty clueless at sixteen. I can’t say I have much of an idea what sixteen year olds would get up to if they were pushed. The character in question goes to all the places and more that most of us only travel to in fantasy land. Nonetheless the sex scenes, for the most part, were a fun ride 😉

In the end the character’s journey back is one of reclamation. The inevitable, unexplained dumping that leaves her breathlessly depressed for years is explained and she able to draw on the magic of ‘closure’ to return to England and reclaim her marriage and her rightful place in the private school social order. She finally has sex (good sex) with her willing husband again (who is surprisingly not at all bitter about going without for 2 years) and she comes to terms with who she has become in her forties.

It’s a tough call as a writer, having to follow up an absolute rip roaring block buster that caused a complete ruckus. I almost wonder if it’s better not to. Unless what was started in the first one isn’t quite finished – which can happen. Writers don’t just write about ideas. They write to ideas, toward them. It’s not uncommon to see themes evolving through subsequent works. I’m not sure that is what Nikki Gemmel was aiming for in With My Body or not. Only Nikki knows. And you’ll have to make up your own mind.

The best of Twitter on 50 Shades

I’m sorry to do this to you folks, but this stuff was too good not to pass on. In doing some research for some books I’m writing I came up with this neat little selection of funnies from those who DIDN’T love the famous trilogy (and were sadly in the vast minority – what is wrong with the world when we can all be so taken in by a little bit of commercial porn?). Accolades to the authors (many of whom were anonymous). Enjoy!

• I’ve never been tied up. I’ve been stood up. By a guy who was tied up.
• This chick comes more than an elevator
• I’d rather have a man with a whip then a glittery vampire any day!!
• I thought “50 Shades of Grey” was a downloadable add-on color palette for Photoshop.
• 50 Shades of Grey describes my teeth right now after 2 bottles of cab + the name of a book so terrible that I set it on fire after 20 pages.
• 50 Shades of Grey. Another horribly written, thoroughly unchallenging novel masquerading as a “bestseller.” 2nd ed. is a pop-up book.
• I’m not going to read 50 Shades Of Gray. The title sounds too much like my laundry.
• Ana came more in her first time than I ever have during sex. Wtf
• Is your breath ‘hitching’ as you type? Is your head cocked to one side?
• Ana considers signing a form which means Christian can anally fist her if he wants. Y’know, first date stuff. FFS
• Until very recently, I thought this book was about vampires. I shoulda read the back cover
• 50 Shades of Grey is the hardest colouring-in book I’ve ever attempted

50 Shades of Pink

No prizes for guessing what this post might be about. Not that the damned book needs any more lip service at 10 million copies (yep that’s TEN MILLION people, nearly half the population of Australia!). Rather than simply wonder what the buzz was about I bought a copy (which I paid far too much for and still resent) and read it.

Well… all I can say is I fully expect to see second hand book stores and edgy op-shops brimming with pre-‘loved’ copies of this thing in about 12 months time. These will be all the people, like moi`, who got sucked into buying the damned thing to see what the fuss was about, read it, and were left wondering what all the bloody fuss was about. Believe me these cast off’s will probably number in their millions. This is not literature written to stand the test of time. The story isn’t timeless – unless men are still trying to control women’s sexuality in 2254, which I hope won’t be the case. The fuss is nothing but a media storm.

How can I be so sure? Because I’ve read quite a lot of erotic literature, and a smattering of commercial erotic books, and some porn, and I’ve got a little secret for ya. E L James hasn’t done ANYTHING new. Zip, nadda, nothing. It’s all been said and done before. Many times. And better (anyone remember Story of O?). The only difference is different people are reading it. And I suspect the audience think they are reading something new, so the whisper got out to the media that a bunch of nearly middle aged career girls and married women were getting all hot and bothered over some sexy book and a whole lot of wind was created. 1 + 1 = 10 million copies.

There are a few frightening things about this phenomena. One of them is that it was the highest selling book in Australia for Mother’s day. I don’t know about you, but I think there’s something vaguely disturbing about giving a book about a BDSM relationship to your mother as a token of your affection for Mother’s Day. But hey, I could be wrong, so sue me.

