Sally Morgan (1)Recensioni

Representation: First Australian characters
Trigger warnings: Displacement, death of a child and friend from an illness, blood, grief and loss depiction, physical assault and injury, child abuse, hospitalisation, racism, bullying
Score: Seven points out of ten.
Note that the novel is authentic since the author's attributes matches the characters'. This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Well. I remember searching this up and then seeing it in one of the two libraries I go to and after seeing positive ratings and reviews I finally picked it up and read it. When I finished it, the only way I could describe my experience reading this story was that I was gutted. It was an informative but heartbreaking read from start to finish complemented by the uncommon writing style. Now then. It starts with the main character who initially doesn't have a first or last name (it's not clear how old she is either) living her life somewhere in Australia until someone displaced her and took her somewhere else in an event now called the Stolen Generations. Did I mention this novel is all written in poetry but the execution is better than some other poetry novels I've read, and it deals with the topic better than another story I saw previously called Our Race for Reconciliation by Anita Heiss? The unnamed girl then goes to a school whose name I forgot with a teacher that called her Anne (hey that name sounds familiar) where she stays for the rest of the narrative.

Not long after Anne as I'll call her from now on (that name will change soon enough) is introduced to some new characters (some of them I liked, like Janey. Some I did not.) I'm not sure why when the teacher tried to teach Anne English she didn't like it only because she said it tried to erase her culture or something along those lines (hasn't she heard of bilingualism? She could use that.) I had a hunch that something heartrending would happen. The last few pages were the saddest as the government abused Anne, Janey was hospitalised for an illness (the book said it was influenza) and later died while Anne, now called Annie hopes that she would be free one day ending the book on a devastating note. It's an imperative read, sure. But it's heavy. I don't know why the library I got this book from placed it in nonfiction. Not realistic. Not historical. Nonfiction.

Told in verse, this was the story of a young Aboriginal girl who was taken from her family and put into an institution for Indigenous children where they were taught English, given Anglo-Saxon names and forced to change their culture.

"Sister Heart" was an emotional read and my heart wept for Annie and the other children in the institution, especially Janey and Tim. I can’t understand how anyone could think it is a good idea to forcibly take children from their families. It is totally cruel and heartless!

The loneliness, fear and anguish Annie felt was heartbreaking and I was disgusted at how she was treated by the adults who were 'educating' her. Even though this was a quick read "Sister Heart" is an important book as it highlights a shameful time in Australia’s history and should be read by both children and adults alike. Highly recommended.

First edition

This book could be used for earlier readers, it is a picture book with little words. It is about the adventures of the little bird and it follows along the birds day as it explores and enjoys the world around it. In a class this could be used as a light hearted read, the story is relaxing so it could be used as a way to settle down the class.

This book goes over what a little bird does from morning to night, you could use this in the classroom not only for its reading comprehension but also you could implement a science lesson in it to explain birds' life cycles or to go over different types of birds in their habitat, the book has a lot of descriptive words in the poetry to expand their vocabulary and get a feel of another kind of writing, I believe that this would be good for ages 2nd-3rd grade.

The plot of Little Bird's day is no surprise-we follow Little Bird from morning to night and see the landscape and other animals. The setting is Australia and the book projects the Aboriginal heritage in its colors and its treatment of all nature as living and vital. I love the white outlining in all the illustrations. I couldn't place why I felt the illustrations made me think of natives and then I read the description of them at the end--"the color palette is based on natural pigments...and the animals are embellished with cross-hatching, a traditional raark design". My favorite illustration was Little Bird flying among the stars. In the text, the author capitalizes everything natural--Sun, Wind, Cloud, Rain, etc. This personifies these things that other cultures do not see as alive. The verb choice fit the native atmoshpere--journey, gliding, soar, nestle. It's a beautiful and well-written picture book.

