A (sometimes confronting) personal and social history: ‘A Particular Woman’ by Ashley Dawson-Damer
I may have only two things in common with the author of this memoir: we are both women, and have both experienced grief and trauma in our lives. I can think of a long list of ways in which we are different: family background, political views, life experiences. So it’s perhaps not too surprising that for much of the time while reading A Particular Woman I felt a certain alienation from its author – or at least, from her representation of herself. Having said that, the book is an interesting read, partly because it’s a journey through Australian life in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s and up to the present time.
I’ll start with the blurb on the back cover:
Embracing the excitement and turbulence of sixties Sydney, Ashley is set to make her mark amid uni classes filled with ambitious young males. She imagines her future with a successful career, husband, and a house full of children.
But life is never quite that easy.As a university graduate with a degree in economics (unusual for a woman at that time) Ashley travels to London and Canada, marries, and lives with her new husband as an expat in the Philippines, Singapore, Nigeria and Argentina. Later, as a single parent, she supports her young children through work as a model; eventually find love and security and a country lifestyle, before venturing into a role in the arts world as a member of various boards. Throughout the years she comes up against tragedy, hardship and profound grief.
I admit to a certain amount of distaste for aspects of her life, or at least for the way she describes them. She recounts jobs with a large tobacco company with no apparent reflection on the evils of this industry. Similarly, her descriptions of her life as an expat in countries with high levels of poverty hint at a limited awareness of the position of relative privilege held by monied, white youngsters in countries previously colonised and often pillaged by the West. Several interactions between various friends and some local people struck me as shameful, but are recounted by the author with no apology or reflection.
Dawson-Damer seemed to move through the world as a young, blonde, beautiful woman with an apparent line up of men ogling her and wanting to take her to bed. I found this uncomfortable reading.
However, I decided to regard this memoir as a first hand account of the times in which she lived. Australia, as with much of the world, was undergoing a period of great change; upheavals as economies and societies transitioned from the post-war era to a modern day understanding of issues like imperialism, racism, and sexism. As an example: while completing her economics degree, it was still the custom to hold a ‘Miss Economics’ competition in the faculty! And as the author puts it:
Work was opening up for me, and yet women in the workplace had to be careful. We knew not to catch lifts alone with certain men; there’s no denying it, in those days we were fair game.
A Particular Woman p36Dawson-Damer’s life did not play out as expected. She was to endure loss and hardship and several transformations of her own life before reaching a place of acceptance and stability. I warmed to her more as she recounted these difficult times and the way she dealt with them. I could admire her hard work, tenacity and commitment to whatever challenges she set herself. Her philosophy is best summed up in these words:
We must celebrate life. Not just our own, but the life we have with others. Most of us are going to have difficult times dished up to us. The awful times are balanced out by the good times. If we are lucky, we will survive the tragedies that might occur and go on to be stronger…Suffering mellows us. It makes us humbler and wiser. It adds steel melded with compassion to our strength.
A Particular Woman p235The book is illustrated with a collection of photographs from different times in her life. I would have enjoyed knowing more about the people and places in some of these, but they were a welcome addition, helping to bring her story alive.
A Particular Woman is a story of resilience against a backdrop of a changing Australia, and would hold plenty to interest readers who enjoy first-hand accounts of interesting lives such as
Ashley Dawson-Damer’s.A Particular Woman will be published in July 2020 by Ventura Press.
My thanks to the publisher for a copy to read and review.#AussieAuthor20
#AWW2020Another Australian ‘living literary treasure’: Helen Garner and her book ‘Everywhere I Look’
I’m late to this book (published by Text Publishing in 2016) but I’m an avowed Helen Garner fan, especially her non-fiction, which Everywhere I Look is: a collection of short anecdotes, musings, essays, film and book reviews, and a catalogue of everyday incidents in the life of an author who has made observing and recording a daily habit. In the hands of someone as skilled as this, the everyday become poetic, luminous, full of beauty, humour and mystery.
These were qualities of other books I’ve read by Garner: Joe Cinque’s Consolation, This House of Grief, The Spare Room, and of course the classic Monkey Grip, among others. How does she do this – write about the ordinary and the extraordinary in ways that make both seem familiar or, at least, understandable?
