22 Aboriginal Australian Prose; Sally Morgan: My Place

Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick

About the Module

In this module we will learn about aboriginal Australian prose, its origin and development and we will have a special reading on Sally Morgan, a one of the most celebrated author of the aboriginal Australian literature. Sally Morgan’s autobiographical novel My Place will be discussed here. The wider reception of the text across the continent and its greater reception into the different parts of the world, public reception of the text and the debates on the texts also will be discussed here. Along with this we will try to talk about other prose writings by the author. In this context we will discuss about the reception and adaptation of Australian oral tradition by the author in her different prose writing. This module is divided into several parts, like, a brief introduction about the aboriginal Australian prose, Sally Morgan’s brief bio-note, her writings, related debates, critical appreciations and then we will summarise our discussion.

Aboriginal Australian Prose

Like any other indigenous literature Aboriginal Australian literature also was in oral tradition. Myths, legends and folklore were main component of their literary creation. Storytelling, telling of long narrative also was main medium of literary expression. Painting was one of the crucial practices which accompanied the literary understanding and literary communication more powerful. The modern literary genres were brought into the land from Europe during the time of British invasion in the land. The expansion of western education and very slow but gradual inclusion of indigenous people into the western educational system brought awareness among the people about the systematic process of discrimination, oppression and colonisation. Indigenous literature mainly kept recorded by the western anthropologists, folklorists and some administrators as it happened in any other part of the world where colonisation happened.

The beginning of prose was about recording or archiving indigenous myths, legends, stories and other narratives. Later these indigenous elements also were adapted by the indigenous authors and the authors of the European descent in different narratives like short story, novel and play. The aboriginal prose emerged with the writings about the indigenous religion, encounter of indigenous people with the Christianity, retelling the traditional stories, telling about the tradition and culture and most importantly about the race and ancestry.

Gradually in the latter half of the twentieth century has observed the emergence of groups of brilliant authors from the indigenous communities who write genres translated from Europe but writes literature of their own. Autobiographies, memoirs, short stories and novels of high quality have been emerging since last six or seven decades and these are receiving critical acclamation from critics across the world and widely accepted by the readers across the world.

Sally Morgan 

Sally Morgan is one of the most renowned authors of Aboriginal Australian literature; she took birth in 1951 in Perth, Western Australia. She speaks and writes in English. My Place,(1987) her autobiographical prose is one of most bestselling book and for this book she was mostly known to the greater world.

She studied in the Australian Institute of Technology and the University of Western Australia. She is though known for her autobiography or memoire but she is also considered as one of the most significant authors of Children Literature in Aboriginal Australian literature and she is also a renowned painter and playwright.

During her school days Morgan was very much conscious about her discrimination for not being white and her own identity was not known to her by her parents for quite a long time. Later once she came to know about her ancestry and identity she started to write about her identity, discrimination, her people and the history she shares; not only the political history but also about the history of her race. This was very common incident happened with other aboriginal or indigenous authors of Australia and Canada. Preliminary discrimination what they had to face and what made them mature enough was used to happen in schools. School-children used to ask such people about their colour, and this very question brought the sense of discrimination and self-consciousness among the authors we are talking about.

Morgan was brought up by her mother and grandmother. Her father was a soldier and died in a battle. Gradually, the teenager Morgan came to know about her sister’s racial identity too that she is from the ancestry of Bailgu people of Pilbara region of Western Australia. But Morgan has to fight a lot to become a writer, as her childhood was not so inspiring to her to be a writer, moreover she does not find any example from her family, or community or people around her to be a writer and to talk about themselves. So, she was not at all ambitious in her life and not even had any urge to do anything, she informed in an interview (Laurie, Victoria ).

Morgan received several awards for her contribution in Aboriginal Australian literature. She received Human Rights Literature and Other Writing Award in 1987 for My Place, she also received the same award again in 1989 for her Wanamurraganya, the story of Jack McPhee. She received Order of Australia Book Prize in 1990, Joint winner Fremantle Print Award in 1993, and Children’s Book Council award in 1998 and 2012.

Her works include Sally’s story (1995), My Place (1987) Wanamurraganya, the story of Jack McPhee (1990), Mother and daughter: The story of Daisy and Gladys Corunna (1994), Arthur Corunna’s story (1995). She has immense contribution in Children Literature also. Her works in Children literature include Little piggies (1991) with Paul Morgan, The flying emu and other Australian stories (1992), Hurry up, Oscar! (1994), Pet problem (1994), Dan’s grandpa (1996), In your dreams (1997), Just a little brown dog (1997), “Where is Galah” (2015). Her play Cruel wild woman and David Milroy (1999) performed in the 1999 Festival of Perth season (Sally Morgan (Artist)).

