Past Programs
Indigenous - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander - 2007
Anita Heiss and Indigenous publishing
22/08/2007
Poet, chicklit writer, social commentator, and member of the Wirundjeri nation of central New South Wales, Anita Heiss talks about her new book of poetry I'm Not a Racist But... and reflects on the state of Indigenous publishing in Australia. She also wrote a book with children from La Perouse primary school in Sydney called Yirra and her Deadly Dog, Demon.
Gail Jones's novel Sorry
26/06/2007
Gail Jones's latest novel Sorry examines the relationship between social justice and literature. Sorry is told from the perspective of a young white girl, Perdita, growing up in the Pilbara in Western Australia in the 1930s and 40s. She lives in a remote shack with her cold parents; her mother Stella, who's always reciting Shakespeare, and her brutish anthropologist father, Nicholas.
Perdita finds more affection from her friends, Billy her deaf neighbour and Mary, the family's Aboriginal domestic servant. When Nicholas is murdered, Mary confesses and is sent away, leaving Perdita bereft, with a stutter and unable to remember the circumstances of her father's murder.
This is a novel that explores the legacy of the Stolen Generation and whether it's too late to say 'sorry'. It has an explicit political agenda and, in the post-script, Gail Jones includes an explanatory note about the national inquiry into the stolen generation that happened 10 years ago.
Gail Jones spoke to the Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange in Melbourne. She starts with a reading from the beginning of Sorry.
Alexis Wright's 2007 Miles Franklin Award-winning novel, Carpentaria (repeat)
22/06/2007
Born in northwestern Queensland, Alexis Wright has been involved in Indigenous rights for many decades, working as an educator and writer, including editing an anthology on land rights in Central Australia called Taking Power: Like This Old Man Here. Her first novel Plains of Promise was published in 1997 and was short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize, the Age Book of the Year and the NSW Premier's award for fiction, and has since been translated into French.
Like Plains of Promise, her second novel Carpentaria is set in the vast dominating landscape of the Gulf country of northwestern Queensland. It is an epic tale of the strained relationship between the white folk of the fictional town of Desperance and the internal struggles of the Indigenous community, who are fighting for survival against an all-powerful mining company.
In Carpentaria, Alexis Wright has created a world that is populated by extraordinary characters. The drift between a modern reality and a place that existed thousands of years before in the Aboriginal Dreamtime.
Alexis Wright spoke to Radio National's Cathy Pryor about her inspirations and her motivations.
This interview was first broadcast on The Book Show on November 6, 2006.
New-look Brisbane libraries
08/05/2007
You wouldn't normally expect to see huge plasma TV screens or Xbox games in libraries, but libraries are in the process of a revolution as they harness new information technologies and model themselves on airport lounges to maintain their civic importance.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange visited Brisbane's latest library redevelopments which sit opposite each other on the river: the Brisbane City Council Brisbane Square Library which has a Gibsonesque Neuromancer feel; and the State Library of Queensland.
She began her tour at the State Library, which was redeveloped at the same time that the Queensland Art gallery was given a facelift along with the building of the Gallery of Modern Art. The library still has its distinctive horizontal layers of concrete facing the river but the entrance facade is actually green and rather beautiful. The architect, Timothy Hill, starts by explaining the challenges of redesigning the library.
