Edition 15
Divided Nation
- Published 6th March, 2007
- ISBN: 9780733320569
- Extent: 280 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
The growing wealth of the past decade has not reached everyone. Pockets of entrenched disadvantage remain, even in the richest neighbourhoods.
Geography, work, race, religion, education, health and ethnicity mark the new divides.
David Burchell throws the spot light on the underlying causes of the riots that shocked Sydney. He reveals a pattern of marginalisation shaped by history, flawed policy and personal incapacity – and finds hope in the remarkable resilience of people under enormous pressure. This challenge is echoed in the reports from around the country.
This issue provides an intimate portrait of the usually invisible fractures even in boom time Australia, with outstanding essays, reportage, memoir, poetry and fiction.
In this Edition
Of Middle Eastern appearance
Selected for The Best Australian Political Writing 2008 "DO YOU EVER wish you were fully Aussie?" This question was posed to me by a teenage girl in a Sydney school last year. "What do you mean by fully Aussie?" I asked. "Um ... like Anglo, you know?"...
The exiled child
There have been many times in my life when people have come to negative conclusions about me, and many terms applied: juvenile delinquent, alcoholic, drug addict, drama queen, borderline personality disorder, self-destructive, hysteric, depressive, neurotic, phobic and hypochondriac. But I’ve discovered a new one, and according to the literature it may be at the heart of all the others: chronic trauma survivor.
Trying to find the sunny side of life
Selected for The Best Australian Political Writing 2008WHEN THE HISTORICAL datelines are being drawn up, the year 2005 may be marked down as the Indian summer of Australia's decade-long economic boom. Truly it seemed as if the sun might never set. Household disposable incomes,...
Destination: Adelaide
IN THE DAYS when seatbelts were optional and parents smoked in the car without a second thought, Adelaide was a destination. We visited my grandfather. He gave us bags of copper coins and we spent them in department stores. Adelaide had movies and music,...
Cracks in the veneer
FEDELE FRANZONI IS on the edge. He lives with his family in Hoppers Crossing, in the outer tract of Melbourne's rapidly expanding western growth corridor. It's a place like many on the fringes of Australia's cities, where hopeful households have flocked in recent years...
Retro-assimilation
NOSTALGIA FOR AN assimilated nation haunts public debate on national identity and nationhood, as well as related issues of race, ethnicity, indigenous rights and immigration. Commentators on both sides of Australian politics deny that the Prime Minister is turning the pages of government back...
On being invisible
AS A WIRADJURI woman with an education, access to health, employment opportunities and a platform, I am incredibly privileged. I sit within the top 1 per cent of the bottom 2.5 per cent of the nation. I am, by any definition, an exception –...
Beyond pity
I FIRST MET Zarah Ghahramani on Tehran's Revolution Boulevard in June 2003, just down the road from the northern campus of the city's university. She was dressed in the tunic of all young urban women in the Islamic Republic of Iran: dark scarf drawn...
Disturbing undertones
AUSTRALIAN FICTION WRITERS have, until the last few decades, avoided settling in Canberra and writing about the city in their novels and short stories. In Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers, Ric Throssell's biography of his mother, Katharine Susannah Prichard, he notes her comment that...
Explorers, writers and other creative strangers
In homage to Lech Paszkowski and all creative strangersIN THE IMMIGRATION office in Paris, I had one chance to convince the person in charge why I should be allowed to stay. Someone in the waiting room cried as he was handed his deportation papers....
The antidote of multiculturalism
Winner, 2008 Australasian Association of Philosophers Media PrizeA CRUEL IRONY has marked recent Australian social policy. Reconciliation between indigenous and settler Australians – which involves a concept and a process that are essentially symbolic – was made "practical", limited to policies aimed at improving...
Blow-ins on the cold desert wind
EACH YEAR I drive from my home near Canberra to the Tanami Desert and spend several months in an Aboriginal community that has become my other home. The trip takes a week or two, allowing for the incremental adjustments that make my arrival one...
The gap between work and choices
ON THE GRASS outside an abattoir on the Western Plains of New South Wales, in the dark, cool air, a few workers are forming the late-night shift of a picket. Some journalists are hanging around, talking to them.It is less than a week after...
The words to say it
THE FUNERAL WAS held in a rural town in New South Wales on the hottest day that year. I nodded at the priest and he nodded at me and then we avoided each other's eyes for the rest of the brief service. A coffin...
Boom! Excursions in fantasy land
MIDLAND: RECENTLY I watched a small group of drunks on the pavement across from the Midland library swinging punches at each other. There were four of them standing in a circle, each giving voice to slurred phrases that I understood to be insults only...
Stranger in a strange land
YOU DON'T LOOK Chinese," said one of a small group of boys who had encircled me."I'm not," I said, stating the obvious."But ya come from Hong Kong?""Yes," I agreed."What language do they speak there?" asked one of the others."Cantonese.""Well can you say something in...
On becoming a Jew
If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.– Bernard MalamudBROOKLYN LAUNDRY, 2002: Sometimes I am asked how it feels to be a Jew in Australia. For years I had not considered myself a Jew. I was a woman, writer, lover,...
Sydney and me
FROM THE BEGINNING to the end of my twenties, I hated Sydney. It was a city whose high prices dictated the terms of its inhabitants' lives: a week of fast-paced, stressful labour, ending with a short bout of frenetic spending. I was trying to...
The fence
I AM SITTING on the white wooden-frame and wire fence that runs along one side of our house and separates us from our neighbours – the Bonds. I am ten. It is a hot day and the sun is burning the skin on my...
On the ground
GLENN MACGREGOR'S HOUSE has stunning river and mountain views, neatly netted fig trees in the garden, and a collection of cars including a Volvo and a Mercedes parked in the driveway. What do you assume about Glenn? What if I also mention he's a...
Down-at-heel among the well-heeled
THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS of New South Wales is a rural region with a reputation for city-style affluence. Most visitors, and a significant number of its residents, see it as the happy hunting ground of the very rich and the ordinarily rich. It's up there...
Featured Contributors
Lee Kofman
Lee Kofman is the author of three works of fiction and the two memoirs Imperfect (Affirm Press, 2019), which...
Robert Hillman
Robert Hillman is the author of five books, including the award-winning autobiography, The Boy in the Green Suit (Scribe...
Julienne van Loon
Julienne van Loon is an associate professor in creative writing at RMIT University. Her books include Road Story (Allen...
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Randa Abdel-Fattah is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University. She is also a multi-award...