My Place

My Place is most significant work of Morgan as it tells about not only her ancestry, discrimination what they had to face or the process of constructing own identity or the identity of her community or communities in general but it reveals a greater reality about the life and people those are oppressed and forced to migrate from their own cultural, native, traditional structure of life and world view. This book is not regarded a great work to know about the racial identity but also the identity and struggle of the people who are oppressed because of different reasons in general.

In 1982, Sally Morgan went back to the place of grandmother’s birthplace. This journey of her was emotional and spiritual. She was trying to connect this experience of own past, own family-past with the past of the community. This very experience of visiting past brings a spiritual realisation into her mind about the significance of the past as well as the complexities in discovering it in the context of her own community. This is Morgan’s self- discovery, a journey through her own past, past of her becoming, past of her family.

The story of My Place begins with the story of Morgan’s own. Here she jotted down the tongue of her mother, grandmother and her own. The narrative initially began with her family and family story. The book is divided into few chapters and those chapters are, The hospital, The factory, I’m in the Army now, Drinking men, Pretending, Only a dream, A change, Family and friends, Wildlife, Cure-alls, Getting ahead, Triumphs and failures, Growing up, Rather peculiar pets, A black grandmother, What people are we, Make something of yourself, The working life, Home improvements, A new career, Owning up, A beginning, A visitor, Where there’s a will, Part of our history, Links with the past, Arthur Corunna’s Story, Where to next?, Return to Corunna, Someone like me, Gladys Corunna’s story, Something serious, Good news, Daisy Corunna’s story, and The bird call.

The tile of the chapters signifies the whole agenda of the book. The story of this book gradually moves from one’s own story to the grand story of the community. Self takes part in the life of the common. This gradual becoming of the narrative itself shows a process of historicisation, placing an individual into the grand narrative of orality of the community. Such orality may be understood as history, may be refused as history, but it has to be accepted that such orality is what people of the community wants to believe, wants to cherish and celebrate. Such narrative is so significant to the people of the community that people would like to place themselves within the narrative.

The chapter like “I’m in the Army now” shows the anguish of the children being ignored by the dominant group/s, as the author says, “Jill, Billy and I loved rude songs”(25), and the song is taught by their father-

I’m in the army now

I went to milk a cow

the cow let-off and I took off

I’m out of the army now!

In the chapters like Only a dream, Family and friends, Wildlife, Triumphs and failures, Growing up, What people are we, A visitor, Part of our history, Links with the past, Where to next?, Good news, and The bird call talks about one’s own story with the family- story and that relates itself with the grand narrative of the community. This how oral narrative appears as factual as history is.

Aboriginal art of storytelling has been adapted here. In The Emotions of History, Damousi commented that the book, “My Place acts as an indigenous account of history in Australia and provides it in a way that is injected with emotion. Typically in historiography, the aim of its writing is “objective and factual, to construct a narrative that is rational, cool and aspires towards achieving some truth” (bejglover;). Indigenous people always understand oral history or story telling as most emotionally and culturally engaged way of telling history. Though academicians do not accept it as a historiography (bejglover;).

This work of Morgan is deeply criticised by Bain Attwood by saying that the identity is a construct and aboriginal identity too. But what made Morgan to construct this identity for her and for others. Because aboriginal identity is one such thing what Morgan ‘adopted late in life rather than being raised with it’ (bejglover;). Hence it is argued that the aboriginal identity of Morgan is because of her book, her book is not because of her aboriginal identity.

Reception of My Place

As soon as it was published, it had to be printed again before the week got over and it was printed seven times in the very first month. In Australia only, the book is sold more than half- millionth and the count will be much more if we include other countries. From the very beginning of release of the book My Place, readers’ response was remarkable. This book was translated into several languages of Europe and Asia. 110,000 copies were sold in a year from publication in Australia and more than 500,000 copies were sold by 1999 in Australia and other parts of the world (Sonoda, Hirokazu ;). After introduction of this book as school text the number of copies sold by 600,000.

The school children and teachers used to think that this book represent the factual description of the aboriginal life. Such kind of reception this book had and as we mentioned that this book was one of this kind, it easily appeared as history to the people of the community and others too who want to know about the aboriginal Australian life. But critic like Tony Thomas says, “Autobiographies by Stolen Generation claimants often contain harrowing narrations and a deliberately naïve prose style that adds to the apparent authenticity. But readers should not take at face value assertions that the stories are factual” (THOMAS, TONY;). But in general writing itself is a manipulating act, writing is always a political act. None of the truth can be described without the manipulative authority of the words and the narrator. Autobiography, being a literary genre, though is not primarily identified as fiction, in general understood as a near reading of the reality. And it is true for any kind of autobiography even it is true for any kind of writing. Hence, especially, refusing autobiographies written by the indigenous writers based on the claim of writing as fictional cannot be much justified.

As this autobiography, according to Tony Thomas, was workshopped by Morgan and Coffey, the publisher, Thomas does not want to see the book as authentic. According to him the book intentionally made melodramatic.

