'Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger.
'Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things – her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley.
'Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Old family wounds open as the Salters fight to stop the development of their beloved river. And the unexpected arrival on the scene of a good-looking dugai fella intent on loving her up only adds more trouble – but then trouble is Kerry’s middle name.
'Gritty and darkly hilarious, Too Much Lip offers redemption and forgiveness where none seems possible.' (Publication summary)
Unit Suitable For AC: Senior Secondary English (Unit 2) – could also suit Unit 3
Duration10 weeks
Curriculum Summary
Find a summary table for Australian Curriculum: Literature content descriptions and NSW Syllabus outcomes for this unit.
Themes
Aboriginal history and culture, belonging, Books by Indigenous creators, colonialism, connections to Country, identity, Indigenous, Indigenous culture, Language, racism, resilience, Stolen Generations
General Capabilities
Ethical understanding, Intercultural understanding
Cross-curriculum Priorities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Dedication: For my brother David, who swam a river to save my life.
Epigraph:
She was charged with shooting the accused, who in giving
evidence against her, made no secret of what his intensions
were towards the woman. She, he said, was only a gin, and he
could do what he liked with her.
'District Court, Criminal Sittings',
Brisbane Telegraph, 31 January 1908
No Laughing Matter : Laughter and Masculinities in Contemporary Australian Fiction
Penrith
:
2023
28462670
2023
single work
thesis
'This dissertation explores the role laughter plays in the construction of masculinities in contemporary Australian fiction. The texts analysed are Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded (1995), Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip (2018), and Tim Winton’s Breath (2008). The diversity of these novels allows for an analysis of Greek immigrant, Bundjalung, and Anglo expressions of queer and heteronormative masculinities in Australian literature. The role laughter plays in perpetuating, or challenging, masculine constructions is explored in this dissertation through laughter’s socially corrective and socially defiant functions. Socially corrective laughter is an expression of laughter’s superiority theory, as developed by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Henri Bergson. In relation to masculine hegemonies, this dissertation examines socially corrective laughter’s agency in influencing individuals to conform to dominant discourses by ridiculing counter-hegemonic masculine identities. Socially defiant laughter achieves the opposite effect. This dissertation coins the term ‘socially defiant laughter’ to describe a means of laughing at hegemonic structures to resist the discursive control that hegemonic masculinities have over masculine minorities. While each of the masculine constructions explored in this dissertation convey divergent expectations, a communality is revealed in how Tsiolkas’, Lucashenko’s, and Winton’s expressions of laughter regulate the way individuals engage with these expectations. This dissertation thus shows that socially corrective laughter and socially defiant laughter are central to the acceptance or rejection of masculine hegemonies in Loaded, Too Much Lip, and Breath.' (Publication summary)
'I read a lot of books in my job. And over the last several years, I've noticed an intriguing trend. Trees are popping up everywhere.'
'If this book were a sound, it would be the roar of a motorcycle down an empty road; bold, and for the moments when it’s in your path, dominating of all your senses. This book swallowed me and churned me in its guts and, as all good books should, spit me back out, a little bit different.' (Introduction)
'As some recently published works have shown, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers are continuing to embrace fiction-writing as a vessel for speaking truth to power. Constantly branching out into new genres—experimenting, fusing, transforming—there’s a noticeable increase in First Peoples speculative fiction being published in Australia.
With each line across the page, the colonial grip on the continent loosens. Fingers unclasp, story by story. Not all of these stories are from deep time—some are reimagined or even newly born—but they all carry power. Story-trails weave across paper and screen towards a common destination: truth-telling.' (Introduction)
'A rare and powerful voice of a woman who has been poor and rich, with a lived understanding of the fickleness of each.'
'It’s the beginning of a Western: an outlaw on the run from police rides into town with a bag of ill-gotten loot. In Melissa Lucashenko’s wonderful Too Much Lip, the outlaw is Kerry Salter, her ride is a stolen Harley and she’s returned to her hometown, Durrongo in northern New South Wales, because her Pop is dying, her girlfriend’s copped five years for armed robbery – and also because Kerry herself needs a place to lie low. But with her demanding family, crooked politicians, sleazy property developers, dodgy estate agents and a hot, six-packed whitefella leaving her “burbling-jumping-fizzing on the inside”, Kerry soon finds small-town life is one big headache.' (Introduction)
'A stranger rides into a one-horse town on a shiny new motorbike. Cue Ennio Morricone music. Except it’s not a stranger, it’s that skinny dark girl Kerry Salter, back to say goodbye to her Pop before he falls off the perch. The first conversation she has is in the Bundjalung language (translated for our benefit) with three cheeky crows. One bites a dead snake in the head and its fangs get wedged onto the bird’s beak, fastening it shut. Chances are it’ll starve to death, thinks Kerry. ‘The eaters and the eaten of Durrongo, having it out at the crossroads.’' (Introduction)
'Melissa Lucashenko’s new novel Too Much Lip is a dark comedy about ordinary people. Set in the fictional Australian town of Durrongo, stories of generations of an Aboriginal family living on Country are shared through a fast-paced plot. Secrets are unravelled, character flaws are revealed. Traces of settler-colonial violence and intergenerational trauma weave through their lives. What Lucashenko leaves readers with is a sense that the family members will heal themselves by protecting Country and supporting each other.' (Introduction)
'I think it’s fair to say that each year the selected novels on the Miles Franklin shortlist manifest the zeitgeist, reflecting on some of the issues that are troubling society.' (Introduction)
'Too Much Lip joins the other prizewinning volumes in Melissa Lucashenko’s trophy cabinet. Her first-ever novel, Steam Pigs (1997), was shortlisted for or won several major prizes, and in the past two decades her books have racked up 26 awards.' (Introduction)
