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My year in books 2019, Part 2: More feminist sci-fi, anthologies and the underwhelming notable names in fiction

It would seem that both the highlights and lowlights of my 2019 Year in Books involved well-known authors. From my surprising introduction to Angela Carter to my hugely disappointing (but annoyingly un-put-down-able) foray into Murakami, books with varying complexity and depth give no indication of whether they will be good or not. Mysteries ranged from the dissatisfying unsolved to the resolved too obviously or neatly. Or the novel is a rollercoaster of zaniness and ideas, as in The passion of new Eve and George Saunders’ short story collection.

The caveat is, as always, that there is no accounting for taste. I was supremely discomfited at moments in Carter’s work, but the same in Saunders’. This was often because unlikeable characters have unlikeable thoughts. The truth is, this is probably an indication of good writing! So perhaps I need to spare Julian Barnes my criticism?

Feminist

The passion of new Eve, Angela Carter

Angela Carter has been on my to-read list for a while, yet I am unsure whether this particular book is a bizarre or representative introduction to her work. Set in a dystopia of racial and gendered distrust, Evelyn’s cocksure self is to become somewhat less so – this is not a spoiler as such – as he becomes the ‘new Eve’. This frenetic adventure questions so many things including sex, sexuality, gender, love, war, militant protest and religion. I imagine this book has been a minefield of criticism. Words that stand out to me in Goodreads reviews are: ‘brutal’, ‘cruel’, ‘hallucinatory’, ‘bizarre’, ‘grotesque’, ‘disturbing’, ‘abrasive’. Not for the faint hearted.

Woman on the edge of time, Marge Piercy

I was sold on this cover at the library, described as a ‘feminist sci-fi classic’ and with a blurb-recommendation by Margaret Atwood.

Of a similar vintage to Carter’s novel, Piercy’s addresses some similar subject matter such as sex, sexuality, gender, love, war and, importantly, bodily autonomy. Where The passion of new Eve features an unwilling sex change, Woman on the edge of time reveals a stark reality of life for a Latino-American woman both in state housing and the mental health system. Piercy cleverly draws out the connection between Connie and Luciente by filling in backstory with multiple other characters until the reader suddenly realises Luciente is not a real person in Connie’s past but is neither a figment. Interchanging between Connie’s reality in a mental hospital and her visits to Luciente in the future, this book draws out the tension of the issues in the story while painting a picture of a utopian future. This was particularly curious to read in 2019 alongside books like Vox by Christina Dalcher and The testaments by Margaret Atwood, because a difference in utopia and dystopia relies on women’s ability to give birth and community rule versus a dictatorial tyranny.

Short stories/anthologies

Civilwarland in bad decline, George Saunders

At the time I considered writing a full review for this collection of short stories, but I am so often eager to get started on the next book (and driven by library return deadlines) that I didn’t get around to it.

This collection completely establishes Saunders’ preoccupation with ghosts alongside dystopian visions. There are twists and turns, likeable and unlikeable characters, crude humour and dialogue as well as poignant moments. Sometimes you have to read a short story collection to discover what an author is truly about and I think this one does exactly that. Incisive, colourful and readable.

The unreal and the real, volume 2, Ursula K. Le Guin

Having read The unreal and the real, volume 1, the more ‘real’ of the two volumes, and The left hand of darkness in 2018 set me up well to enjoy the sci-fi short stories in this collection.

Highlights included: ‘The matter of Seggri’, in which Hainish anthropologists infiltrate the world of Seggri and illuminate the matriarchal culture in which men are oppressed in similar ways to women on earth, complete with comparable reasons for men not to be educated and being hormonal and irrational. Very cleverly exposed through different characters’ accounts. Playing with perspectives again, like writing from the perspective of a tree in The unreal and the real, volume 1, is ‘The ascent of the north face’. ‘Sur’ sees an account of an all-female Antarctic expedition. ‘Nine lives’ calls into question the ethics of cloning in a vivid classic sci-fi situation. While ‘Those who walk away from Omelas’ plays with another classic ethical question. These stories reveal Le Guin’s cleverness in the sci-fi fantasy genre, her commitment to her world-building particularly in the Hainish cycle stories, and her ethical and feminist bents which infiltrate all her writing.

