2022, 264 p.
I'm often rather amused (dismissive?) by a memoir written by someone under 40. However, in this case Amy Thunig has packed a lot of living into her forty-odd years. She is obviously of a different generation to me: I had never heard of her, despite contributions to Buzzfeed, Sydney Review of Books, IndigenousX, The Guardian, Junkee and a lively online presence. She is a Gomeroi/Gamilaroi/Kamilaroi woman, writer and academic and this book is a series of essays on her life.
In her prologue she writes:
I often wonder about timelines and the way a Eurocentric view positions time as linear but as Indigenous peoples we are raised to understand time as circular. Within a circular understanding of life: time, energy and generations coexist. Coexistence with and within Country on lands, within waterways, and skies. Our accountability and obligations are therefore to our ancestors, and our descendants, as well as to ourselves....I do not know the simple way of saying that child-me could see and feel future-me, that our coexistance within circular time meant we conversed and encouraged one another, and as we are one and the same, I knew where I would land even though I could not see how I would journey there. Exchanges of energy and love, across time spent in the locations, encouraged by ancestors.
p.2
This circularity is reflected in her writing, which consists of a large number (28) small-ish chapters of about 4-8 pages, usually introduced by a current-day, or at least a future-me, reflection, before launching back into memoir. This gave the book the feeling of being a series of essays or writing exercises, although perhaps she does not yet have enough distance to impose onto this writing a broader, overarching theme.
It must be that future-me that brought the child Amy through a childhood and adolescence in 1980s Australia that would have defeated many other children. She was the second of four children, and both her parents struggled with drug addiction, and her father spent some time in jail. The family shifted several times although her grandparents, particularly her Pop, remained points of continuity in her life. Despite some appalling instances of racism and classism by teachers, she did well in school and maintained the appearances of an engaged after-school life of dancing, school performances and after-school jobs despite a chaotic and violent home life and poverty. This culminated in being kicked out of home in late secondary school and couch-surfing while continuing to attend classes. She did well, and attended university, moving through undergraduate, graduate and finally PhD level but always aware of the precariousness of the image she was adopting, drawing comfort from other indigenous academics in the academy.
She proudly proclaims her indigenous heritage in the reflections that launch each chapter, as she returns to, and draws strength from Country. She speaks of the influence of her ancestors, and her present-day passages mention the aunties and elders who surround her. However, the discrimination and cruelty that she experiences as a child is not voiced as racism, even though racism underlies it. As a daughter she feels the stigma attached to her parents' drug-addiction and imprisonment, which applies to all children in similar circumstances (although the high representation of indigenous people in prison means that this would be a more common experience for indigenous children). She speaks often of the influence of her grandparents, but support from her broader extended family seems to be absent, especially when she is homeless. There does not seem to be any involvement at all of formal indigenous organizations. She is largely silent about the political aspects of her aboriginal identity, even though it clearly fundamental to her experience and story.
In one of the last chapters of the book she writes:
The journey of reconnecting with my parents was a slow and clumsy one. It began with a desire to have them there for big moments- I missed them. It involved the realisation that while they had struggles, and sometimes those struggles had hurt me, unlike other people I met when away from them, they never sought to hurt me... Reconnecting with my parents, and understanding them, were two unrelated journeys. I didn't understand my parents, even when I started to reconnect with them. You don't have to understand fully to begin to accept in part, and I continued to be deeply resentful for many years, believing that they actively, consciously chose drugs over me. That it was a binary and I was the lesser option.
p. 249
It was only when she was given a synthetic heroin painkiller in hospital in her twenties that she realized that using brought a sense of silence.
That was when I began to understand that the nothingness is the bliss. My parents have experienced high levels of trauma- generational and individual- and all without the supports needed to actively heal...They weren't choosing heroin over me; they were choosing quiet over the overwhelming noise. It was then that I moved towards understanding, and my resentment began to ease a little.
p.250
Personally, I don't know if I could overcome my resentment and I wish that she had explored this in more detail. Perhaps her adult relationship with her parents is still a work in progress, and too close to be written about yet. But to even reach this point of understanding and reconnection suggests that she is ready to write this memoir, despite still being relatively young.
My rating: 8/10
Read because: I read a review in the Saturday Paper
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
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