Deborah Shepard Books
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact

Reviews of Memoir

Exploring the best of classic and contemporary life writing, memoir and autobiographies from New Zealand and overseas. 

The Stolen Children: Their Stories, edited by Carmel Bird

30/3/2011

 
Picture
The Stolen Children: Their Stories (1998) edited by Carmel Bird, is a deeply affecting collection of testimonies and personal stories by Indigenous Australians gathered from the Bringing them Home report (1997) that examined the racist assimilation policies 1922 – 1970s whereby mixed-race Indigenous children, some just tiny babies and toddlers were forcefully separated from their families with the intention of absorbing them into mainstream white culture.

The vast majority were sent to far-flung parts of Australia, siblings separated by inhumane policies known as ‘split the litter.’ Frequently they were exploited as domestic servants and manual labourers bullied, humiliated, under-nourished, abused, often denied the promised education while stripped of their own language and cultural knowledge. This is a deeply sorrowful story of the mental anguish of a people, of broken despairing mothers and fathers who lost their children forever and of the emptiness felt by the children who were told their parents were dead or had rejected them. And we learn, the trans-generational grief continues today when families are re-united but not always re-integrated as a result of the loss of tribal knowledge, family history and language.
The Appendix continues the story with compassionate and shocked responses from writers, journalists, religious leaders, thinkers and politicians, juxtaposed with John Howard’s appalling non-apology.  An unembellished submission by a white policeman’s son stands out. He remembers his father returning from his job, accompanying welfare officers to bodily remove children from their homes and sitting on a stool outside the kitchen ‘crying and sobbing like a child.’

This is an important, unforgettable book for spreading awareness of the terrible human cost of misguided racist policies and attitudes and for giving voice to those who suffered irreparably. It will make you weep at the perpetration of abuses and gasp at the courage and quiet magnanimity of those who survived.

This was first published for New Zealand Book Month 2011,

Comments are closed.

    Author Reviews

    All
    Adam Dudding
    Blake Morrison
    Carmel Bird
    Miriam Frank
    Stevan Eldred-Grigg

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
Copyright © 2017 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact