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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
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
Notes
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Author's note: 'A collection of intertwined short stories that all form part of a bigger story.'
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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
Other Formats
- Also e-book.
Works about this Work
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Writing the Aboriginal Women’s Auto/Biographical Experience : Jackie Huggins and Jeanine Leane
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.
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Australia in Three Books
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
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)
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Review : Purple Threads and Mazin Grace
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 8 no. 2 2014;
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story ; Mazin Grace 2011 single work novel -
Home Talk
2014
single work
autobiography
— Appears in: Ngapartji Ngapartji, in Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia 2014; (p. 211-225)'This is a story about how I came to write. In 2010, when I was in my late 40s,
I completed a PhD and wrote a volume of poetry and a novel. This is a story. It is not an essay or an article or a treatise or anything else that ‘scholarly’ writing is called in western literature. This is a story because Aboriginal people live for and by stories. This is the story about how I came to write all that I did and how I came to find my place and my voice in a nation that until the early 1970s was dominated by an official White Australia Policy. It can be argued that, even in the twenty-first century, vestiges of the ‘white nation’ still prevail.' (Introduction)
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Aunties Delight as Sunny Finds Her Cultural Identity
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 18-19 February 2012; (p. 21)
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story -
The Ties that Bind
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 19 May 2012; (p. 21)
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story -
Review: Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane
2007-
single work
review
— Appears in: Anita Heiss
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story -
Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane: Book Review
2009-
single work
review
— Appears in: Karenlee Thompson 2009-;
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story -
Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane
2009-
single work
review
— Appears in: ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 2009-;
— Review of Purple Threads 2010 selected work short story -
Purple Patch for Winning Author
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
2012
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 26 April 2012; (p. 5) -
Aussies Are on the Page
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
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)
Awards
- 2012 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Indigenous Writing
- 2012 shortlisted Commonwealth Book Prize
- 2010 winner Queensland Literary Awards — Unpublished Indigenous Writer : David Unaipon Award
- Gundagai area, Southeastern NSW, New South Wales,
- Country towns,