'A family memoir charting the political and social changes of Aborigines over the past 40 years. Stan Grant was born in 1963 into the Wiradjuri people - a tribe of warriors who occupied the vast territory of central and southwestern New South Wales. For 100 years the Wiradjuri waged a war against European invasion and settlement. This war has largely been ignored by historians and politicians but will be burnt into the hearts and minds of the Wiradjuri forever. By the time Grant was born, the war against invasion had largely been lost and remnants of the Wiradjuri were scattered among mission camps and the fringes of rural towns. Then the Wiradjuri people found themselves waging a new war - this time against alcoholism, poverty, abuse and neglect. It was against this backdrop that the Grant family waged its very own struggle: a life-and-death battle for survival.' (Source: publisher's website)
'Let’s start with a portrait. The year is 1993. The book is My Kind of People. Its author is Wayne Coolwell, a journalist. Who are Coolwell’s kind of people? Ernie Dingo, for one. Sandra Eades. Noel Pearson. Archie Roach. And there, sandwiched between opera singer Maroochy Barambah and dancer Linda Bonson is Stan Grant, aged thirty. Circa 1993, Grant is a breakthrough television presenter and journalist whose mother remembers him coming home to read the newspaper while the other kids went to play footy. ‘[T]here was a maturity and a sense of order about him,’ Coolwell writes. The order belies his parents’ life of ‘tin humpies, dirt floors, and usually only the one bed for all the kids in the family’. They are unable to afford a football (Grant relies on rolled-up socks). His sister, one of three siblings, sleeps on a fold-out table. In one house, they have to chase away a group of occupying emus before they can move in.' (Introduction)
'Let’s start with a portrait. The year is 1993. The book is My Kind of People. Its author is Wayne Coolwell, a journalist. Who are Coolwell’s kind of people? Ernie Dingo, for one. Sandra Eades. Noel Pearson. Archie Roach. And there, sandwiched between opera singer Maroochy Barambah and dancer Linda Bonson is Stan Grant, aged thirty. Circa 1993, Grant is a breakthrough television presenter and journalist whose mother remembers him coming home to read the newspaper while the other kids went to play footy. ‘[T]here was a maturity and a sense of order about him,’ Coolwell writes. The order belies his parents’ life of ‘tin humpies, dirt floors, and usually only the one bed for all the kids in the family’. They are unable to afford a football (Grant relies on rolled-up socks). His sister, one of three siblings, sleeps on a fold-out table. In one house, they have to chase away a group of occupying emus before they can move in.' (Introduction)
