Being Black 'n Chicken, and Chips

Kookaburra in a tree. Port Douglas, Far North Queensland. April 2021.

Being Black 'n Chicken, and Chips by Matt Okine

This was a good little read, funny in parts, although not quite as funny as I think intended. This bittersweet coming of age story may have worked better as a memoir rather than a semi-fictionalised book. Matt Okine's youth saw him losing his mother to cancer and the struggles of having a Ghanese father, much like our narrator, "Mike Amon".

While this choice may have both made the writing psychologically safer - and opened up the potential for more dick jokes - it does somewhat undermine the gravitas of what is quite a moving tale of loss, grief and growing up.

It also isn't helped by an inconsistency in a tone that makes me wonder who the intended audience is. For the most part, it reads like a young adult, but the sentimental reverence of the late-90s and nature of many of the jokes and exploration of the mother-son dynamic suggests an older audience.

One other minor quibble that put me on the wrong foot was the choice to fictionalise Brisbane while the rest of Queensland and Australia stayed the same. I found the constant reference to this mysterious place that we all know is Brisbane unreasonably maddening as it consistently took me 'out of the tale.

Despite this, Okine nails the landing, and the tenderness shines through. The final section of the book is the strongest and give a hint at what the author might have achieved if he'd resisted the urge to clumsily reach for the laugh in every situation.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

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Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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