This will hurt me...

  Zinc work, East Risdon Bay. August 2021. That Deadman Dance   by Kim Scott A masterpiece. In Bobby Wabalanginy, an intelligent and optimistic soul, Scott conjures up a narrator who will live long in the memory. Bobby, whose real name remains unpronounceable to the invaders throughout the novel, means "all of us playing together", a bitter irony given the course of events. Bobby is a marvel. Bright and eager for knowledge, he is a natural showman. These capacities allow him to shine in both his indigenous world and the newcomers to his land. Part clown, part shaman, the book does a magnificent job of naturally showing the reader the centrality of songs, music, and dance to the Noongar people of southwestern Western Australia. Bobby learns to speak, read and write in the white man's language, but a reoccurring motif throughout is the fundamental disconnect in understanding between the two cultures. His native culture is just as complex but more physical, present and eleme...

  Looking southwest from Cape Raoul, Tasman National Park. May 2021. Taboo by Kim Scott Kim Scott has achieved a great feat with  Taboo . In tackling a subject so replete with immense themes - decolonisation, pain, the art of memory and forgetting - he manages to toe the line successfully like few others. Moreover, he's written an authentic and engaging book on the murder, dispossession and maltreatment of the Noongar people that is at once sombre yet optimistic. This is all the more startling from a book saturated with violence of all kinds. Violence upon violence over generations to the point where our heroes are both sullied by that violence - both perpetrators and victims - and retain the redemptive power that will be required to ensure that a persecuted people can both survive and prosper. Australia has now reached the 'truth-telling' phase of real reconciliation. After two centuries of colonial dispossession, repression masked as harmony and silent shame, this is a no...