A second is that, even though I know there are thousands of women out there reading it, I’ve not seen a single copy being read on the train. Which seems kind of odd given how much reading is done on trains and the sheer numbers of this book that are out there. What’s been said is true – women are ashamed to be seen reading it.

Not me. I boldly took my copy on the train every day. I scanned the crowd, looking in vain for a fellow 50 shades reader with whom I could give the ‘nod of understanding’ as we indulged ourselves in wild sexual fantasies on public transport. And found no one. I was alone. And all my blustering about how silly it was to be ashamed of reading this stuff in public went out the window. I persisted, but I made sure the cover was flat on my lap so no one could see it. And if I put the book down I made sure the back was facing up. I’m horrified to admit that even cocky little me gave in to social pressure and tried to hide the fact I was reading 50 shades.

BUT WHY?? It’s only sex, for God’s sake, it’s not like the rest of the peak hour passengers in my carriage hadn’t done it or thought about it or read about it at some stage of their lives. Sex isn’t uncommon and neither are fantasies about control, bondage and restraint. So why is this readership, so hungry for this trilogy, so ashamed of it? Why was I ashamed of it?

I think it’s got to do with us girls just not being particularly proud of our sexuality. Everybody else owns it. Female sexuality is a public and commercial commodity, so no wonder we are all a bit shy about it. We’ve been told a million times that nice girls don’t like to have too much sex (and men don’t marry sluts) and what a load of crap that is, but culturally it seems we’ve bought the BS wholesale – no return.

A very good friend of mine LOVES this trilogy. She regularly visits the fan site (of course there’s a fan site, silly) and informed me that a couple of larks have registered Twitter accounts in the names of @AnaRSteele and @ChristianTGrey (complete with dashing photos of handsome models). She told me some interesting things. Like a lot of women, since having kids her libido had gone AWOL. Reading this book reawakened her natural longing for good & interesting sex. Which is pretty nice for her, I think. She was also grateful for the e-format, so she didn’t need to feel ‘outed’ when reading in public. And when I mentioned I’d heard the book wasn’t well written, she said, ‘Well Kate, I wouldn’t know’.

So there it is. Married women, middle aged women, career women – conservative women who would normally read straight romance – have discovered the joys of erotic literature compliments of E L James and her 50 shades trilogy. If nothing else, you’ve got to give it that. If it means women can reclaim/rediscover/own a greater portion of their sexual selves as a result, then I’m not one to argue. I just hope no damage is done along the way. There are plenty of men out there who don’t have the faintest idea of the difference between a ‘sensual’ smack and a ‘punishment’ smack (Christian Grey’s words, I assure you) and would relish the opportunity to punish a woman while she’s aroused. The line between domination with permission and pure domination is faint, if it exists at all.

The next step is twofold. Get some good quality erotic stuff onto the commercial market because these women deserve a well-written story, then get this readership to be proud enough to read the stuff in public. And I’m leading the charge. No more pink cheeks for me! 🙂

Related articles

• Top (Funniest) Tweets on ’50 Shades of Grey’ (sharilopatin.com)
• Book Review #33: Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James (hellokatieo.wordpress.com)

The face of an emerging writer

A family free day awaits and I am agonising over whether to work on my e-book project or go to day 2 of the Emerging Writers Festival Town Hall Program. So, I’m doing what all good writers do, procrastinating in the form of a quickie blog post (the most satisfying of all forms of procrastination.)

The thing I love most about the EWF,  besides the comfortable lack of slick polish in its presentations, is the diverse crowd it attracts. Having attended many writing related events in the past 5 years, this is the one that never fails to amuse and inspire.

Many of it’s devoted followers could be pegged as ‘literary types’. There’s no shortage of horm rimmed spectacles or boho op-shop attire. But there’s plenty of everything else as well. Some attendees (including myself) have wrinkles and don’t give a ducks waddle what they wear. Some are very young, high school and university age, and this is the great advantage of this festival because they bring vibrancy and bouyancy and a hopeful enthusiasm to the ambience of this event.

