'Lesley Williams was forced to leave the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family at a young age to work as a domestic servant. Apart from pocket money, Lesley never saw her wages – they were kept ‘safe’ for her and for countless others just like her. She was taught not to question her life, until desperation made her start to wonder, where is all that money she earned? And so began a nine-year journey for answers.'
'Inspired by her mother’s quest, a teenage Tammy Williams entered a national writing competition with an essay about injustice. The winning prize took Tammy and Lesley to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and ultimately to the United Nations in Geneva. Along the way, they found courage they never thought they had and friendship in the most unexpected places.' (Source: On-line)
'In a 2019 article in The Guardian, Gomeroi poet, essayist and legal scholar Alison Whittaker declared ‘Blak literature is in a golden age. Our white audiences, who are majorities in both literary industry and buying power, are deep in an unseen crisis of how to deal with it.’ This essay tries to understand what constitutes the crisis, how settler readers, like me, might see it and emerge from it, and what some of the stakes are. I consider the reading crisis in relation to the dominant model for reading testimonial literature established by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, which positions the reader/listener as empathetic co-owner of the speaker’s trauma and powerful enabler of their testimony. Following Libby Porter, I contend settlers can progress to ‘more mature ways of responding to the invitation to a sovereign relationship.’ I discuss three strategies settler readers can implement to this end: focus on the presence of the writer, position themselves as outsiders wanting to listen and recognise themselves as implicated subjects. I ground the discussion in the 2015 life-history text Not Just Black and White: A Conversation between a Mother and Daughter by Murri women Lesley Williams and Tammy Williams.' (Publication abstract)
'Not Just Black and White is a powerful true story of the lives of two Aboriginal women. Written by a mother and daughter, the book tells an important part of Queensland’s history and was the winner of the prestigious David Unaipon Award in 2014. On reading the book, I was reminded of other Aboriginal women’s life stories, such as Rita Huggins’ and Jackie Huggins’ 1994 narrative Aunty Rita and Ruth Hegarty’s Is That You, Ruthie? in 2003. These narratives also tell of Aboriginal women’s resilience and resistance to colonial oppression in Cherbourg, Queensland, located approximately 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.' (Introduction)
'Not Just Black and White is a powerful true story of the lives of two Aboriginal women. Written by a mother and daughter, the book tells an important part of Queensland’s history and was the winner of the prestigious David Unaipon Award in 2014. On reading the book, I was reminded of other Aboriginal women’s life stories, such as Rita Huggins’ and Jackie Huggins’ 1994 narrative Aunty Rita and Ruth Hegarty’s Is That You, Ruthie? in 2003. These narratives also tell of Aboriginal women’s resilience and resistance to colonial oppression in Cherbourg, Queensland, located approximately 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.' (Introduction)
'In a 2019 article in The Guardian, Gomeroi poet, essayist and legal scholar Alison Whittaker declared ‘Blak literature is in a golden age. Our white audiences, who are majorities in both literary industry and buying power, are deep in an unseen crisis of how to deal with it.’ This essay tries to understand what constitutes the crisis, how settler readers, like me, might see it and emerge from it, and what some of the stakes are. I consider the reading crisis in relation to the dominant model for reading testimonial literature established by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, which positions the reader/listener as empathetic co-owner of the speaker’s trauma and powerful enabler of their testimony. Following Libby Porter, I contend settlers can progress to ‘more mature ways of responding to the invitation to a sovereign relationship.’ I discuss three strategies settler readers can implement to this end: focus on the presence of the writer, position themselves as outsiders wanting to listen and recognise themselves as implicated subjects. I ground the discussion in the 2015 life-history text Not Just Black and White: A Conversation between a Mother and Daughter by Murri women Lesley Williams and Tammy Williams.' (Publication abstract)