The underwhelming

I read a few underwhelming books this year too. Some of these fell under an ‘other’ category to my list above, some fall into the set lists in some way.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Haruki Murakami’s

My first foray into the prizewinning author Murakami’s work, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, was a book I could not put down yet was disappointed by in the end. Reading the reviews, the issues with the book are representative of Murakami’s work. A number of mysteries are never really solved or explained, including the core one, a long story-within-a-story has uncertain relevance, female characters are all surface and overly sexualised and the protagonist is simply unlikeable (and not in a good unreliable narrator kind of way). I thought Murakami was supposed to be this magical poet of a writer, but this encounter has made me reluctant to read even his most famous works – although I suspect I will get there. (While his other works are perhaps classics and sometimes dystopian or sci-fi, I think this one is a bit of an ‘other’ with some fantasy elements. No talking cats in this one, though.)

The night circus, Erin Morgenstern

The night circus was a fantasy novel recommended to me a few years ago by a fellow student with whom I shared an interest in Isobelle Carmody’s work. I read recently that Erin Morgenstern wrote her debut during NaNoWriMo – that is over the month of November, for the uninitiated. Again, similar reasons kept me reading yet underwhelmed me. A review I read suggested that each of the elements of the blurb could be deconstructed and helped me to understand my reluctance with this novel. No spark between the lovers, no urgency to the ‘battle’, too much back and forth with the timeline. This reviewer suggested the novel was too long and that lovers of prose would like the book, but while I found some of the writing lovely and poetic, I found it was more often straightforward than poetic. The imagery was there simply because the writer liked it, not because it held any deeper, literary meaning. I bought this book and I’m looking to give it away – I won’t be reading it again!

Other notable underwhelms:

The sense of an ending, Julian Barnes. Apparently Barnes is one of these famous white male writers! People seem to quote him! This is probably actually a good book. There is some really great imagery and clever circularity in the use of the imagery in particular. The narrative in the main, though, seemed to be kind of narcissistic and there were crudities which, it would seem, tend to go with this genre of writing and bring out my responsive prudery!

Did you ever have a family, Bill Clegg. And what is it with debut writers and complex stories that are achronological and feature far too many characters? This seems to be a theme of the novels I have read this year, both debuts and subsequent novels (The night circus, Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy [not a debut]), like these novice novelists haven’t read their creative writing rules! I think these people must be bouncing off of an unwitting success. I actually skim-read some this book because it was so tedious (clearly not tedious enough to actually put it down though). It pitched a great mystery to it, then spread off into the tendrils of a myriad of other characters’ stories which figured in the main story, so only titbits of information came through about the main mystery in each chapter. The mystery wasn’t worth it at all.

Something different from a different time

Requiem for a wren, Nigel Schute

I picked up Requiem for a wren by Nigel Schute from the general library shelf. I have read a few Vintage Classics, and was at first looking for something completely different from The testaments to analyse for a comparative essay. I came back for it later just to read.

It is a wartime mystery and is described as a romance with a difference. A box-style narrative, the narrator tells another story within his story, gradually revealing more information leading to the ending the story began with. This novel was uniquely Australian and shed light on the English and Australian experience of World War II. I had not read a book like this before, although I suppose I have watched a great deal of programs and films set during this time, like Foyle’s war and The promise. Some of the language was hard to follow simply because there was no explanation; I suppose I was expected to know what a Bofors was. (I appreciated learning some of this when watching a film recently though: I knew that a Junkers was a German plane and that a Bofors was a gun. I think that was Jojo Rabbit.) It was a solemn sort of book but I liked the structure and the way the characters were gradually developed. Again, I sensed where it was going and perhaps the ending was too neat – there was a bit of an assumption about a woman’s feelings!

Read My year in books 2019, Part 1.

My year in books 2019, Part 1: Classics, feminist myth and sci-fi, dystopias and short stories

In 2019, I committed to read 36 books on the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I simply decided to add one to the number of books I read in 2018. I beat my goal by 6 books, but it must be acknowledged that some of these books were really small and one I did not complete in entirety (a text book), so a tiny bit of cheating! One reason why I found this meme so amusing:

‘That still only counts as one!’ (Funko POP Gimli and Legolas). Reprinted from Writing About Writing in Facebook, November 18, 2019.

Rejoining the local library in 2018 reinvigorated my excitement for browsing and reading more randomly and freely (in more ways than one). For a long while I had been buying, borrowing or re-reading books from my shelf, so my interests were narrowed. I have been trying to broaden my reading. (A few weeks ago: ‘I have broken my rule that I pick up one book from the sci-fi fantasy shelves and one from the general shelves.’ M shook his head and said, ‘Self-imposed rules.’)

