I’m not very good at playing the clap sticks, either, and I loathe sleeping outdoors. This is my story: it is a story about not being from the desert, not learning to speak my traditional language until I was fifty years old, and not wearing ochre. Her father was an immigrant from Austria and her mother was Aboriginal and she cheekily describes herself as a “concrete Koori with Westfield Dreaming” because she lives in the city and loves shopping!
Rejecting the stereotypesĪ proud Wiradyuri woman from central NSW, Heiss was raised in suburban Sydney and educated at her local Catholic school. Just last month, she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to tertiary Indigenous Studies & the Arts.
It’s an account of a range of issues affecting Aboriginal Australians as told through Heiss’ own intimate and personal lens as a successful author, a passionate advocate for Aboriginal literacy and a high-achieving public intellectual. It’s billed as a memoir but it’s much more than that. I haven’t read the original (which has been eloquently reviewed by Lisa at ANZLitLovers), so I’m not sure how much it diverts from the first, but I found it an entertaining and educational read and it made me rethink and reassess my own views on what it means to be an Aboriginal in this country. Non-fiction – memoir Vintage Books Australia 384 pages 2022.ĭr Anita Heiss’ Am I Black Enough for You? should be required reading for every Australian.įirst published in 2012, it has been updated and subtitled “10 Years On”.
0 kommentar(er)
