Cirrus@Austlit

'THERE ARE SMALL things that have changed since I was told I have cancer.

'My mother, with whom I’m very close but in a non-­sentimental kind of way, has started to send me emojis in her text messages – something she’s never done before. She’s not an effusive, emoji-­using person, and I like and admire that about her. The expanding pink hearts at the end of her messages feel out of place. She has also started to text things like You have a beautiful smile in response to photos I’ve sent her – again, completely out of character, and worrying because to behave out of character means that something has happened to knock you out of yourself.' (Introduction)

'THE FIRST TIME I tried to cry on cue, in a workshop intended for aspiring young actors, it did not work. It was 2006; I was eighteen years old and performing a rather ambitiousmonologue from Andrew Bovell’s After Dinner,in which forty-something Monika describes finding her husband dead in the living room. Naturally, dead husbands require real tears, and I assumed unashamed effort was the key to achieving them. I listened to sad music before I performed. I laboured every word. I chased – begged – the emotion like a hysterical teenage girl running after an ex-­lover at midnight. JUST COME HERE. PLEASE. By the end of the monologue, I was so frustrated I couldn’t make myself cry that I began to cry. When I finished, the teacher said, ‘I think that play is supposed to be a comedy.’'  (Introduction)

'THE DAY OUR puppy was due to arrive, my husband and I cleaned our apartment well enough to receive a foreign dignitary, or child services. When the pet taxi arrived, the driver thrust with one hand a small quivering creature at me – no blanket – and with the other a wad of paperwork. I handed the creature to my husband, who took him into our warm bedroom and prepared him a bowl of food. I entered the room to witness the puppy scarfing the food whole, like a seagull. My husband and I looked at each other. Then the dog regurgitated a mound of wet, pink barf. As soon as it was out of his mouth, he leapt on it again and wolfed it down. Again, the food poured from his mouth, and when it hit the floor, he went to eat it. I scooped him up in my hands to put an end to the madness and looked at him closely.'  (Introduction)

'I WOULD LIKE to love my mother without feeling, to perform the rituals and duties of filial care without the risk to heart of hurt. Mine, I am ashamed to recognise, is a thin love that loves small, loves just a little bit. Love for someone like me – a middle-­aged, middle-­class, privileged woman with a comfortable life and a job I find endlessly fulfilling – should be easy. But, like so many of my female friends, I am afflicted with Asian Daughter Syndrome, and after a lifetime of being a second mother to my family, I can’t shut up the loathsome whiny voice of the self-­pitying child in my head, squatting behind my left ear, hand out and begging for visibility, wanting ‘mother’ to be a verb as well as a noun to me.'  (Introduction)

'SHE CROSSED MY path one afternoon in 1995. I was sitting at a bus stop on Elizabeth Street in Meanjin/Brisbane, wearing glittery fishnet stockings, Dr Martens boots, a leopard-­print skirt, a studded spiky collar and a shirt that read ‘Pretty Vacant’. She rolled past me on her skateboard. I’d often seen her at gigs – she embodied the spirit Kathleen Hanna sang about in Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’. She was a punk I admired.'  (Introduction)

'IN THE EARLY hours of the morning, the boy turns to his mother. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story, Mum?’

'She stretches, opens her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she says. She looks at him, lying on his back, bathed in the buttery light of dawn. She tries to stay awake so that she will remember. Later she will check the time on her phone and see that he woke her before six.'  (Introduction)

'A FEW WEEKS into the first draft of what eventually became The Wonder of Little Things, I said to my co-­author, Vince Copley – whose life story it is – ‘I don’t know whether I can do this.’ This being to turn the many stories he was telling me into a book.

'On the other end of the phone, Vince – a Ngadjuri Elder – said, ‘I have every faith and trust in you, right. It doesn’t even exist that you’re not gonna do a good job.’' (Introduction)

'LEOPOLDO IS AT least three tacos in before I start talking with him. Mouth full, he tells me, ‘El de huazontle es exquisito,’ raising his hand to the taquero for another.