Between required texts for uni and catching up on old works by much-loved authors, I have managed to read a lot of great and a lot of mediocre books. I have also read a number of anthologies and short story collections (including such things as Island magazine). Here are some of the highlights and low-lights of my 2019 reading:

Classics

For these purposes I will identify a ‘classic’ as an ‘older’ book, including ones by my favourite authors.

Wizard of the Pigeons, Megan Lindholm

I have yet to nab all of Lindholm’s (aka Robin Hobb) early works; nevertheless this one is a standout.

This is not your everyday fantasy novel, and yet it is exactly that. An unassuming homeless man who has an affinity with pigeons spirals into a state of mind and situation that seems impossible to escape. The magic and the depiction of the homeless folk in this book is delivered with such realism and empathy. This book also deals with trauma in a sensitive and creative way that has you questioning and yet accepting the reality of the narrative through to the end. One of my five star reads from the year.

A portrait of the artist as a young man, James Joyce

Baffled yet somewhat entertained by the ‘moocow’ and the stream-of-consciousness of early childhood, fighting my way through the endless hellfire sermon (all so especially endless reading it foolishly on my iPhone 4S – a download from the Gutenberg Project), and ultimately confused by where and when and who his girl is, somehow I still wrote an essay. What I found most interesting in the end was a discussion about how the dangers of walking in the urban environment figured into Joyce’s writing.

Reading Joyce for my Irish Literature unit also gave me a special appreciation of T.I.S.M.’s reference in ‘whatareya’. Is Joyce genius or wanker? I suppose narcissism follows both those options and this book is certainly narcissistic – even the walking figures into that. Is it worth reading? I would say so, as a lighter experience Joyce’s major work that goes further than Dubliners into stream-of-consciousness but not so far as Ulysses.

Myth

Weight, Jeanette Winterson

I purchased Weight at the same time as The passion of new Eve, clearly on a feminist buying bent to use a voucher at Dymocks.

The reviews on Goodreads of Weight are at two ends of the pendulum: people that hated it citing vulgarity, people that loved it citing Winterson’s endless poeticism. This is not high on my list of loved Winterson books. I did find the crudity distasteful, but perhaps that was simply a clever method of creating a dislikeable character in Heracles, but also in exposing the narcissism of gods and demi-gods alike and thus creating a contrast to Atlas’ character.

Circe, Madeline Miller

Miller’s writing is accessible and her beautiful imagery evokes the poeticism of imagery in classical myth. This book was more enjoyable than Weight. Cleverly building in a host of stories about the gods that Circe became involved in, the story mostly focuses on her island exile for aeons. Unlovely and unpopular, Circe must discover and develop her own abilities and her self through her exile. Over time she also discovers the truths of those whose paths crossed hers, such as Odysseus, her father, Helios, and Scylla, the nymph-turned-monster.

Sci-fi fantasy

The companions, Sheri S. Tepper

Probably only second to the other Sheri S. Tepper novel I read in length in 2019 (The Margarets, at 528 pages), The companions was another revelation of female sci-fi writing.

This book was lush in description and culture. Perhaps the villains were the clichéd anti-human in sci-fi and some of the discoveries related to them predictable or too obvious. I found the protagonist near-unlikeable, despite her love of animals in an almost animal-free earth and her disappointed ‘marriage’ (to another unlikeable character), the lushness of the settings and back-story and the action kept me hooked. The story is a suitably grand-opera style one for such a long sci-fi novel with the fate of humanity and the universe at risk, but the planetary mysteries at the heart of the back-story were much more engaging and well-imagined and written. I loved the richness and vastness of this novel, my first taste of Tepper, despite the latent hollowness of its protagonist.

Dystopia

Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

I recall attempting to read Slaughterhouse five once and putting it down because it felt like derivative humour: who could beat Douglas Adams at that particular satirical style? I do realise Vonnegut predates Adams, so this is an anachronous complaint.

Cat’s Cradle hit the spot with journalistic veracity. The protagonist, a writer, was conducting research for a story that connected with his own history. The father of the atom bomb was a composite of facts and fictions that simply rang true. This set a steady platform for the more ridiculous elements of the plot to play out, so in a sense they became less shaky. The religious quotes - and calypsos – from Bokononism added to this bizarre veracity too. As did the flawed nature of the writer becoming more and more evident as the story went along.