The second-last piece in this book, titled ‘The Insults of Age’, should be a must-read for any woman approaching mid to later life (and their partners, family and friends.) Her warning to thoughtless (younger) folk who might presume to act towards older women as if they are invisible, stupid, deaf or helpless, is one of several paragraphs that made me chuckle.
There were, as well, moments when I gasped in recognition of the situation described and at the beauty and simplicity of the prose, such as in the piece describing her mother and their relationship. ‘Dreams of Her Real Self’ also made me weep a little. There is this:
When, in the street, I see a mother walking with her grown-up daughter, I can hardly bear to witness the mother’s pride, the softening of her face, her incredulous joy at being granted her daughter’s company; and the iron discipline she imposes on herself, to muffle and conceal this joy.
Everywhere I Look, p94And these sentences, describing a photo of Helen as a baby in her mother’s arms, which capture the other side of the parent-child relationship:
I am six months old. I am still an only child. She is carrying me in her arms. She is strong enough to bear my weight with ease. I trust her. She is my mother, and I am content to rest my head upon her breast.
Everywhere I Look p105There it is – the entirety of the complicated bond between parent and child in a handful of understated or pared-back sentences. Who could say more, or more beautifully?
A wonderful offering from a living literary treasure.
Harrowing yet ultimately hopeful: ‘Invisible Boys’ by Holden Sheppard
Holden Sheppard’s debut novel follows the struggles of three high school boys in the small Western Australian town of Geraldton, as they try to figure out the big things of life: who they are, where they belong, what family and friendships mean, and their sexuality. All three suspect they are gay and each has a different response , as they also try to navigate the various responses to homosexuality by the people around them.
I recall that during Australia’s sometimes fractious marriage equality debates, there were warnings from those working with young people, especially in rural and regional areas, that the divisiveness and stigma still attached to homosexuality would be worsened by the rancour around the campaign. They worried that it could cause further harm to young people already struggling with questions around their sexual identity. The events played out in Invisible Boys bring these concerns to life in a realistic way.
The author wrote in his Acknowledgements that each of the three main characters represented a part of himself. And yes, so vividly are they portrayed, the characters and events must surely have arisen from lived experience.
The three young protagonists are Zeke, a studious boy from a staunchly Italian Catholic family; Hammer, an athletic boy who dreams of becoming a star football player; and Charlie, a punk rocker who has no idea of where he fits – he only knows that it’s not in Geraldton, not in his Catholic high school, and certainly not in his neglectful, dismissive family. A fourth character, Matt, comes from a local farming family and plays an important role as the novel progresses.
The boys differ in the level of sympathy they engendered from me at the beginning of the novel. Hammer presents as a particularly repellent individual, the result of being raised in a toxic swill of extreme homophobia and sickening misogyny. As events unfold, there are glimpses of other facets of personality and what makes each boy behave the way they do, their fears and insecurities.
Here is Zeke, for example:Why am I so weak? Why do I cower to this? I know homosexuality is natural in the animal kingdom. I don’t think anyone should have fewer rights than anyone else. I don’t hate it in other people as much as I hate it in myself. And yet I fall in line with Father Mulroney’s condemnation.
Invisible Boys p507This quote, incidentally, is from a scene which also has some laugh-out-loud moments – Zeke’s excruciating enforced act of confession in church.
And here is Charlie:
I figured you’re allowed to tell other gay guys in the closet. It’s like mutually assured destruction. Either of you tells and it’s catastrophe, like a nuclear winter.
Invisible Boys p523Anyone who can remember their own pathway through the agonies and traps of adolescence will relate to the boys’ struggles. And the added layers of difficulty imposed by their families, friends and community, can only be viewed as absurd, unfair and entirely unnecessary. Why make someone’s path to adulthood harder than it needs to be?
The last word on this book belongs to its author:
…my teenage self, who, for a long time, didn’t want to be on this planet anymore because he was a gay bloke. Good on you for staying alive, you resilient bastard. Turns out you were good just the way you were.
