These stories are heartfelt and show how negative experiences can change you for the better as you grow to come to terms with your identity. It shows the struggles of acceptance, racism, and just growing up as an aboroginal. ( )

““There is no single or simple way to define what it means to grow up Aboriginal in Australia….”

I’m having such a hard time putting together a response to reading Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. I have such a mix of emotions - I am angered, ashamed, sad, enlightened, inspired and hopeful.

Fifty contributors share their diverse experiences of growing up Aboriginal in Australia. They come from all over country, and are of varied ages, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic class.

Yet there are commonalities in their stories -the weight of intergenerational trauma, the burden of stereotypes and racism, the struggle with identity, the desire to understand and embrace their culture, kin and country.

Though the quality of the writing can be uneven, the honesty of the authors stories are affecting and powerful. They are a generous invitation to learn and gain some understanding of what it is like to be a First Nations person growing up in Australia, both then and now.

“….it’s so obvious that underneath the invisible barriers and expectations we have constructed and placed on each other, we are all brothers and sisters; we are all just pink flesh and bone.”

An informative, thought-provoking, and moving anthology Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is essential reading in the journey to create a new dialogue with and about Aboriginal Australians. ( )

3,5

This rating is not for the stories in the book, but for how the book is compiled. I think this is an important book and the stories are wonderful. However, fifty stories are at least twenty-five too many for a book that is three hundred pages long. The stories are also a bit repetitive, and not the good kind of repetitive. Also, sorting all these stories alphabetically by surname was also a mistake, I think it would have been better to sort them by theme.

If you're going to read this book, and you should: do not try to read this book in one sitting. Just read one or two stories each day. ( )

This book opened my eyes to something I knew almost nothing about, and it was fascinating. The editor states "There is no single or simple way to define what it means to grow up Aboriginal in Australia, but this anthology is an attempt to showcase as many of the diverse voices, experiences and stories together as possible." Hess did a remarkable job of providing the reader with a diverse group of aboriginal people with a range of experiences (and a good deal of shared experience.) I listened to this on audio, and hearing people tell their own stories really enhanced the experience.

Each piece here tells a unique story that highlights the differences in experience dictated by age, skin color, parental ties to aboriginal roots, and other factors. Some of the contributors grew up in European neighborhoods, and a few were adopted by white parents. One thing that did not seem to make much difference was economic standing, with more well off contributors facing much of the same flak as the less advantaged writers. As one would expect, some of the essays are better written than others, and more interesting, but all are deeply honest and informative. The stories, the writers often unconnected from one another, raise so many of the same themes. The pressure for fair aboriginals to "pass" as European was repeated. The racist comments of friends followed by "oh, I forgot you where here" or "I forgot you were aboriginal" seem so common. The high incidence of suicide in aboriginal communities appears to have touched most every contributor.

I was struck and disheartened by the similarities between the Australian aboriginal and the Native American and African American experience. The disrespect of native peoples, and the irrational import placed on skin color in the way people view one another is an international disgrace. This book illuminates that while educating on those things uniquely Australian. Exceptionally worthwhile.

One note, I dipped in and out of this and that worked well. I do not think this is the kind of book that is best consumed in one bite. ( )

This is a very important book with many eye-opening sections. Made up of submissions from a wide range of people, the common thread that ties these stories together is of growing up marked as 'other'. While this idea is one that will resonate with many readers (all childhoods include negotiating one's own identity), the harrowing pity of this work is that the writers, each with Aboriginal heritage, have been made to feel strangers in their own place, as if somehow they do not belong to the land that is so integral to their lives.
It's tough reading in parts.
Some of these stories will make you cry, some will make you shake your head, others might allow you a wry grin at a piece of irony or a bit of self-deriding humour. Overall, the collection struck me as more bleak than hopeful of a more inculsive future, but that may be more a reflection of my feelings about the world as we know it. Sad, striking, moving, instructive: this book would make wonderful reading in schools.
I'd recommend that you treat it a series of short stories that you can delve into now and then. En masse, the effect is rather overwhelming. ( )