Critical Appreciation

The book has been dedicated to author’s own family. Dedication is sometimes very interesting to study. Dedication unfolds different underline words. Author dedicated this book to her family, and her family is not only the family where she does belong but it is about the whole community as the very narrative of the book implies. She wrote in the dedication:

To My Family

How deprived we would have been

if we had been willing

to let things stay as they were.

We would have survived,

but not as a whole people.

We would never had known

our place.

(Morgan, Sally;)

These few words, like poetry is immensely significant. Words are so common, so known to us but it insists to go into deeper of the layered meaning of it. The word ‘place’ in My Place, is not only a place where one can be located or something can be located but this place is a cultural place, historical place, psychological place and spiritual place. The place what exist in the psyche of the people of certain community. The place where a community with its all the history, culture, people, language and life in wide sense can be located. The place has to be revived, has to be relocated, has to be re-established, and therefore Morgan is writing My Place, the place of one’s own, place of tradition and ancestry. If we think quietly deeply, we can find in different way, in different phrases of life many people who are migrated, who are displaced, who are made slave in their own land, all are looking for the their places. It is a reality in any time and in civilization because deplacing of people and community has been happening since the very beginning of the civilization itself. After colonisation Indians are also looking for such place, place of their own very Indian culture. After invasion of the non-tribal people in the tribal lands, tribal people are also looking for their own place.

But there are qualitative differences among these such places and method and urge of looking for such places. For the mainland Indians it is about culture and own very Indian identity which was interrupted with the colonial hegemony. But there are whole lot  of cultural examples and elements what can help Indians to reframe their culture of past and revive their very pre-colonial Indianness. But for the communities who do not have their own language and archives of past, it is very difficult for them to revive their history, culture, tradition and identity. As it happens with the Indian tribal people. The same thing happened with the Australian aboriginal people, Maori people of New Zealand or with the First Nation of Canada, or with the people of Latin America and Africa.

And that is why question of authentic past always comes in reading of such kind of texts, like Morgan’s My Place or Rigoberta Menchu’s I, Rigoberta Menchu. In such cases past also has to be imagined, past is hypothetical based on the experiences of historical memory.

This past is not romanticised which is promoted and penetrated in the cultural representation by the colonisers or settlers. But this past has its own pain, despair, screaming of lost, and also have different codes of meaning to be broken. Understanding this past sometimes is challenging for the people of the community. We see in Morgan’s My Place,

‘Can’t you just leave the past buried?

It won’t hurt anyone then.’

‘Mum, its already hurt people.

It’s hurt you and me and Nan, all of us …’

(Morgan, Sally;)

Conclusion

Sally Morgan’s My Place has its own claim to re-establish the human rights for the people who lost. This text is a seminal text and a model for the communities across the world to write their own saga. This book shows such representation and revival of collective memory that it stands as a symbol to connect oneself or community with the land of their origin or the land which is lost politically and culturally.

In spite of all the debates, the wider reception of the book shows that the book is one of this kind in aboriginal Australian literature what people desire of, this is one of its kind where people can see reflection of their own memory and can believe this book to imagine their own past, heritage and culture.

Summary

In this module we have learnt about the aboriginal Australian prose tradition and its brief history of nature. We have introduced Sally Morgan with her brief bio-note and her contribution in the history of aboriginal Australian writing. We have known about multifaceted talent of Morgan and her wider contribution in different genres of literature. We have also learnt about Morgan’s autobiographical novel My Place and its extremely wide reception among the readers of Europe, America and Asia. This module also has discussed about the debates related with this novel and at the end a critical appreciation of the novel has been presented.

References

• bejglover;. Aboriginal Identity: Sally Morgan and My Place. n.d. 14 December 2017.<https://makinghistoryatmacquarie.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/aboriginal-identity- sally-morgan-and-my-place-2/>.
• Laurie,    Victoria    ;.    An    Interview    with    Sally    Morgan.    23    October    1999.    Web.<http://www.unionsverlag.com/info/link.asp?link_id=6000&pers_id=91&pic=../portr ait/MorganSally.jpg&tit=Sally%20Morgan>.
• Morgan,        Sally;.         My        Place.        n.d.        ebook.        13        December        2017.<https://media.smith.edu/media/assistivetech/atlibrary/Morgan_My_Place.pdf>.
• Sally              Morgan              (Artist).              n.d.             11              December              2017.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Morgan_(artist)>.
• Sonoda, Hirokazu ;. “A Preliminary Study of Sally Morgan’s My Place.” The Otemon Journal  of                     Australian                    Studies         35        (2009):         157-170.        web.<http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.822.9114&rep=rep1&type=pdf>.
• THOMAS, TONY;. “My Place: a betrayal of trust.” Quadrant Online 17 May 2010. <http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2010/05/my-place-fabricating-family- history/>.