What a charming, upsetting and perception challenging book. An excellent read. Provides some deep insights into how this country (Australia) treated Indigenous Australians from the perspective of an Indigenous family. The book was published in the mid 80's, however is still relevant today. - Perhaps even more so.

Indigenous, Aboriginal

This was a really fun and cute read.

Sally Morgan is an Aboriginal woman from Perth and while these aren't her traditional family stories they are stories she's created that were inspired by her upbringing. I love the illustrations in this book, they really bring the stories to life and are vivid and colourful.

My favourite story was The Roly Poly Wombat, he was just so adorable my heart couldn't take it.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would because I was really conscious of reading it and how I would use it in a classroom but I think Morgan's a valuable author. I will definitely be reading more of her work, adult's, children's or otherwise.

I read what turned out to be a cheesy romance novel recently, just because the story was set in the outback, but the author recommended this book in her acknowledgements so I bought a copy. What a difference! Sally Morgan's family history/memoir is witty, endearing, honest and painful in places, recounting her discovery and acceptance of her Aboriginal heritage. She grew up in Perth in the 1980s, with her mother Gladys, four siblings and her nan, Daisy, and once asked her mother, in all innocence, which country they originally came from. Her mother and grandmother had learned to be ashamed, even fearful, of admitting that they were Aboriginal Australians and never told Sally and her brothers and sisters about where their family came from. After reading the personal memories of Gladys, Daisy and Daisy's brother Arthur, told through Sally, that bitter secret seems almost understandable.

The first part of the book is a standard memoir, with the thread of identity running through Sally's vault of hilarious childhood anecdotes. Young Sally reminded me of Scout in Mockingbird, a wilful and individual child whose imagination keeps getting her into trouble. Her father, who was a POW during the Second World War and suffered from (undiagnosed) PTSD when he returned home, took his life when his children were still young, but despite poverty and prejudice, the family stuck together and looked out for each other. 'You lot stick like glue,' a classmate tells Sally, and I love that about them. Nan is a fantastic character, leaving onions all over the house and chatting up Jehovah's witnesses to use their leaflets as toilet paper, but beneath all the humour, there is a sadness and a frustration too. When Sally realises that her family are Aboriginal, she wants to learn more, but both Gladys and Daisy have distanced themselves from the past.

I suppose, in hundreds of years time, there won't be any black Aboriginals left. Our colour dies out; as we mix with other races, we'll lose some of the physical characteristics that distinguish us now. i like to think that, no matter what we become, our spiritual tie with the land and the other unique qualities we possess, will somehow weave their way through to future generations of Australians. I mean, this is our land after all, surely we've got something to offer.'

Daisy, born in 1900, and Gladys, born in 1931, were both used and abused by white men, in particular, fathered by employers but then sent away from the land like dirty secrets. Children fathered by white men who 'passed' for white were even taken from their Aboriginal mothers and adopted out (the 'Stolen Generations'). I can't even begin to take in how they were treated. Everybody knows about the history of slavery in America, but the same disgusting practices and attitudes were still happening in twentieth century Australia, thanks to men like A O Neville.

Thank you to Sally Morgan, her mother Gladys and grandmother Daisy, for sharing their stories. Definitely recommended.

I read this as a challenge to fulfill the category related to aboriginal people. Others had recommended this book. I was hopeful since it was a culture I knew very little about.

The book focuses on one family as they retrace their history. A girl begins talking about her seemingly normal life until she reaches her teens. She confronts her aboriginal background and begs her mother & grandmother for details.

Getting to the details was rather delayed. Conversations were included that were not significant. The editing could have been much better. The book took too long in reaching its point & I would not recommend it.

This has been one of my favorite books as I "read my way around the world," and this is one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. The book gave a good feel for Australian culture in general. It touched on growing up, family secrets, Australian history, Aboriginal culture, race issues, even war and mental health. It was a page-turner for me. I found myself picking up the book during breakfast, work breaks, even staying up late at night to read the next couple of chapters. The writing slogged a bit during the stories of her grandmother and her great uncle, but nothing you can't get through, and I learned a lot. This was a very enjoyable book, and I can easily see how it claims the descriptor as "An Australian Classic." I'll be donating my paperback to the public library and buying a hardcover copy to read again in the future.

