Sunday, November 13, 2011

MY PLACE

SALLY MORGAN
Fremantle Press
Rs 768
Pages: 496
“I am stamped as an Aboriginal by the non-indigenous groups of Australia. However, I want to know the name of my original identity.”
These and several other related questions are tormenting the dear old Nan from Sally Morgan’s autobiographical My Place. Nan’s excruciating pain is loudly echoing in her persistent silence about her past. Only Sally’s (Nan’s grand-daughter) and Gladys’s (Nan’s daughter and Sally’s Mother) consistent effort to give Nan her rightful voice, helps Nan attain a peaceful death, while the world learns a new history from Nan.
Yes, Sally Morgan has openly slapped the official history of Australia and brought to light a new but a heart-rending truth about the Australian Natives. Natives like them call themselves “The Fourth World Countries within The First World Countries” as they are still unofficially colonised by the crown.
Alcharinga – or Dreamtime Stories of the Aboriginals have become almost invisible due to the rationalistic ideologies placed upon them. As they did not even have the laws on their side, the Aboriginal Native History was either buried or disguised in fictionalised stories by the law abusers. Sally Morgan bravely challenges these official records of colonisation by providing viewpoints of the victims. One of them is Nan, Sally’s maternal grandmother.
Through the autobiographical narrative, Sally introduces us to Nan with words of a different music. It may be said that this music comes from the heavenly spirits protecting Sally and her family. The entire novel has numerous psychic certainties, which are surely mocked by the outside world. However, trusting her spirits, Nan opens her secret doors for Sally. She does this with the intension that someday, someone will stop the brutal treatment given to her people and forever treat them as equals.
Right from her childhood, Nan faces cruel and depressing treatment. As she is an Aboriginal dark-coloured Native, she is helpless to fight it. Even her elder brother, Arthur can not save her from her blackened future. Nevertheless, she helps her daughter Gladys and Gladys’ children to live a happier life.
Nan and her “white” son-in-law Bill do not see eye-to-eye in spite of sharing the same roof. Bill – an ex-army officer leads a troubled life thanks to the gory wars he was part of. He drinks and worsens his and his family’s life, almost hurting them in his violence.
Bill hates Nan for her colour. Once, in the absence of Gladys, he also calls her ‘a bloody nigger’. Just for the family’s peace, she keeps quiet.
Nan is very conscious of her being a dark Aboriginal. To avoid any major issues, she instructs the children to keep their friends away from her and especially not bring them inside the house. Nan speaks in her mother tongue only with her brother – Arthur. She fears her language will display her identity, which will ruin her family. Through her silence, she protects her family. Nan’s silence about their identity is eating Sally from within. Thus, she goes on a quest to place herself somewhere and voice it out through her novel, My Place.
When Sally initially strives to bring to light her original Aboriginal identity, Nan shrinks back utterly scared. She has dark secrets about her past and does her best to conceal them, even from her family. She does not join her family up North for research with the fear of these secrets spilling out resulting in her own people hating and rejecting her. Nan is proved wrong, when Sally brings back the news that Nan’s people still love and remember her very much. That’s the bond an Aboriginal Native shares.
Due to her characteristic upbringing and experiences of life, Nan always fears the worst for her family. She fears that as they are Aboriginals, the government would separate them. That is why; during the former days, Nan and Gladys decide to tell the children that they are Indians and not Aboriginals, in order to protect them.
It’s only later that Nan opens the door of her past to Sally, slowly. Thanks to Sally’s efforts, eventually Nan accepts her identity of being an Aboriginal and also feels proud of it. It’s worth reading how Sally manages the Herculean task of unearthing Nan’s secrets.
Sally Morgan stands in a very subjective position related to her voice. She has no choice. It is her face of truth. Take it or leave it. Even her representation of the Aboriginal Natives is mocked at by certain natives. They say, she is a half-caste, thus her truth is not pure. Through her novel, we clearly see the efforts Sally has taken to compile the entire truth and offer us in just one platter.
My Place is a critique of Darwinistic Paternalism. It criticises the men who marry numerous times or abuse women, especially the Natives and then leave the children, especially the Aboriginals abandoned.
Thus, in My Place, through Nan’s intriguing persona, Sally Morgan seems to say that racism is not just an ideology in the abstract, but a very practical part of the lives of the Aboriginal Peoples for “the pain, the effect, the shame are all real”.
Above all, Nan teaches Sally and the entire family to forgive and move on. 

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