My Place
by Sally Morgan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sally MorganEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-12-01
ISBN: 0949206318
Number of pages: 440
Publisher: Fremantle Arts Center Pr
Book Reviews of My Place
Book Review: Great Read of an Interesting Family
Summary: 4 Stars
There are some one- to three-star reviews for this book which suggest that it (a) is boring, (b) a lie (no one could remember as much of her childhood as Sally Morgan does), (c) raises her family to sainthood
I'm not an Australian and don't have any interest in the reconciliation issues that one reviewer says are the "only reason" for publishing this book. Yet I couldn't put the book down.
Certainly, if you're looking for a harrowing story of a aboriginal oppression, you won't find it here (for the first half of the book, Sally Morgan believes what her mother tells her: the family is from India). Primarily what you get is the story of a lower class Australian family dealing with adversity.
To suggest that Ms. Morgan creates heroes out of her family also misses the mark--much of the book describes the inability of her father to deal with life after the war and the frustration that she faces dealing with her mother and grandmother.
What you do get in this book is a story of a terrifically interesting family. I found myself pulled through the book, eager to see what these people would do next. It's possible that if I were Australian I wouldn't have found the book so interesting (it's possible that much of what I found interesting would be commonplace to someone from Australia). But for a Canadian, it was a eye opening book about life in Australia.
Another review comments that some aboriginals feel that Sally Morgan should not claim an aboriginal identity because she didn't grow up in an aboriginal community. In the book she talks about how her schoolmates tell her she isn't a "real Australian" because her skin is the wrong color. Apparently, some feel she isn't "dark enough" for others. This tells us more about the reviewers desire to reject her experience than the value of the book. Anyone who reads the book can decide for themselves how much of an aboriginal identity the author is claiming and/or should be allowed to claim.
As for remembering so much of her childhood: Many other autobiographies spend far more time (and detail) on their youth. The first third of Gorky's autobiography ("Youth"), for instance, is almost 400 pages long. The 100 or so pages that take Ms. Morgan to the end of high school doesn't seem excessive.
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