These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination... Rabindranath Tagore

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
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On the way to the river are the old dormitories, used for something else now, with their fairy-tale turrets, painted white and gold and blue. When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
--from Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Sunday, August 5, 2012

My Girragundji


My Girragundji – Meme McDonald + Boori Pryor. 1998. A Little Ark Book. Allen and Unwin


I may know the kids in my world
But they don't want to know me

 I fight them to preserve my identity
But I get into trouble for fighting
I get into trouble for losing

 My parents live in my house
But they love their drink
I don't know them when they drink
They don't know me

 Being different in a white world can be traumatic
But being uncomfortable in your own black world can be
Soul destroying

 Unless
Of course
You find a little spirit
A little tree frog
A girragundji


GOODREADS REVIEW

 My GirragundjiMy Girragundji by Meme McDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tapping in to the spirit of a living thing can be a magical balm for a lonely soul.

p.34 When I look in my gundji’s eyes, she speaks to me.

A touching story of a boy seeking some kind of identity in a world fractured by racial discomforts.
A beautiful idea, but somehow the book weathers the final narrative.

View all my reviews
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1 comment:

Katrin Klink said...

I love your book reviews, they are truly poetic. Since I'm from Germany, I don't know any of those books, you showed me a whole new world. Thank you and have a great time!
Katrin

August 21, 2012 at 11:19 PM

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