'It’s a little before 8 am, 19 September 2019. I’m sitting on a broken plastic chair, having just returned from watching the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, hold the annual minute’s silence to honour those killed by the earthquakes that have struck the city over the years. I try the huazontle. It is exquisite. I throw back a few, because I’ll be attending protests and memorial services all day and won’t get another chance to eat until dinner (too busy commemorating events I never experienced). Leopoldo, who has endured all the city’s recent major earthquakes, tells me he’ll participate in the commemorations, particularly the yearly evacuation drill – that it’s an obligation, like a civil duty. Now in his fifties, he has participated in these events since they began after the city’s devastating 1985 earthquake. But, as if memory alone were insufficient for reminding him of the past, he blows cigarette smoke towards the traffic alongside us and says, ‘It’s not that I just want to remember. I want to not forget.’'  (Introduction)

'THE IDEAS EXPRESSED in the above statements – plucked from myriad ‘official’ examples – will likely be familiar to readers. They reflect two key assumptions that permeate the provision of maternal and infant care in Australia and throughout the Global North. The first is that breastfeeding constitutes the optimal foundation for a child’s development. The second is that a mother and baby share an ‘inseparable’ dyadic attachment. These assumptions are presented as ahistorical universal truths. In fact, they are radically new.'  (Introduction)

'MY FATHER USED to say to me, ‘If you’re not into sport, you’re not really Welsh.’ It was not something he ever said to my sisters, with its connotations of manliness; just me. However, at thirteen, the only sport I was devoted to was surfing. But surfing was not a sport he could recognise. Not a team game, nor endemically Welsh – it looked to him effeminate, and the deeper I got into it the more he distanced himself from me.'  (Introduction)

'IT WAS A difficult parting that I have struggled to articulate for many years. I did not want to be kind and donate my red double stroller to the charity shop at the maternity hospital. I accept that this admission probably makes me some kind of monster, but if I give you the reasons then you might understand how important it was to me at a time in my life that was unlike any other before it.'  (Introduction)

'Across nearly five decades, Richard Glover and Debra Oswald have been spinning the stuff of everyday life – family dynamics, growing pains, relationships, the ever-­amusing escapades of kids, pets, grandchildren and in-­laws – into stories for page, stage, screen and airwaves. For Debra, those stories take the form of incisive and sharply observed drama and fiction, from novels and award-­winning plays to her smash-­hit TV show Offspring, which lured more than a million viewers for its 2013 finale. For Richard, it’s real life that delivers the entertainment goods: his long-­running humour column, daily radio show and non-­fiction books such as the bestselling The Land Before Avocado find levity and insight in seemingly ordinary moments.

'These two seasoned storytellers also happen to be a couple, and each has been there for the creative triumphs and tribulations of the other. In this conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed, Debra and Richard talk to Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver about the emotional acrobatics of writing for a living – and living with a writer.' (Introduction)

'Anne Zahalka has been making viewers look twice for nearly four decades. One of Australia’s most respected photo-­media artists, her practice explores shifting notions of Australian identity, challenges cultural stereotypes and highlights the changing ­relationship between people and the natural world. Back in 1995, Zahalka decided to turn her gaze towards a more personal subject. Her series Open House, recently exhibited at a major retrospective of the artist’s work, is a collection of tableaux vivants that depict Zahalka’s friends in the interiors of their homes, surrounded by the décor and detritus of their daily lives. In this interview, Zahalka talks to Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver about our intimate connections to objects and the strange temporal magic of the photographic medium.' (Introduction)

'Debra Dank wasn’t planning to write a book. But in 2022, her PhD in narrative theory and semiotics was published as We Come with This Place, a lyrical and richly evocative account of Country, family and ancestors. What began as an academic project – one that Dank imagined only her children would read – went on to captivate audiences across the nation and collect a slew of top literary prizes.

'It’s easy to see why. Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman, an experienced educator, a partner, a mother and a grandmother – and while all these life experiences are present in her book, its narrative threads stretch much further. We Come with This Place weaves together a multiplicity of voices, entities and stories, all of which reflect the collectivism of Aboriginal culture. In this interview, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Dank talks to Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver about the strength of community, the solace of stories and the ever-­present salience of the past.'  (Introduction)