The hallowed halls of our beloved Town Hall are filled to brimming with presenters who contradict each other, challenge accepted views of the publishing industry, are honest and sardonic and most of all, generous with their hard earned wisdom. These people are the warriors of the writing movement. These are the the true word-smiths (word whores in their words), squirrelling away day after day, on whatever project or piece they can pitch to a willing editor. They are Twitter and blogosphere savvy and if they’re not, they’re up-front about it. Their lack of mainstream commercial success (of the Bryce Courtney variety) makes them the carriers of wordly wisdom and the bearers of rejection wounds. Listen close, EWFers, your bretheren are speaking.

And in that I have convinced myself. My deadline is two months away and I don’t want to waste this opportunity to immerse myself in the bliss of connecting with kin.

EWF2012 here I come! xx

To love a woman differently

I came across this on another blogpost and was so moved by it I had to repost. This is one for the blokes out there – a little piece of insight you might find of value should you choose to attend to it.

From Terry Tempest Williams

“If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently. What a woman never forgets is when she allows a man to make love to her, she enters a pact with angels that should a child be conceived in that moment, she holds the life of another. A man can come and go, he pulls out and walks away. But a woman stays and remains tender. She wants to be held. She wants to talk. She wants to revisit that motion made inside her because in the lovemaking, a woman is remade – because until she bleeds, she knows that man is the father of her child, whether she ever tells him or not. Because until she bleeds, her body has been rearranged through his ecstasy and hers, which will become theirs. Because until she bleeds, repeat it again…she will check her womb everyday for the stirrings of life. Because until she bleeds she wonders if her life will be one or two or three. Repeat and repeat because until she bleeds, she imagines every possibilty from pleasure to pain to birth to death and how she will do what she needs to do, and until she bleeds, she will worry endlessly, until she bleeds. If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently.”

Mother of all debates

An early photograph of an Ifugao mother and her son. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have a question. Why is there so much crap published in Western world about bloody motherhood? It seems politicians, media commentators, feminists, maternal lobby groups and people in general feel compelled to continually debate the role of women as mothers in the home vs women as mothers in the workplace – with plenty of hand wringing about what is the right balance.

Yes, getting the balance right is difficult. There is no one size fits all answer. People make choices on staying at home or working or both depending on their personal circumstances and preferences. Working might be a matter of have to. Same with staying home. The truth is how women chose to live their lives as mothers and/or employees is really nobody’s damned business but their own! And yet, the cycle of public debate about what women choose to ‘do with their lives’ after children continues unabated.

I conducted a very simple survey to find out just how overused the term ‘motherhood’ is. Put ‘Motherhood’ into Mrs Google and she yields a whopping 33,500,000 hits. How many do you reckon you get when you do the same for ‘Fatherhood’? Go on, have a guess. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a LOT less. 24 million hits less, to be exact.

This obsession with motherhood is partly driven by women’s ongoing battle to assert their inherent human value as mothers and their right to work if they choose. But what about the significantly lower numbers for fatherhood? Do they mean men are less concerned about their role as a father, or do they indicate that we as a society think fatherhood is less important than motherhood?

Some of the answer to these questions lie in the first 10 hits in the fatherhood search, which yields links to foundations, research and support networks for fathers – probably because fatherhood is serious business not to be argued about or taken lightly. Motherhood, on the other hand, yields links to maternity online shopping, a movie, a musical, a book, and a tribute site so you can construct your very own sentimental tribute to your mother. Support groups are there too, but further down the list. It seems that ‘Motherhood’ is an open slather subject for public and commercial interest. Sadly, ‘Motherhood’ has become a term loaded with sales pitches, sentimentality, expectation, judgement, criticism and, worst of all, ill-informed and (dare I say it) irrelevant public comment.

In the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of bullshit (sorry about the French but there really is no other word for it) written in the media about ‘mummy wars’. Apparently women are pitting themselves against each other in a desperate attempt to justify the choices they’ve made about staying at home (SAHM) or working once they have children. Women are propagating their own myths about the value of a woman who stays at home (assumed to be low) compared to one who chooses to work (cue guilt ridden sacrifice for the betterment of society). And they are at each other’s throats in an effort to prove their personal choice is the best one.