Vox, Christine Dalcher

Vox is a dystopian novel that featured on all the lists in 2018, frequently with the blurb suggesting it was the new The handmaid’s tale. In this, the oppression of women occurs swiftly after the far-right president’s election. All women are fitted with wristbands that electrocute them if they speak over 100 words in a day.

I always admire the author that has the ability to lead the reader to the assumptions they seem to push into your head, but some authors haven’t yet got the subtlety of this. I figured out Dalcher’s sting pretty early in the piece and wondered why her smart protagonist had not yet worked it out.

Possibly most disturbing is the relatable actions of the male characters in the protagonist’s life, especially her son. The actions are not subtle and they are somehow not surprising. The fear and impact on her young daughter’s life is also effective. Is it a feminine cliché if the smartness of this particular protagonist is drowned out by her emotional reactions?

Similar reads: The testaments, Margaret Atwood (for which I have written a review elsewhere); The shining wall, Melissa Ferguson; Woman on the edge of time, Marge Piercy; The core of the sun, Johanna Sinisalo. 

This post was getting far too long, so some more mini-reviews will be in Part 2...
Read My year in books 2019, Part 2. 

Rewinding a personal apocalypse into performance art

I’m a Phoenix, Bitch, ideated by, written by and starring Bryony Kimmings, is a one-woman performance about trauma and recovery.

It seems fitting that this piece of theatre for the Sydney Festival occurs as the apocalypse seems nigh in the smoke-filled backdrop of Sydney. Kimmings’ own tale of trauma is not without its climate change–inflamed influence.

Known for her unashamedly autobiographical performance theatre, Kimmings commences with her own ‘potted history’. Several prior theatre works reveal her penchant for the critical and often controversial self-expose, from the one-woman show – which this is – to the family affair. In keeping with prior works, she leads the audience to expect a comic/tragic cry-fest.

Kimmings begins with an important message. This story is about her trauma, but it is not fresh, not served up unthinkingly for a vulnerable audience. She has worked through her trauma and is safe; the audience is safe. Telling personal experiences is a mode of therapy – not just for the storyteller, but often for the audience too.

The story follows Kimmings’ meeting and falling in love with her now-ex, Tim, falling pregnant, a traumatic birth, postnatal delusory cleptoparasitosis alongside her son’s onset of epilepsy and her work toward recovery.

Kimmings adopts the therapy technique of ‘rewinding’ into the traumatic experience into the on-stage performance using video elements. A camera on moveable tripod, a hand-held camera and what the play dubs a cyclorama, a circular backdrop at first curtained off, are used to great effect. Crucially, the audience can see the true reality of what is on-stage at the same time as seeing Kimmings through a distorted video lens projected onto the background screen. An audio element of her rewinding process features periodic recording of Dictaphone messages to her mute four-year-old son, Frank.

Rewinding into Kimmings’ story begins with the background and context in which her trauma occurs. There are three Bryonys on stage. Post-trauma Bryony is the main protagonist speaking to us from the stage, dressed in comfortable black ‘celebrity sportswear’ complete with ‘camel toe’. Pre-trauma Bryony is the performance artist at her peak, singing and dancing in orange sequins and heels. The third Bryony is characterised by a comically deep man’s voice that is her inner critic. Described as a ‘straight, white, ci-gendered TV drama exec’, this voice questions Bryony’s reality as she navigates both the peaks and troughs of her experience.

Aspects of Kimmings’ performance evoke Jennifer Saunders. She makes comedic use of her malleable face for the fawning ‘breakfast nymph’ who entraps the ‘Greek god’ with her Venus flytrap vaginal perfume and perfectly made-up façade. Her accent too is malleable, London-posh to quirky London-youth – ‘peace’ – particularly when recording messages to her son about surviving the apocalypse (notably, whether physical or mental). She dons wigs and lipstick and colourful items of clothing at each of her video stations on the stage, wiping the canvas clean to her black singlet and bike shorts for each scene. Her singing and dancing is at times whimsical and ethereal, working an edge into her ‘breakfast nymph’ who threatens her newfound man ‘so you don’t leave me alone’; her pregnant hippie festival Insta-chick morphing into the real trauma of birth; her horror-movie self haunted by vocals that echo around the cyclorama scene: images of personal struggle as black and white schlocky horror and later reality-style ‘true’ horror.

Kimmings’ narrative features physical representations of ‘drowning’ into her state of psychosis and strengthening into her personal recovery. Her talent and commitment to the storytelling and physicality of this theatre piece is evident - with tears of pride and exertion on her face, Kimmings had to interrupt the applause to inform the audience of her merchandise and signing at the door. The comedy is evenly matched with the building tragedy of the story and draws the audience in gradually and methodically.

