For thirteen years, Odette Brown has quietly raised her granddaughter, Sissy, on the outskirts of Deane, a small rural Australian town. As far as Odette is concerned, the quieter their lives, the better. Sissy is a fair-skinned Aboriginal child, and welfare authorities remove such children from their families. But Odette's world could be destroyed by the arrival of a cruel-eyed, by-the-book policeman. It's going to take every bit of Odette's courage and cunning to keep her granddaughter out of the hands of the government-backed Sergeant Lowe.
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I was immediately swept away into the world of Australia's post-colonial past when I began reading Tony Birch's The White Girl. Australia's treatment of the Aborigines mirrors that of the U.S. government's treatment of Native Americans. In Australia, the policy of separating Indigenous children from their families is now referred to as the Stolen Generations, and Odette Brown is desperately trying to keep her granddaughter from vanishing into an uncaring government's maw.
Odette lives on the outskirts of a rural small town where Aborigines are only permitted in town on Saturday mornings between eight and noon when they are allowed to shop at the company store. Tony Birch had me walking down the road, side by side with Odette. He had me worrying about her bright little granddaughter, who was still so naive about the world she lived in. When by-the-book Sergeant Lowe came to town, it soon became apparent that he loved having the power of life or death over people. Birch's writing is so evocative, so powerful, that I not only cared for Odette and Sissy, I not only worried about them, but I became very angry over how they were forced to live.
One passage in particular broke my heart: "The first children of the mission had been buried in nameless unmarked graves...The only indicators of the presence of the children beneath the earth were the wildflowers that revealed themselves each year. The seeds had been sown by mothers."
The White Girl is so incredibly powerful that it will remain with me for a long, long time. Read it.
The White Girl by Tony Birch
eISBN: 9780063213548
Harper Via © 2022
eBook, 272 pages
Historical Fiction, Standalone
Rating: A+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.
Wow! Just from your description, Cathy, I want to read this. It sounds powerful, and I really do like novels that give a strong sense of place. I can see why you were swept away.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds very good. I just finished another of Marcie R. Rendon's Cash Blackbear books and she always discusses the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families and nations in the text and/or in the Afterword.Also, read "The Berry Pickers," by Amanda Peters, which deals with the abduction of a Canadian Indigenous child from two viewpoints. This is such an important issue. The book and movie "Rabbit-Proof Fence" tells the story of three girls abducted by British authorities in Australia. I need to add this book soon but I am still saddened by Peters's book, which shows the emotional toll a kidnapping takes on the child's Native family and on her.
ReplyDeleteWow. This does sound like an impactful read. And an emotional one, too.
ReplyDeleteI see why that passage stayed with you - it's extremely powerful and heartbreaking, even on its own. I can imagine the impact it had when you came upon it while reading.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like an extraordinary read. The name of the book, and really anytime I hear the term white girl when it comes to books, reminds me of the first line of Paradise by Toni Morrison.
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