Really? Come on ladies, we are so much better than that!

If fatherhood copped the same kind of public debate, what do you reckon it would sound like? I’ll hazard a guess for you. It would be full of blokes blowing their own trumpets, telling the world how great they are at managing the demands of their inflexible bosses while squeezing in quality time with their kids and still managing to run a household like clockwork – all at the same time, clever dicks that they are! The only complaint would be they don’t get paid enough for home duties – because there would have to be some kind of remuneration for all that WORK at home wouldn’t there? I guarantee there wouldn’t be a bloody hint of guilt or judgement. There’d just be a lot of self-congratulatory back slapping and nominations for Father of the Year.

Today I spoke with a friend who has three kids, the youngest about to turn 2, and she is being pressured by her workplace (and her husband) to return to work. This is in spite of the fact that what she will earn in 2 days of admin work will be swallowed up by train fares and childcare fees. This is also in spite of the fact that she has only 2 days in the week when her children don’t have after school commitments, and only one of those days suits her employer.  And because her husband is contracted to a fairly high-powered job, she is the one expected to organise kids, drop them off to childcare and before school care, get herself to work (an hour away) on time, then pick everyone up again at the end of the day and go home to organise dinner. And she only gets paid, and then not very much, for the stuff she does while she’s sitting at a desk. (I have to note here that our Mr. Abbot thinks women should be supported to do this because we should be considered ‘economic assets’ as well as ‘social asset’s’. Thanks for your reductionist views, Sir, I feel so much more empowered and valued now.)

The truth is we women are doing the best we can with what we’ve got. We work because we choose to or because we have to. For many of us our work choices are limited not only by our family circumstances but by the blinkered way employers think. Part time job opportunities that take our skills seriously and pay us well for our time are as rare as a bloke who cleans the shower recess. Believe me, I’ve been looking for an alternative part time job that will use my impressive list of skills for over 12 months without luck and I’m not alone. Employers just don’t want to know about part time workers, no matter how skilled they are and how much they have to offer. They are simply not interested in using a little flexibility to employ ‘mothers’, given their priorities lay elsewhere (with their kids) and obviously not with their job.

Frankly I’m sick to death of having my role as mother, the choices I make as a woman responsible for my life and family, constantly open to public comment. I do what I do because it’s best for me and my family – not because some journalist, academic, feminist, public policy maker or anyone else tells me it’s what I should do. None of my peers judge me for working. And I applaud those who opt to stay at home (which I personally believe is the harder option). ‘Mummy wars’ are an invention of patriarchal and patronising thinking, women’s insecurity about themselves and attention grabbing media beat up. Lay off, I say, and give some support to enable mums to do what they do best – caring for their families.

Related articles

• Modern motherhood: readers respond (guardian.co.uk)
• Will There Ever Be a Truce in the Mommy Wars? (psychologytoday.com)
• Everything Elisabeth Badinter (bluemilk.wordpress.com)

Another Australia

“I want our people to have books, their own books, in their own communties, and written by our own people. I want the truth to be told, our truths, so, first and foremost, I hold my pen for the suffering in our communties. Let it not be mistaken: suffering is widespread in our communities.”  – Alexis Wright

There is a reason (other than school holidays) for my long absence of recent weeks. I’ve been reading a modern epic. I’ve been lugging it around on the train, to bed, to work, to cafe’s, pretty much anywhere I could find a few moments to get through a few more pages (a chapter would be too ambitious).

Carpentaria is the fourth novel I’ve read for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 (if you want to join it’s not too late!). I’ve been wanting to read it for years – because it’s a Miles Franklin winner (2007), because it’s by an Aboriginal author(many of whom deserve to be more widely read), and because it was an underdog.

