image of person or book cover 4805010044787482621.png
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Homesickness : A Memoir single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Homesickness : A Memoir
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'She tells me she’s returning to every childhood home she lived in, and all the memories she can’t leave behind.

'The past, she says, it kind of owns me.

'I want permission to write her life while she lives it. I want to know why she is returning to the past at this stage of her life and why she can’t escape memories from decades ago. I want to know many things.

'But nobody writes a nobody’s life, she says.

'I want to reassure her. You’ve kept so many secrets from childhood and hidden from the world for so long, I say. And you’re not a nobody.

'In this memoir, through both her words and illustrations, Janine Mikosza revisits the fourteen houses she lived in before turning eighteen. Homesickness explores how we remember, the myriad ways a child’s trauma lives on in an adult’s body, responsibility versus accountability, and the shift from silence to finding a voice. It is about finally being believed when speaking the truth, and the consequences of a decades-long silence.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  •  Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Ultimo, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,: Ultimo Press , 2022 .
      image of person or book cover 4805010044787482621.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 256p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published May 2022.
      ISBN: 9781761150234

Works about this Work

Fernanda Dahlstrom Reviews Homesickness by Janine Mikosza Fernanda Dahlstrom , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 28 2022;

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography

'Homesickness is a memoir that strives, as Emily Dickenson urged, to tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Memoirs are reconstructions that seek to capture the voice and perspective of one or more of the writer’s younger selves. Their truth claims are subject to dispute, challenge, and counterclaim. But Melbourne artist and sociologist Janine Mikosza takes a more oblique approach to her subject and the result is a soaring view of the emotional trajectory of her life and of the philosophical questions that its telling raises. When Homesickness opens, she is having cake with a nervous and sometimes hostile woman who tells her to call her Jin as ‘It’s better than Janine.’ After she gets permission from the woman to write her story, it becomes clear that the two women are different iterations of the same person: the narrator is the memoirist, while Jin is the woman who lived her childhood trauma and is still struggling to process it. The book unfolds as a dialogue between author and protagonist, with the two often at cross-purposes, as Mikosza struggles to balance writing about the past with recovering from it.' (Introduction)

Readers Are Hungry for Stories about Trauma. But What Happens to the Authors? Imogen Dewey , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 19 November 2022;
Books Roundup Ellen Cregan , Danny Sun Baulch , Beau Windon , Bryant Apolonio , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , June 2022;

— Review of The Eulogy Jackie Bailey , 2022 single work novel ; Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography ; This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Basin Scott McCulloch , 2022 single work novel
Homeward Bound Oliver Reeson , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 May 2022; (p. 16)

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography
Janine Mikosza : Homesickness Felicity Plunkett , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 May 2022;

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography

'Two women meet in a cafe. One asks permission to write the other’s life “while she lives it”. The writer is a compassionate and observant interlocutor. Her subject, Jin, is wary and evasive. Their conversation examines words survivors of violence live with: memory, forgetting, blame, denial, doubt.' 

‘Exquisite’, ‘Extraordinary’, ‘Insightful’ : The Best Australian Books Out in May Steph Harmon , Sian Cain , Lucy Clark , Steve Dow , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 2 May 2022;

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography ; Bedtime Story Chloe Hooper , 2022 single work autobiography ; Here Goes Nothing Steve Toltz , 2022 single work novel ; Sunbathing : A Novel Isobel Beech , 2022 single work novel
How to Write about Broken Trust in a Memoir? Janine Mikosza’s Homesickness Maps Trauma in Bold New Ways Marina Deller , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 16 May 2022;

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography

'I am accustomed to reading difficult things. I affectionately refer to my research as “morbid” and I have indeed read many heartbreaking, dark books.' (Introduction)

Janine Mikosza : Homesickness Felicity Plunkett , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 May 2022;

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography

'Two women meet in a cafe. One asks permission to write the other’s life “while she lives it”. The writer is a compassionate and observant interlocutor. Her subject, Jin, is wary and evasive. Their conversation examines words survivors of violence live with: memory, forgetting, blame, denial, doubt.' 

Homeward Bound Oliver Reeson , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 May 2022; (p. 16)

— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography
Books Roundup Ellen Cregan , Danny Sun Baulch , Beau Windon , Bryant Apolonio , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , June 2022;

— Review of The Eulogy Jackie Bailey , 2022 single work novel ; Homesickness : A Memoir Janine Mikosza , 2022 single work autobiography ; This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Basin Scott McCulloch , 2022 single work novel
Readers Are Hungry for Stories about Trauma. But What Happens to the Authors? Imogen Dewey , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 19 November 2022;
Last amended 3 Jan 2023 07:01:56
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