Born: Established: ca. 1956 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
AustLit
Details of Works Taught
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y
Foreign Correspondence
Geraldine Brooks
,
Sydney
:
Anchor
,
1998
Z1182902
1998
single work
autobiography
(taught in 2 units)
From adolescent pen pal in the suburbs of Australia to prize-winning foreign correspondent, Geraldine Brooks presents an intimate and captivating memoir. Born on Bland Street in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longs to discover the vivid place where history happens and culture comes from. As a means of escaping the world around her, she enlists pen pals from around the globe who offer her a window on the hazards of adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. With the aid of her letters, Brooks turns her bedroom into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the barricades of Parisian student protests, the swampy fields of an embattled kibbutz. Brooks goes from the protected environment of a Catholic girls school to the University of Sydney, eventually renting her own flat near the bustling Sydney harbor. She hires on as an intern at The Sydney Morning Herald and then wins a scholarship to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City, where she begins her career as a foreign correspondent. As a writer for The Wall Street Journal, Brooks reports on wars and famines in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Africa, but she never forgets her earlier foreign correspondence. Back in Australia to attend her dying father, she stumbles on her old letters in her parents' basement, and embarks on a journey that tales her around the world on the most meaningful assignment of her career. Her search leads her through Israeli moshavim, Arab souks, medieval French hill towns, Martha's Vineyard fishing shacks, and Manhattan nightclubs. One by one, she finds men and women whose lives have been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of a mysterious and tragic mental illness. It is only from the distance of foreign lands and against the background of alien lives that Brooks finally sees her homeland and her own life clearly. Candid, thoughtful, and compelling, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world. (Publisher description) |
Wish you were here: Workshopping Travel Writing | Flinders University | 2009 (Semester 1) |
y
Foreign Correspondence
Geraldine Brooks
,
Sydney
:
Anchor
,
1998
Z1182902
1998
single work
autobiography
(taught in 2 units)
From adolescent pen pal in the suburbs of Australia to prize-winning foreign correspondent, Geraldine Brooks presents an intimate and captivating memoir. Born on Bland Street in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longs to discover the vivid place where history happens and culture comes from. As a means of escaping the world around her, she enlists pen pals from around the globe who offer her a window on the hazards of adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. With the aid of her letters, Brooks turns her bedroom into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the barricades of Parisian student protests, the swampy fields of an embattled kibbutz. Brooks goes from the protected environment of a Catholic girls school to the University of Sydney, eventually renting her own flat near the bustling Sydney harbor. She hires on as an intern at The Sydney Morning Herald and then wins a scholarship to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City, where she begins her career as a foreign correspondent. As a writer for The Wall Street Journal, Brooks reports on wars and famines in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Africa, but she never forgets her earlier foreign correspondence. Back in Australia to attend her dying father, she stumbles on her old letters in her parents' basement, and embarks on a journey that tales her around the world on the most meaningful assignment of her career. Her search leads her through Israeli moshavim, Arab souks, medieval French hill towns, Martha's Vineyard fishing shacks, and Manhattan nightclubs. One by one, she finds men and women whose lives have been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of a mysterious and tragic mental illness. It is only from the distance of foreign lands and against the background of alien lives that Brooks finally sees her homeland and her own life clearly. Candid, thoughtful, and compelling, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world. (Publisher description) |
Wish you were here: Workshopping Travel Writing | Flinders University | 2008 (Semester 1) |
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
A Home in Fiction
Geraldine Brooks
,
2011
single work
essay
(taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: The Idea of Home 2011; 'The fourth and final of the 2011 Boyer Lectures with prize-winning Australian journalist and novelist Geraldine Brooks. In today's lecture we'll hear about the exact moment she thinks she became a novelist, and about the significance of literature in answering the large questions of who we are and how we should live.' Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ |
Creative Writing | NYU - Sydney | 2015 (Semester 2) |
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y March Geraldine Brooks , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2005 Z1182868 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 2 units) "An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union, which is also capable of barbarism and racism, but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief." -- Book Jacket | Contemporary Approaches to Literature | La Trobe University | 2014 (Semester 1) |
y March Geraldine Brooks , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2005 Z1182868 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 2 units) "An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union, which is also capable of barbarism and racism, but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief." -- Book Jacket | Contemporary Approaches to Literature | La Trobe University | 2016 (Semester 1) |
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y
Year of Wonders : A Novel of the Plague
Geraldine Brooks
,
London
:
Fourth Estate
,
2001
Z900724
2001
single work
novel
historical fiction
(taught in 1 units)
This historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the 'Plague Village,' in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, a tainted bolt of cloth from London carries bubonic infection to this isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners. A visionary young preacher convinces the villagers to seal themselves off in a deadly quarantine to prevent the spread of disease. The story is told through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Anna Frith, the vicar's maid, as she confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna emerges as an unlikely and courageous heroine in the village's desperate fight to save itself. (Source: Trove) |
Past Reading: Contemporary Historical Fictions | Flinders University | 2009 |