One of the best collections of Australian aboriginal stories. The author is an artist who embraces her aboriginal heritage in the gorgeous art accompanying the stories. Wonderful.

Read in one afternoon, evening, and night. Just mesmerizing. I still think people should not drink if they're having trouble, and not have more kids if they can't take care of the ones they have, but I feel a bit more sympathy for what it must be like to be in desperate straits or whatever.

I highly recommend this to everyone who cares about racism, or family, or history, or slavery, not just in Australia but anywhere - universal themes that apply to American Indians and African-Americans for sure, probably also Canadian First Peoples, Tibetans, East Indians, etc.

Loved this. Thought that the last quarter of the book was not as good as the last, the retelling of the elders stories was powerful but dragged and seemed to be somewhat of a non-sequiter.

This is a facinating story about how we transition from being members of traditional society into the mainstream. It is a generational account of this movement.

Sally persists in finding the truth about her heritage. Her mother and grandmother were raised in a strongly prejudiced society that would take mixed blood babies away from their aborigine mothers and so kept secrets.
If this was a novel, I would not have rated it 4 star, because the tale drags in parts, e.g. when no progress is made, but the importance of speaking the truth makes this a worthwhile memoir.

3.5 Stars--
I honestly have to say that I probably never would have picked up this book if it wasn't sent to me by a friend. Mostly because I never knew it existed, but that's beside the point, hehe. I'm not really a memoir reader, but I am trying to read more non-fiction this year, so this blended perfectly with this goal.

My Place tells the story of how Sally Morgan discovered who she is. In a way, it was a very touching story, and I'm glad that I read it. I've never really given much thought to my own family history when it comes to race, but then race has never been something that I think about. I register different skin tones, yes, but I can't say that I label or judge people because of them. It's just not how I think. Which is why racism makes me so angry. I just don't understand the way that certain people feel that they are better than others because of the color of their skin.

Sally's story is a quest to find out about her racial origins. To make a long story short, she discovers that she is Aboriginal, and then sets about learning the stories of her family members to find out why this is such a shameful secret that must be hidden at all costs - even to the point of blatantly lying.

To be perfectly honest, I know next to nothing about Australian history, and still less about Aboriginal Australian history. This book has definitely piqued my interest, so I think that I'll be reading other books about this so that I can get a fuller picture. Morgan describes a sort of bonded-slavery as being the main interaction between "whitefellas" and "blackfellas" (Aboriginals). White people essentially forced Aboriginal people into servitude, took away their children if they were of mixed-blood ("half-caste") and looked white, and generally made their lives exceptionally difficult according to how dark their skin is. I say that this is a sort of bonded-slavery because even though it is technically slavery, with laws prohibiting Aboriginals travelling without a permit, etc, it's more like indentured servitude, as there were wages involved - even though they weren't paid most of the time. Not to mention that Aboriginals could be let go and hired into service elsewhere. They were owned, in a way, but more in terms of lack of options than actual slave ownership.

Not that this makes it any better. Slavery and racism and bigotry and ignorance are slavery and racism and bigotry and ignorance. The forms that they take matter not one bit. Aboriginal people were taken from their homes, and forced to work for nothing or next to nothing for white people who held everything over their heads at unattainable heights. It was an accomplishment just to survive. And this, still going on in the early parts of the 20th century. It's shameful.

It's also shameful that people should be made to feel so ashamed of their heritage and history that they would deny it. It's understandable that people would want to deny what they are to avoid prejudice and hatred, but it's incredibly sad that the very things that define us are the things that we wish to be rid of in order to be accepted.

