Speaking my language

Blood will tear us apart. Again.

Featured in

  • Published 20211102
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-65-8
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

MY AUNTIE HAS stopped speaking to her siblings. Rifts like these are commonplace in my family, where people fall out with each other like dealt cards. The size of our family doesn’t help. The original eight siblings have grown into four generations and almost ninety people. This year two of my cousins had babies and another announced her pregnancy. There are now too many of us to squeeze into our suburban homes at one time. Full family parties happen only at parks and playgrounds or in the backyards of wealthy family members, which are the only backyards that can accommodate
us all. 

Some of the grievances are historic, dating back decades and finessed over time. Others are new, fresh. It’s a condition prevalent among migrant families, especially those like mine who have been tentative – because of differences in language, culture, class, education – to socialise widely in Australia. We are tethered to each other and this tether grows thin, frayed by too many gatherings filled with the same faces and the echoes of old pains. We fight often, and in this context my seventy-year-old auntie’s antagonism is understandable.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

As dead as

Non-fictionAs a Mauritian person, I’ve always known about dodos. I first heard about them from my dad’s family. The dodo was only ever found in Mauritius, and I naively believed that everyone knew that. But when I was relaying my experience of listening to the podcast to a group of friends, they were surprised to hear that the dodo was Mauritian. They are not the only ones. Since that conversation, I’ve been playing ‘where does the dodo come from?’ for months. Not many people know, and I’ve been angered by this, not at my friends but at the way in which stories of the dodo seemingly exist outside of place and time, when to me place and time are integral to my understanding of the dodo. 

More from this edition

In America 1979

PoetryIn America, I was no longer who I thought I was; one time in America, I was a white person helping an elderly black...

Americano Sal

FictionIt was always busy there in Palermo. During a snow shower I’d sit in the cafés, small corner net connections. Sometimes the weather was a little heavy – I’d kick my boots clean of ice at the entrance, umbrella heavy with sleet. The man you paid to use the internet would be singing in Farsi; a woman would speak in hushed tones in the cubicle. Sometimes not so hushed. Talking to her family on the other side of the world. Where maybe it was snowing, too. And together they could listen to each other. Together in the snow they could talk.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.