Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia by Anita Heiss

3 reviews

balfies's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

Another fantastic memoir anthology, this one exploring Aboriginality. I often had to take the time to properly absorb each piece, so I've been dipping into it shortly over about 9 months.

Some poetic, some hilarious, many haunting or reckoning with pain and discrimination. Emotional, evocative, and expressive writing throughout.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, Rape, Medical trauma, War, Violence, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Murder, Misogyny, Mental illness, Hate crime, Grief, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Death, Colonisation, Classism, Child abuse, Bullying, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Addiction, Ableism, and Abandonment

emzilia's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

(Listened to audiobook version)

A few notable chapters for me:

• Easter 1969, Katie Bryan. Wish this one was longer
• Growing up, Grow up, grown-ups, Ambelin Kwaymullina
• ‘Abo Nose’, Zachary Penrith-Puchalski
• Carol Petterson’s chapter: I had no idea Australia enforced a type of caste system within missionaries based on the skin colour of people, people in the same family - Carol was not allowed to talk to her own brother or Mother because she was light skinned and he was not to avoid ‘contamination’

I really loved this anthology collection. It’s so important to hear the experiences of different Aboriginal people from different walks of life that are largely just synthesised together as a single experience in mainstream dialogue/media, or are otherwise underrepresented at all. 

My first time listening to an audiobook, and while I think it complemented the nature of a short story collection with a range of voices, I did find it harder to retain the stories. If I get a chance I’d like to read this again, properly, and take my time with it a bit more so the essays don’t blend together as much. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism

Moderate: Self harm

Minor: Alcoholism, Bullying, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, and Rape

moosegurl's review

challenging informative slow-paced

4.0

"The arrival of my branch of the family in Perth was the result of a journey undertaken by my great-grandmother that was not her choice. Like so many others, she was a member of the Stolen Generations, as was my grandmother after her. 

People ask me sometimes if I experienced any racism when I was a kid. Questions like that always make me wonder where the other person is living. They seem to be speaking to me from some kind of magical Australia, where it's possible for an indigenous person to escape the effects of racism in a colonized land. But that's not the Australia I know. It would be surprising if it was, given that the entitlement of the colonizers to the soil was founded on the alleged superiority of western Europe ways of life, over those of indigenous peoples."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide

Moderate: Racism, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Alcoholism, Bullying, Emotional abuse, and Hate crime