I feel like it is an important book, and that it brings awareness to something that people outside of Australia are probably completely oblivious to, and people inside Australia would likely wish to forget. Just as people in the US would like to forget that we were slave-owners once too. I don't understand this seemingly universal drive for a group of people to wish to have dominance over other groups of people. I refuse to believe that this is an ingrained trait.

Anyway, I wish that I could actually give this book a higher rating. I do feel like it is important, but I wish that it was a little more accessible. It feels like it was written with native Australians in mind - people who would already know what a goanna is, and what a didgeridoo is, etc. Things are mentioned but not explained, so there's a lot that has to be looked up in order to get the full story. It feels like it was written for people who already have an academic knowledge of Australia's Aboriginal history, but now just need a few more details to really understand. In a way, this book gives them that, but not with the depth that it could have.

It is written in very simple and straightforward language, which, to me, depersonalizes the story a bit too much. Granted, this should be a story in which you could fit yourself in there and think "This could have happened to anyone... this could have happened to ME and MY family," but really it is a personal story about Sally's family, and the way it was written was too detached to really allow the reader in. The story told us what happened ("And then I was beaten with a whip.") but in a very clinical fashion which makes it hard to feel for someone who doesn't seem to be upset themselves. After telling her mother's story, Sally mentions that she felt close to her mother, but that was all there was. Just that mention. Sally mentions later that there are "depths to {the story} that she knows that she will never plumb." Which is true, but telling us that there are depths isn't the same as communicating them. I would have liked to feel like I was being told the story directly, not a fact-based reproduction of it. I know that this story is a memoir, and that the information in it relies on the information that the contributors are willing or able to share. But it just seems to me that there was a lack of personalization that would have really brought the story together and made it something amazing.

Also there were quite a few typos and errors in the text, which was distracting. One in particular really threw me for a loop - Sally's mother is relaying the story of her father's death, and how she was concerned about his afterlife whereabouts, so she asked "Gold" to show her where he was. I racked my brains for about a minute, trying to think of who Gold was, when it dawned on me that it was supposed to be "God".

And that brings me to my next point, which is that there is a "spiritual realism" aspect to parts of the book. Several of the family members are stated to have seen visions, both of the future and of God and angels, and to have seen signs and omens and the like. I feel like this part of the story wasn't very believable. It was relayed as fact, as was everything else, but I'm a natural skeptic, so I found it hard to believe in visions of angels and the like. I'm not saying that they didn't happen - I don't know what they saw or didn't see - I just would have liked for there to have been a little explanation as to the spiritual nature of Aboriginal people. Parts struck me as being almost voodooish in nature (and this is NOT meant in the "EVIL BLACK MAGIC" way, but as the spiritual religious way), but also mixed in with Christianity in a way that just... I don't know. It didn't feel right for some reason. Like it was tacked on to show how they just knew things would work out, but the history for these feelings wasn't prsented to make it believeable to me. Again, I'm not saying that it didn't happen, because I can't know that. People's faith and spiritualism takes all different shapes and forms, and that's perfectly fine by me. I just wish that there was a basis - a tradition - that explained that Aboriginal people are more in tune with this part of life than other people. This is barely hinted at, but not in the way that I'd like to be able to appreciate these sections.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. It was a quick read, and has started an interest in Australian history that I wouldn't have had before. I will definitely look into more books in the future to see if I can get a fuller understanding of the way life was there, and how it is now. I appreciate having read this book, at having my horizons widened.

Thanks for sharing this book with me, Jon! :)

Another book I’m glad I picked up thanks to a fellow Viner. This is a non-fiction account of the life of Aboriginal professor, artist and author Sally Morgan. The book goes through her memories of childhood dealing with her sometimes abusive father, the struggles of her mother and grandmother trying to provide for Sally and her siblings, and her discovery of her Aboriginal culture.