The manuscript was rejected by every major Australian publisher before being picked up by small publisher Giramondo. At the time of publication it got caught up in the controversial Angus & Robertson decision to play hardball with small press publishers by refusing to stock their books unless the publishers paid a fee. The big book giant was aiming to clear shelf space by getting rid of those pesky lesser known Aussie authors with small print runs to make way for the block buster international authors with high sales volumes. It caused one hell of a ruckus and had the effect of significantly lifting Carpentaria‘s sales figures.

Carpentaria is everything its shout lines promise it to be – part epic, part scripture and brimming with vivid characters that dominate its equally vivid landscape. It is an Australian literary triumph, the likes of which I’ve not read for a very long time.

However, at 518 glittering pages it is a big – no enormous – reading commitment to undertake, especially in these days where the quick fix read reigns supreme. It took me exactly 6 weeks (two library borrows) to finish it, but finish it I did and because I wanted to not because I felt I had to (although there was an element ‘I won’t let this thing beat me’ to it).

Alexis Wright is incapable of writing a boring sentence.

It was refreshing, and eye-opening, to read a story that has a contemporary Aboriginal world view at its heart. There are some challenges here for those who are unfamiliar with some of the core aspects of Aboriginal culture. The prose careens between the real and the unreal, integrating the ancient lore of a dreamtime landscape with modern Australian cultural life, and the divide between black and white that persists, particularly in the northern parts of this land.

Wright’s characters are complex and intensely imagined, like their names – Normal Phantom (seaman and fish embalmer), Angel Day (femme fatale and Queen of the rubbish dump), Bruiser (the bully-boy Mayor), Truthful (the failed policeman), Mozzie Fishman (the cultural Law Man).

‘This was the only man they knew who lived in the world of marine splendour, riding the troughs on God Almighty seas, surviving cyclones one after another, following a fish to where other fishing men had perished just for the sake of it, once in a while, returning to port to check on the family, before leaving the very next dawn. What a man! An asset to the town, an asset to his race, mind you.’ (re: Norm Phantom)

Entire communities become single characters in this novel, acting as one with various cultural voices combining to create a picture of a mob acting in its own best interests. Even the landscape, teeming with stories and spirits, is a character in this novel. Powerful beings from the Dreamtime move within and over the land, ghostly ancestors traverse the space between dreams and reality and interfere with the daily lives of human beings. There are pages devoted to the whims and rages of spirits of the sea and land and the violence of their jealousies, furies and kindnesses.

The story Carpentaria tells is enormous too. The prose is riddled with beauty and insights as Norm battles with his belligerent wife, Angel Day, and his disowned activist son, Will Phantom. The characters personal battles are fought within the larger landscape of the songlines of the land and sea and the clandestine activities of a vampire-like, morally bankrupt mining company. Sound familiar? Because it is. This is a tale that is fast becoming part of the Australian landscape – the mining company dominating political and social debate, drowning out the voice of the citizens of this country no matter what their colour.

“You know who we all hear about all the time now? International mining company. Look how we got to suit international mining people. Rich people.”

Wright has plenty of fun at the expense of the blundering, supercilious white inhabitants of the town of Desperance and her tongue in cheek moments are evenly and appropriately placed. She shows clearly how silly Australian mainstream culture can be, how ridiculous some of our social rules are and how smug are the generations of Australians who have grown up feeling entitled to their sanitised, abridged version of Australian history.

‘Remember! Who bloody knows what kind of traditions people have, who say they came from nowhere and don’t believe in their own God anymore.’

‘What could they do? It looked like defeat was imminent. And, that same old defeated look, two centuries full of it, began creeping back onto their faces.’

The rhythm of the prose required me to read differently. Perhaps it was the earthy vernacular, or the unfamiliar spirit beings and landscape, or just the lengthy chapters. There were two parts of the story I struggled with, both set in a cyclone, but that might have had more to do with not having the time to sit and consume it as a single chunk. Nonetheless, because the prose was such a pleasure and the story a challenge to read I never contemplated putting the book down.

If you can, make the time to ingest the world of Carpentaria. It won’t cease to surprise with its vast narrative and beautiful prose, and it will introduce you to a new way of looking at Australia and its people.