AustLit
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UQ Stories for Reconciliation Meeting #9
Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip
UPDATE: The March 25 session will now be run via Zoom.
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://uqz.zoom.us/u/aeJguIMisY
Or iPhone one-tap (Australia Toll): +61280152088,464296009#
Or Telephone:
Dial: +61 2 8015 2088
Meeting ID: 464 296 009
International numbers available: https://uqz.zoom.us/u/aeJguIMisY
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Cover image courtesy of publisher.See full AustLit entry'Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger.
'Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things – her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley.
'Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border.
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See full AustLit entryMelissa Lucashenko is an award-winning novelist who lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. She was born and grew up in Brisbane. After working as a barmaid, delivery driver and karate instructor, Melissa received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University, graduating in 1990.
Her writing explores the stories and passions of ordinary Australians with particular reference to Aboriginal people and others living around the margins of the first world. Melissa has been an independent screenplay assessor for Screen NSW and Screen Tasmania, and a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council.
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255198assertionThe Bundjalung people (also spelt as Bunjalung, Banjalang and Bandjalang) are the original custodians of northern coastal areas of New South Wales, stretching from Grafton on the Clarence River in the south to the Logan River in the north and inland as far as the Great Dividing Range at Tenterfield and Warwick.
This trail introduces Bundjalung writers, storytellers, and works.
The Bundjalung language belongs to the Pama-Nyungan family of Australian languages. At the time of first contact with Europeans there were up to 20 dialects of the language, which included the Wahlubal, Yugambeh, Birrihn, Barryugil, Bandjalang, Wudjebal, Wiyabal, Wuhyabal, Minyangbal, Gidhabal, Galibal, and Ngarrahngbal dialects.
Click here to explore AustLit's Bundjalung trail, and discover an array of Bundjalung writers, storytellers, and their works.
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See full AustLit entry
'Melissa Lucashenko’s new novel Too Much Lip is a dark comedy about ordinary people. Set in the fictional Australian town of Durrongo, stories of generations of an Aboriginal family living on Country are shared through a fast-paced plot. Secrets are unravelled, character flaws are revealed. Traces of settler-colonial violence and intergenerational trauma weave through their lives. What Lucashenko leaves readers with is a sense that the family members will heal themselves by protecting Country and supporting each other.
(...more)Karen Wyld reviews Too Much Lip in the essay ‘Taking Back the Island’.
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Claire Nichols interviews Mellisa Lucashenko about her latest novel Too Much Lip on ABC's Radio National program The Book Show, available to listen here.
Throughout, Lucashenko shares her thoughts on underclass poverty, Aboriginal language, and keeping a fighting spirit within a discriminatory political climate.
'If there's a message in the book, that's it, if you don't fight you lose. And superficially it looks like it's a book about an adventure in the criminal underclass, and it is that…if you dig down another layer it’s about intergenerational trauma in an Aboriginal family across three generations or four generations, but if you dig below that again it’s actually a book about class'.
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The Value of Deep Listening
Judy Atkinson speaks of how listening to Indigenous Australian stories of intergenerational grief and trauma is part of the healing process. Within, she offers that listening comes with responsibility and confronting the violence head-on.
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In Sinking Below Sight, Melissa Lucashenko intimately observes the lived experience of herself and three women in the socioeconomically underclass region referred to as the 'Black Belt' by Brisbane-based Aboriginal people. With these vivid portraits, Lucashenko underscores the potential government policy has to effect violence-driven cyclic poverty.
Read it here.
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