Powerful family story: ‘Tears of Strangers’ by Stan Grant

The title of this extraordinary memoir is from a Russian proverb: The tears of strangers are nothing but water. These words echoed in my mind as I read this story of his family, that is also a powerful and sometimes challenging examination of the concept of race, of Australian history, and the author’s own position within the black and white worlds of modern Australia. It’s also a call for empathy: for Australians of all backgrounds to learn and understand the historical events that have shaped us all, and to feel more than indifference at the past and present suffering of others.

It is beautifully written, canvassing his own family’s roots in both black and white Australia and the complications and challenges that involves.

He is searingly honest, writing as he does about his relationships with family members, his search for truth, and his hopes for a better future for all First Nations people. The narrative does not skirt around issues such as violence, alcohol and drug use, poverty, incarceration. He describes the so-called ‘Bathurst Wars’ and other conflicts where whites and indigenous communities clashed over encroaching white settlements, and the sickening violence that occured there and in many other parts of the country.

He describes indigenous heroes of history and more recent years, tracing the steady thread of resistance since white settlement. Contrary to past assumptions by many, Aboriginal people did not meekly submit to colonisation. We should all know more about these figures from the past, who were at the time regarded by white settlers and authorities as troublesome, criminals and threats, but to their own people were freedom fighters.

As a way to learn about these and other aspects of Australia past and present, I can highly recommend Tears of Strangers. It’s focus on the micro, on positioning one person and his family within the context of wider events and the past, allows readers to read with empathy.

Part of this search means unlocking secrets, always painful and often tragic. I hesitate now as I stare at a blank page that I know I will soon reveal perhaps more than I would like to. But the truth demands courage. I hope only one thing: that one day Aborigines can be free of the all too painful choices our blackness has forced upon us.

Tears of Strangers (loc 8% ebook version)

Tears of Strangers was published by HarperCollins in 2002; the edition I read published 2016.