As promised, I’m a Phoenix, Bitch safely conveys the tragi-comedy of Kimmings’ experience of motherhood. While there was no observable cry-fest from the audience, the empathy to Kimmings’ experience was yet palpable. This mood, generated by Kimmings’ consummate skill moving the audience from low-key confidential, almost stand-up, start in the first scene, through the fantastically filmic three-dimensional cyclorama and finally to the strong and decisive recovery process that forms the satisfying, true climax.

That is not without the reminder that the river is always lapping at the bank of the mind; the hellish state Bryony experienced is as much a part of her life as pre-trauma Bryony’s faux facades. But now that she has learnt to swim, she is as well prepared for the apocalypse as she can be.

A dream-state in blue

Still from Wuthering Heights (2011)

Garbed in blue, I was anointed in blue. For the fertility of spring, the Easter of the southern clime, the spring equinox. It is possible that then I entered into a dream-state—but I might just be making that bit up.

Last weekend I participated in a dance performance with the Hands, Heart and Feet tribe at the end of a day celebrating the elements at the Leela Centre in Darlinghurst. While I did not participate in the day, which was a Women’s Weekender organised by Genevieve Rogan of Dancing Change, the sense of community, bonding and opening up of those who did came through in the relaxed evening.

Bree Rain—let me take some degree of license here to call her a spiritual celebrant—was present to close the day before the performance began. Oddly, she offered pomegranate juice to symbolise the close of winter. She reminded us of the story of Persephone whose consumption of seven pomegranate seeds resulted in her exile in the Underworld. This is the bit that struck me as odd, and merged with my later thoughts about a dream-state in blue—drinking the pomegranate juice only works if we associate the freshness of fruit with the newness of spring, not with Persephone’s mistake.

I don’t criticise, it was merely a moment of dissonance, something that did not sit well when I considered it. But as with anything a bit of explanation tends to elucidate the intended meaning, which could be anything if you are suitably convincing.

If the pomegranate represented the (spring-reborn) element of Earth, the sheer blueness of the blue lotus tinged oil aligned it with Water, raising another dissonance if oil and water do not mix.

Blue lotus, from some swift internet-based research, is an oneirogen, a substance that is said to induce a dream-like state of mind, sometimes called ‘lucid dreaming’.

Again, I felt a dissonance with the spring equinox. Although lucid dreaming is not deep dreaming, is not sleep, spring is yet the wakening from sleep, so the idea of inducing a lucid dreaming state to awake from our winter hibernation and embrace the fertility of spring still seemed a slightly conflicting notion.

One experience of this with no mind to the origin, medium or expectation of achieving any unusual state of consciousness cannot offer much.

Bree anointed our foreheads with a spiral of oil, her finger coming to a stop in the centre of the circle. Someone remarked that it would be a wonderful perfume—a very expensive one, Bree rejoined. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent. I couldn’t describe it for you, but it was floral, sweet, delightful—certainly, it was a natural scent. (My make-up pad came away a little blue, later.)

As usual when I perform these days there were no real nerves. I did not even feel stiff or clumsy from sitting for a time before we danced. I don’t think I thought much, I felt the movements keenly. It was a smooth, relaxed-pace dance (you can watch a video of the dance here), so perhaps I just fell into the rhythm and calmness of it. Once we had unwrapped our blue fabric for the second half of the dance—the chiffonography, if you will—I even recovered well from M and I becoming entangled!

Now, I am in a meditation of the colour blue and how this can link to the spring equinox, I am reminded of some musings on blue shared on Brainpickings. Blue merges into or is conjured by a distance, the darkness and the light, and as the light returns in spring perhaps blue becomes clearer. Now I am of the mind to leave you with Persephone—‘Our lady of the underground’—from Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown: ‘But look a little closer, everything will be revealed / Look a little closer, there’s a crack in the wall’. Let the light in.

Summing up the self is impossible

My new boss observed recently, ‘You don’t talk much about yourself, do you?’ My initial response—as of I needed to justify some sort of lack in that regard—was perhaps I am being shy. A quiet part of me wondered if I don’t like talking about myself, a wonder that I immediately quashed because I do talk about myself (and am now writing about myself!). Later I thought I have been too busy at work to chat, but that is also not entirely the case either unless I was simply being polite in engaging in conversation.