Prior to this book I had no idea of the Aboriginal culture or Austrialia’s history for that matter. This was a good introduction into the topic. Morgan’s book not only touches on Morgan’s own personal story and struggle, but also that of her grandmother and her great uncle helping to give a well rounded view of the cultural and generational change towards national acceptance.

Morgan has an honest way of writing, which makes it almost seem like she is just chatting with you and telling you her story of discovery. There were moments that I was cracking up at her smartassness and other moments that were genuinely touching. By the end of the book I was sobbing uncontrollably because Morgan’s grandmother reminded me of my own grandmother who passed away. It made me miss her and wonder what stories I may have missed from her.

a good read

was lead here by her "My Place " which was 5 star

so was let down a little on this book

Sally Morgan grew up in Perth, Australia with her mother, grandmother and her alcoholic father, who clearly was suffering severe PTSD, and was frequently hospitalized. Although her early life was difficult and chaotic, it was also at times magical, and I thoroughly enjoyed the portion of the book describing her early childhood. The book failed to engage me when it began to focus on the author's quest for her racial and ethnic roots.

Her grandmother was one of the "lost generation" of aboriginal children--those children of mixed race who were removed from their homes and mothers to be raised by the government or by missionaries. During [[Morgan's]] childhood, her grandmother's background was a deep, dark secret. She knew her grandmother looked "different" and that she herself was darker than some of her classmates, but she was told that this was because they were from India. I find it incredible that at that time (the 1960's), in that place (Western Australia), [[Morgan]], an extremely intelligent teenager, would accept this fiction. When, at university age, she discovered the truth, she began to search for her roots and to try to reconnect with her grandmother's aboriginal relatives. She also wanted to find out the identity of her grandmother's father, and her mother's father.

In this part of the memoir, [[Morgan]]'s prose loses its sparkle and becomes dull. It also feels unfocused, as here she is working on her degree, then here she is taking a trip to the outback, then marrying and babies and research all together in very little order. It wasn't necessarily confusing--it just felt scattered, and whatever analysis there was was thin. And while the book includes a little factual/historical information, it is not organized or put in context, so the book is not valuable as a history. I wouldn't call this a "bad" book, but I hope that there somewhere exists a better book on this subject.

2 stars

(By the way, [[Morgan]] is now a well-respected aboriginal artist. I heard of her through her artwork, rather than because of this book, which evidently is required reading in some Australian schools).

Sally Morgan has written a poignant memoir about her discovery and exploration of her family’s aboriginal Australian roots.

Morgan describes her childhood in a working-class family in Perth, the largest city on the southwest coast of Australia. Her father had fought and been captured by the Germans in World War II and was fighting a losing battle with what we would now probably call post traumatic stress disorder, made worse by his drinking. Morgan was still in grade school when he died. Her mother and Nan, the grandmother who lived with them, decided to keep the children from knowing that they were aborigines. They had justified fears they would be declared unfit and the children would be taken away. Because of white men in their lineage, only the grandmother was dark enough to be easily identified as a “blackfellow.”

Read more on my blog: me, you and books
http://mdbrady.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/my-place-by-sally-morgan/

I think this book had the potential to be really great...but it is just terrible writing. It should have been interesting; there is a very limited amount of writing about or by Aborigines. I wanted to know how Sally finally found out about and embraced her Aboriginal heritage, and the parts where she repeats the tales of her mother, uncle, and grandmother are much better. However, she just takes way to long to tell her story and there are plenty of anecdotes that are just too long and off-topic. I read this for a class on Postcolonialism. It worked for our section on Australian literature, but it was just terribly written. What happened to children with even a portion of Aboriginal blood was terrible, and I'm glad the Australian government is finally offering them some kind of assistance. Morgan did well with the older generation's story, and it immensely helped in sharing the history of the Aborigines.

A very good book. Interesting to see the personal journey the author went on to find her identity and heritage. Her mother and grandmother were great characters who had such a tough life. Good stuff.