Cirrus@Austlit

'Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is a mosaic, its more than 50 tiles –  short personal essays with unique patterns, shapes, colours and textures – coming together to form a powerful portrait of resilience. Some contributors, such as footballer Adam Goodes and opera singer Deborah Cheetham, are well known, others less so. Editor Anita Heiss has also included the stories of educators, journalists, military veterans, musicians, elders and students, many of whom are here published for the first time. Some had happy childhoods and others nightmarish ones, some grew up in their own families and others were stolen from them. They describe different paths to Aboriginal identity against the background of a nation that has yet to come fully to grips with a legacy of massacre, dispossession and persistent racism.' (Introduction)