Imagen del autor

Julie Janson

Autor de Benevolence

6 Obras 61 Miembros 4 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Créditos de la imagen: Julie Janson

Obras de Julie Janson

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Género
female
Nacionalidad
Australia
Lugares de residencia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Ocupaciones
Teacher
Artist
Playwright
Poet
Premios y honores
Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize (2016)
Judith Wright Poetry Prize (2019)
Biografía breve
Julie Janson is an established Australian playwright and novelist. She is of Aboriginal descent from the Burruberongal clan of the Darug Nation of the Hawkesbury River, NSW.

Miembros

Reseñas

Ten year old Muraging is given by her native father to the Parramatta Native School in Australia. There, they rename her Mary James, try to erase her "barbaric" ways and try turn her into a proper Christian girl. At the age of 16 she runs away, marries and has a child. When her husband sets out to fight, she is lost and returns back to society with her daughter. From there she goes back and forth from "civilization" to native society.

I found this book very hard to get through. It felt very disjointed at times. The characters were hard to get a feel for and did not come across as realistic. I'm sure there are others who will appreciate the book and enjoy it. Unfortunately, this book was not for me.… (más)
 
Denunciada
JanaRose1 | 3 reseñas más. | Jan 6, 2023 |
The author tells us at the end of the book(in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS) that this "is a work of fiction based on historical events of the early years of British invasion and settlement around the Hawkesbury River in Western Sydney, New South Wales.

... Muraging is based on my [the author's] great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas, who was a servant on colonial estates in the Hawkesbury area. The other characters in the novel are inspired by historical figures and [my] imagination, except for the governors who are based on historical documents."

BENEVOLENCE relies heavily on research and the author's family history, and there is no denying the value of the perspective it gives us. The British invasion had a huge impact on the local Aboriginal tribes, not only with the declaration of the policy of "terra nullius" which gave white settlers the right to claim the land, but also with their so-called "benevolent' practices which put aboriginal babies into orphanages where they died, took children away from their families and put them into schools, brought with them diseases like measles, small pox, and the common cold which decimated the populations, and carried out war against those who resisted.

The novel is very graphic in the story that it tells, and will stay with readers well after reading it.
… (más)
½
 
Denunciada
smik | 3 reseñas más. | Oct 16, 2021 |
Somehow, I missed the publication of Julie Janson’s first novel Crocodile Hotel (2015), reviewed here by Alison Broinowski, and I would have missed this second novel too if not for the Facebook group started by Kirsten Krauth. Set up to provide publicity for authors denied the usual launches and tours, the group rejoices in the rather unwieldy name Writers Go Forth. Launch. Promote. Party… but it has alerted me to some books I might otherwise not have heard of, including Benevolence which is a very interesting book indeed.
The ironic title Benevolence signals the truth about paternalistic initiatives set up to ‘benefit’ Indigenous Australians in the colonial era. The novel is a retelling of the early years of European settlement, each chapter beginning with a short paragraph about the ‘progress’ of the colony. But this is no ordinary historical novel: written as a rebuttal of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005), Benevolence is ‘hidden history’ because it reshapes the clichéd narrative by offering the Indigenous perspective on these events. Each chapter continues with episodes in the life of the central character Muraging, born in the early 1800s in the Hawkesbury area. Although she is based on the real-life experiences of Janson’s great-great grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas a symbol of the full impact of colonisation on her people, the Darug.
Muraging is re-named Mary in the Parramatta Native School when her father left her there, believing that she would be ‘better off’. As the novel progresses, we see that this was an act of desperation born of extreme hunger, which was widespread in Indigenous communities as the settlement encroached further and further onto hunting and harvesting grounds. We also see that she is never ‘better off’ because, whether she learns and adapts to European ways or not, there was no way for an Indigenous person to be ‘better off’ because benevolence did not extend to equal rights and opportunities, much less respect for First Nations ownership of the land. At the same time, as Muraging learns to her dismay, her own people often don’t trust her because of her confused loyalties.
Muraging never sees her father again, and all her life, like members of the Stolen Generations today, she feels a sense of loss and abandonment. She doesn’t give up seeking the whereabouts of her family until the bitter end when she learns their fate in the most awful of ways.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/07/06/benevolence-by-julie-janson/
… (más)
 
Denunciada
anzlitlovers | 3 reseñas más. | Jul 8, 2020 |

Premios

Estadísticas

Obras
6
Miembros
61
Valoración
2.9
Reseñas
4
ISBNs
18
Idiomas
1

Tablas y Gráficos