Born Into This
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
* The Story Prize Spotlight Award, Winner
* Tasmanian Literary Awards, Longlist
* Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
* Queensland Literary Awards – University of Southern Queensland Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection, Shortlist
* Age Book of the Year award, Finalist
* An ABA Indie Next pick for “Great New Reads” for August.
* "A Best Native Book of 2021" —The Tribal College Journal
* "A Best Book of the Year" —Independent Book Review
* An ABA Indie Next pick for “Great New Reads” for August.
* "A Best Native Book of 2021" —The Tribal College Journal
* "A Best Book of the Year" —Independent Book Review
The remarkable stories in Born Into This are eye-opening, razor-sharp, and entertaining, often all at once.
From an Aboriginal ranger trying to instill some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions, Adam Thompson presents a powerful indictment of colonialism and racism.
With humor, pathos, and the occasional sly twist, Thompson’s characters confront discrimination, untimely funerals, classroom politics, the ongoing legacy of cultural destruction, and — overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both black and white Australia — the inexorable disappearance of the remnant natural world.
"A legacy of cultural destruction in Australia and the disappearance of the natural world loom over stories of Aboriginal rangers, untimely funerals and angry bees in this sharp fiction debut."
—New York Times Book Review
"With its wit, intelligence and restless exploration of the parameters of race and place, Thompson’s debut collection is a welcome addition to the canon of Indigenous Australian writers."
—Thuy On, The Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thompson portrays a group of Aboriginal communities in Tasmania in his riveting debut collection. Stories of brutal weather and angry bees, urban protests and remote islands, trace the tether between Tasmanian Aboriginal people and their ancestral lands. In "Invasion Day," a demonstration in support of Aboriginal rights during Australia Day turns tense with taunts from white passersby, prompting the narrator to douse an Australian flag in lighter fluid and threaten to set it ablaze. In "The Old Tin Mine," an Aboriginal survival camp for boys suffers due to the camp leader's drug addiction and the effects of climate change. The protagonists of "Descendant" and "The Blackfellas from Here" use their wit and passion to cleverly push back against racism in their communities. The author movingly describes their resilience, whether facing aggressive storms or the terror of colonization. At the heart of these stories is the natural world, which serves as a constant symbol of survival for those who, as Thompson writes in the title story, are "born into a hostile world and expected to thrive." Thompson's strengths are in his exquisite descriptions of nature ("Snow gums erupted from the shattered shale, their twisting boughs flexing skyward, like fingers on an upturned hand"), as well as his memorable voice. This shows great promise.
