'In this unique and highly entertaining autobiography, Alf Taylor chronicles his life growing up in the infamous New Norcia Mission, north of Perth in the fifties and sixties.
'At once darkly humorous and achingly tragic, God, The Devil and Me tells of the life and desperation of the young children forced into the care of the Spanish Nuns and Brothers who ran the Mission. Their lives made up of varying degrees of cruelty and punishments, these children were the 'little black devils' that God and religion forgot. Written with an acerbic and brutal wit, Alf intersperses dark childhood memories with a Monty Pythonesque retelling of the Bible, in which Peter is an alcoholic and Judas is a good guy.
'As a child, underfed, poorly clothed and missing his family, Alf sought refuge in the library in the company of Shakespeare and Michelangelo. He writes with joy about the camaraderie of the boys, their love of sport and their own company, but also notes that many descended into despair upon leaving. Most died early. Alf Taylor is one of the 'lucky ones'.
Source : publisher's blurb
'Many books have been written about Australia's Stolen Generations. There have been books of history and scholarship, of course, but among the most powerful and affecting books are the numerous works of life writing. Certainly, the best-known book about the Stolen Generations would have to [End Page 390] be Doris Pilkington's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, published in 1996 and adapted as a film in 2002. Pilkington was a member of the Stolen Generations, but Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of her mother's and aunts' escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, where they had been taken after being removed from their families. It is, therefore, an unusual book for being a secondhand account but told by a member of the Stolen Generations. It is also unusual for being Pilkington's second book; her first was a novel titled Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter (1991), which won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer. Among the many other works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations, it is more typical for these books to be an author's first—or even their only—book.' (Introduction)
'Many books have been written about Australia's Stolen Generations. There have been books of history and scholarship, of course, but among the most powerful and affecting books are the numerous works of life writing. Certainly, the best-known book about the Stolen Generations would have to [End Page 390] be Doris Pilkington's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, published in 1996 and adapted as a film in 2002. Pilkington was a member of the Stolen Generations, but Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of her mother's and aunts' escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, where they had been taken after being removed from their families. It is, therefore, an unusual book for being a secondhand account but told by a member of the Stolen Generations. It is also unusual for being Pilkington's second book; her first was a novel titled Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter (1991), which won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer. Among the many other works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations, it is more typical for these books to be an author's first—or even their only—book.' (Introduction)