Holden Sheppard, Acknowledgements in Invisible Boys.Invisible Boys was published by Fremantle Press in 2019. It was the recipient of the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award 2018 (even before publication!) and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2020, as well as being a Notable Book in the 2020 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) and longlisted in the 2020 Indie Book Awards, among other accolades.
#AussieAuthor20
Why Bri Lee’s skull is a sign that women have had enough of abuse
Eggshell Skull, published in 2018 by Allen & Unwin, is a memoir that peels back layers of personal and societal abuse, as seen by the author in her first year as a Judge’s Associate, and throughout her own foray into the legal system as a complainant.
If you or someone close to you has had contact with the police or courts in Australia, either as defendant or complainant, you will relate to much of Bri’s story. Many years ago, I survived a bitter drawn out dispute in the Family Court. Loud bells of recognition jangled in my head as I read Bri’s descriptions of the powerlessness, despair and frustration she experienced during her own ‘journey’ through complex legal processes. She had the advantage of familiarity with at least some of the jargon and steps involved in bringing a matter to court, having completed a law degree and worked as a Judge’s Associate for a year—insight which most of don’t have access to.
Ironically, it was precisely that experience so early in her working life that led her to bring forward her own complaint. After travelling with her Judge on court circuits to Queensland country towns and regional centres, and hearing case after case of rape, sexual assault, and child abuse—not all of which were resolved in the complainants’ favour—something tipped inside her. She began to recognise that her conflicted feelings about her chosen profession, her disturbing memories of an episode of childhood sexual abuse by a teenage friend of her brother, her negative self-image and episodes of self-harm, were all connected.
‘Since puberty I had accepted…that I wasn’t worth anything; that the ugly thing was ever-present inside me. That it was the dark truth, a rotten core, and that the smiling daytime Bri was the façade. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that so many of the feelings I struggled with are perfectly normal for abuse and trauma survivors.’
p. 131She decided to do something about it.
So began her transformation from wearing the robes of a Judge’s Associate, to entering a police station and court house wearing the everyday clothes of a complainant. She experienced the labyrinthine, slow passage of legal matters from complaint to trial and sentencing—and the many points along the way at which the matter can be deemed not serious enough or unlikely to be brought to trial and so dropped from the lists. The cliché ‘roller-coaster ride’ barely suggests the emotional highs and lows someone experiences at these times. Small vignettes, like the painful process of making her initial and later statements to a police officer whose two-fingered typing meant the ordeal was dragged out much longer than it needed to be, increasing her discomfort, are details that brought me right into her experience. I was there with Bri, wanting to shout hurry up! at the slow typing officer. The way the defendant delayed matters endlessly by not showing up or having tasks completed on time, became another form of abuse.
…I’d felt totally powerless…Samuel in control again. He was taking up my time, my energy, my life. Calls about the case invaded my beautiful home. Reminders of the next mention invaded my mind when I slept. So long as the legal process continued I would be the complainant—and every two, three or four weeks, I would be reminded of that. Reminded that I was just the girl, reminded of being pushed on my back, belly-up, frozen.
p 284On top of all that is the added layer of social attitudes towards women who make allegations of rape or other sexual assaults or abuse. How can they be believed? Does their use of the contraceptive pill while not in a steady relationship imply they are sexually promiscuous? Are their memories of childhood abuse accurate or are they imagining it? Unlike other crimes, there is often no ‘hard’ evidence of crimes of a sexual nature, especially historical crimes. So there are plenty of holes into which these matters can, and often do, fall.
The title, Eggshell Skull, refers to a common legal rule that a defendant must ‘take his victims as they find them.’ (p.v) If, for example, a victim of a punch dies because of an existing medical condition, the person who threw the punch is still responsible for their death. When her matter is resolved, Bri Lee finds herself reflecting that the rule works both ways. If a perpetrator of abuse decides to fight the allegations in court, and finds the complainant more determined, braver, better supported by family and friends than he’d expected, well…that’s his problem, not hers.
This memoir is an interesting read in the context of the Me Too movement, in which women all over the world began to call out male sexual abuse for what it is and took action to stop it. Bri Lee’s eggshell skull is perhaps one part of that worldwide picture.
