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Cover image courtesy of QUP
y separately published work icon Purple Threads selected work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Purple Threads
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Purple Threads is a humorous collection of rural yarns by a gifted storyteller. Jeanine Leane grew up on a sheep farm near Gundagai, and the stories are based on her childhood experiences in a house full of fiercely independent women. In between Aunty Boo's surveillance of the local farmers' sheep dip alliance and Aunty Bubby's fireside tales of the Punic Wars, the women offer sage advice to their nieces on growing up as Indigenous girls in a white country town.

The cast of strong Aboriginal women in a rural setting gives a fascinating insight into both Aboriginal and rural life. Farming is not an easy pursuit for anyone, but the Aunties take all the challenges in their stride, facing torrential rain, violent neighbours and injured dogs with an equal mix of humour and courage. Purple Threads uses an irreverent style reminiscent of Gayle Kennedy's Me, Antman & Fleabag and Marie Munkara's Every Secret Thing, but offers a unique perspective on the Australian country lifestyle.' Source: Publisher's website

Exhibitions

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Notes

  • Author's note: 'A collection of intertwined short stories that all form part of a bigger story.'
  • Dedication: For the women who raised and encouraged my sister and me, and for Peter, Jerome, Eugene and Hugo - the purple threads in my life.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 2010

Other Formats

  • Also e-book.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

‘Like All Change, It Happens in the Margins’ : Joan Fleming in Conversation with Jeanine Leane Joan Fleming (interviewer), Jeanine Leane (interviewer), 2023 single work interview
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , no. 109 2023;

'Jeanine Leane and I met in the Spring of 2022 to plot this interview over coffee. Jeanine has a quick, ferocious intelligence that moves associatively, while her fingers make languid circles in her hair. She is fine-boned and extremely upright. The day we met, she wore a fitted, double-breasted greatcoat with military detailing that flared at the waist. She told me she picked it up in Cambridge, England, on a day she was there as an invited speaker. After the talk, she said, while walking along the rigidly manicured paths of the Cambridge campus, she stopped to gesture at a flowering bush and was instantly policed by a porter, one of those grounds-guards in bowler hats who keep non-fellows from walking on the grass. ‘Do you know what day it is?’ Jeanine said to the porter. ‘It’s invasion day today, in so-called Australia. I’ll point at any flower I please.’' (Introduction)

Writing the Aboriginal Women’s Auto/Biographical Experience : Jackie Huggins and Jeanine Leane Ishmeet Kaur , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Claiming Space for Australian Women's Writing 2017; (p. 275-289)

'Autobiographies by Aboriginal Women writers have gradually emerged for almost three decades now. Varied and interesting experiments are visible in the life-writing form by Aboriginal writers. In an attempt to write accounts of their own life and experiences, Aboriginal writers have employed different narrative techniques and methods. This chapter is a case study of life narratives by two contemporary Aboriginal women writers Jackie Huggins (Auntie Rita) and Jeanine Leane (Purple Threads.) The focus is on the different methods of writing while “recalling the past”. Interestingly, these narratives create “matriarchal spaces” of expression being written by women who are recalling either their mother’s experiences or Aunties’ stories. The chapter makes an attempt to relocate this idea of history from a feminist perspective.'

Source: Abstract.

Australia in Three Books Anita Heiss , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 14-17)
Literature as Protest and Solace : The Verse of Alf Taylor Danica Cerce , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 16 2015; (p. 25-33)

'Although Australian indigenous poetry is often overtly polemical and politically committed, any reading which analyzes it as mere propaganda is too narrow to do it justice. By presenting the verse of Alf Taylor collected in Singer Songwriter (1992) and Winds (1994) and discussing it in the context of the wider social and cultural milieu of the author, my essay aims to show the thematic richness of indigenous poetic expression. Indigenous poets have, on the one hand, undertaken the responsibility to strive for social and political equality and foster within their communities the very important concept that indigenous peoples can survive only as a community and a nation (McGuiness). On the other hand, they have produced powerful self-revelatory accounts of their own mental and emotional interior, which urges us to see their careers in a perspective much wider than that of social chroniclers and rebels.' (Publication abstract)

Review : Purple Threads and Mazin Grace Joelene Pynnonen , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 8 no. 2 2014;

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story ; Mazin' Grace Dylan Coleman , 2011 single work novel
Aunties Delight as Sunny Finds Her Cultural Identity Helena Kadmos , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 18-19 February 2012; (p. 21)

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story
The Ties that Bind Ian McFarlane , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 19 May 2012; (p. 21)

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story
Review: Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane Anita Heiss , 2007- single work review
— Appears in: Anita Heiss

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story
Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane: Book Review Karenlee Thompson , 2009- single work review
— Appears in: Karenlee Thompson 2009-;

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story
Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane Lisa Hill , 2009- single work review
— Appears in: ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 2009-;

— Review of Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , 2010 selected work short story
Purple Patch for Winning Author Mahala Strohfeldt , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 8 September no. 484 2010; (p. 4)
'Ms. Leane has just taken out the Unpublished Indigenous Writer David Unaipon Award at the 2010 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for her first-time novel. It has been described as a 'sad hilarious and moving yarn' but more than that she says, it is a collection of poignant memories of her growing up years.' Koori Mail no.484, 8 September 2010
More Prizes for That Deadman Dance 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 21 September no. 510 2011; (p. 21)
'The phenomenal success of Aboriginal author Kim Scott's latest book prompted a somewhat contentious question at the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this month...'
Canberra Writer on C'wealth Shortlist Gia Metherell , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 26 April 2012; (p. 5)
Aussies Are on the Page Marc McEvoy , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 29 April 2012; (p. 19)
‘Look What They Done to This Ground, Girl!’ : Country and Identity in Jeanine Leane’s Purple Threads Helena Kadmos , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;

'Purple Threads, by Jeanine Leane, embodies country. Images of the land are physically and emotionally evoked in the individual stories that make up this short story cycle, running through the stories as delicately as strands of purple wisteria and as powerfully as the Murrumbidgee River flows and then surges through the countryside where they are set. In this article I aim to demonstrate how two features of the short story cycle - the independence and interrelatedness of the stories in the cycle, and the longer story within the cycle - help to convey the multifarious connections people can have to their country, family and the places they call home.

Leane draws on her own experiences to articulate formative incidents in a young girl’s life that explore what it meant to be an Aboriginal girl growing up in central NSW in the 1960s and ’70s. The development of Sunny’s cultural and ethnic identity is inseparable from her relationship with country, nurtured by her Nan and Aunties’ love and respect for the land, and challenged by a Dorothy-esque journey that carries her far away to a foreign country in search of family, and back again to the place she feels most loved and secure.

'This article thus explores the importance of country in Sunny’s growing awareness of her identity, and forms part of a broader project on the representations of women’s lives in the short story cycle.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 10 Sep 2024 14:18:47
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