One common experience was being told that you are both ‘not black enough’ to be Aboriginal and ‘too black’ to be included in the mainstream. There are many common threads in these stories: distinct as each one is, each writer has a story to tell about the pain of being singled out by racism and the relentless forces of colonialism in settler Australian culture, and it is infuriating and heartbreaking reading about these things endured by small children. It comprises the stories of people who have grown up speaking their people’s language, people who have lived on country their whole lives, people who belong to the Stolen Generations, and people whose families have moved between cities for generations. This brilliant collection of short memoir from Indigenous writers highlights an enormous diversity in the life stories of Aboriginal people in Australia, from those who grew up in middle-class suburbia to those in self-determined communities, to missions and reserves, to small communities in remote areas.
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