Leaving the machinations of my overthinking behind, some people do seem to love talking about themselves. They could be trying to make themselves look good or they might not have anything else to talk about. They could be narcissistic if talking about themselves is all they do. Or it could be simply that this is a way we relate to others, by sharing our own experiences. There is absolutely something powerful in sharing personal stories and experiences with others, there is no denying that.

Society puts much stake on how we define ourselves. In a job interview we are asked, ‘What three words would you use to describe yourself?’ or perhaps the two questions for us to elucidate our weaknesses and strengths. In my last job interview, I ran out of words at one of these questions. This is partly because I was ill prepared, but I like to think it was also a subconscious response from my non-conventional self against this simplified summing up. (Also trying to convince myself I did not just have a brain blockage.)

It takes time to get to know someone though. To expect you to get to know me immediately by summing myself up in a few words and phrases would be disingenuous. It is common to form an assumption about a person on first meeting them. Again, this links to the psychology of the job interview, it is often noted that people form an opinion on you within the first 30 seconds. Instinctive trust upon meeting a new person—a strange problem I have had—could lead you to accept the words that a person uses to describe their self, when it is more often actions observed over time that reveal that person’s true nature.

I am not suggesting that we distrust people from the start if they love talking about themselves. Context will always trump that anyway. In my situation, I am being sensibly cautious, I think, not to talk too much about myself with a new boss until I have a handle on them. But fundamentally I prefer to think that over time I will reveal myself. For want of a better analogy, I prefer to perform the artful striptease rather than the immediate full monty. But in the context of who you are, it’s less about thinking you might lose interest or wanting to maintain some mystery than about recognising that I am—people are—more complicated than to be summed up so quickly.

Captivated by herstory

‘[T]heater isn't a place to go to forget anything, but a place to go to remember.’ —David Mamet (quoted in Sanchez-Escalonilla, 2014).

On 24 July 2019 we attended the opening night of Forgotten at Riverside Theatres, a play about the first riot of the women in the Parramatta Female Factory in 1827 by playwright, Cate Whittaker.

A sizable cast of school students, alumni of the Parramatta diocese Catholic schools’ performing arts program, CAPTIVATE, provided a rabble amply raucous for the small Lennox Theatre stage.

The story focused on a few key women who were sent to third class—where they did hard labour—and the rebellion that broke out after the ongoing theft of the prisoners’ rations.

Women were brought to the colony for the purpose of growing the population in Australia. Marriages were arranged out of Female Factories for freed convicts and were a way out for the women, as was the possibility of being employed as a domestic servant. The Parramatta Female Factory—named thus, and impressed upon as just that, ‘a factory’, by the Matron in the play, because the women were put to productive work—was the first in Australia.

(While I have still not been to visit the Parramatta Female Factory, I was pleased to recall some of these details from visiting the Cascades and Ross Female Factories in Tasmania three years ago.)

My recent reading on institutionalisation in the nineteenth century gave me insight into the Irish experience in both Britain and Australia. Those Irish frequently institutionalised in asylums and hospitals in Australia had often been previously interned in British institutions. As a subjugated population, the Irish were characterised in racialised ways as being physically and mentally weak, diseased and degenerate—characterisations that persist today with clichés of the Irish as drunk and disorderly. Migrating to Australia, it seemed, was a new beginning of ongoing institutionalisation and racialised treatment of the Irish.

This context, for me, made the moment toward the end of the second act with an Aboriginal woman all the more poignant, as she and veteran convict, Annie, commiserated over the loss of their respective lands to the ‘bad white men’: the British.

And if this emotional moment just before the intermission foreshadowed the emotion at the end of the play, that was made more significant for me by the details of the costuming, colour symbolism of cloth and ribbon reminiscent of the plays of the Irish Literary Revival. (Thanks to my recent studies of Irish Literature.)

The focus on herstory, the untold stories of women in history, was given significance by all of the female characters being given first names, and the secondary stories of experiences of diaspora, loss of family and children, and opportunities of marriage and work outside the prison. Each of these stories was given poignancy, from the gift of food from the Aboriginal woman, a solo song to a separated child, the loss of a child, making the audience empathise with the convicts’ campaign against deprivation.

While I would note that the Irish accents employed may be forgiven, the subject of this play should certainly not be forgotten.

Reference

Sanchez-Escalonilla, A. (2013). Verisimilitude and film story: the links between screenwriter, character and spectator. Communication & Society, 26(2), 79-94. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/1468444821?accountid=10382