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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A story about what it means to be a friend … Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books … and life, love and the jagged bits in between. Dissecting each other’s lives seems the most natural thing in the world – and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure. Best friends tell each other everything, don’t they? But each woman harbours a complex secret and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck.' (Source: Publishers website)
Adaptations
-
y
Tiddas
2022
Fortitude Valley
:
Playlab
,
2022
23446172
2022
single work
drama
'Brisbane, 2022. Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books, life, love and the jagged bits in between.
'Dissecting each other’s lives seems the most natural thing in the world and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure.
'Best friends tell each other everything, don’t they? But each woman carries a complex secret and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck.'
Source: La Boite.
Notes
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An interview on ABC Radio National's Books and Arts Daily can be accessed here. (Accessed 12 March 2014)
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Dedication:
To my tiddas,
for lifting me from life's moments of darkness
into the light again.
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Epigraph: 'Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.' –Virginia Woolf
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
- Also braille.
- Also dyslexic edition
- Also large print.
Works about this Work
-
Considering Sameness
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Long Campaign : The Duguid Memorial Lectures, 1994–2014 2017; (p. 155-166)‘In ‘Considering sameness’, author and activist Adjunct Professor Anita Heiss confronts the challenges of writing and talking complex Indigenous characters into mainstream Australian literature and public discourse. Her ‘sameness’ does not ignore or oppose expression of ‘difference’. She looks for common ground from which to take a broader view of human interaction than is permitted in oppositional same-different debates underpinned by competing hierarchies of value. In doing so she surrenders neither space nor place. She discusses the approaches taken in 13 books of poetry, adult and young readers’ prose, and autobiography and essays to be found in the AustLit/Black Words database, to challenge and reverse dominant literary stereotypes in mainstream literature by arguing that – in all genres of writing and reportage – stereotypes have influence on identity construction, perception and reception: good and bad.’ (16-17)
-
Educating the Reader in Anita Heiss’s Chick Lit
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 10 no. 3 2016;' In this essay, I use a close reading of Anita Heiss’s five chick lit novels to argue that racial identity profoundly affects the relationship between the chick lit novel and advice manual genre. In Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, Caroline Smith contends that the chick lit novel critiques and satirizes regimes of female control through its engagement with the domestic advice manual. This relationship, however, does not always work in the way Smith assumes because the protagonist is not always white: she may be Latina, Chinese, South-East Asian, or, as Anita Heiss shows, Aboriginal Australian: Heiss’s fiction serves as an advice manual, designed to expose readers to the correct norms and behaviors for interacting with Australia’s First Peoples.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
-
Up Close : Sisters Bound by Books
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: Good Reading , March 2014; (p. 32-33)'ANITA HEISS – author, tireless advocate for Aboriginal rights and author of a new novel, Tiddas – talks to ROB KENNEDY about the challenge of counterbalancing the tone of
chick lit with meatier social comment.' (Publication abstract)
-
All Sisters Under the Skin
Similarities;
Sisters Should be Doing it for Themselves
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 6 April 2014; (p. 12) The Canberra Times , 6 April 2014; (p. 9) The Sunday Age , 6 April 2014; (p. 16)
— Review of Tiddas 2014 single work novel 'Aboriginal writer Anita Heiss is focused on celebrating what brings people together, writes Karen Hardy' -
Anita Heiss : Tiddas
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , April 2014;
— Review of Tiddas 2014 single work novel
-
Adding Political Flavour to 'Choc-Lit'
'Choc-lit' Flavoured with Activism
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 22-23 March 2014; (p. 36) The Canberra Times , 22 March 2014; The Age , 22 March 2014; (p. 36)
— Review of Tiddas 2014 single work novel -
Anita Heiss : Tiddas
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , April 2014;
— Review of Tiddas 2014 single work novel -
All Sisters Under the Skin
Similarities;
Sisters Should be Doing it for Themselves
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 6 April 2014; (p. 12) The Canberra Times , 6 April 2014; (p. 9) The Sunday Age , 6 April 2014; (p. 16)
— Review of Tiddas 2014 single work novel 'Aboriginal writer Anita Heiss is focused on celebrating what brings people together, writes Karen Hardy' -
Anita Heiss
2014
single work
autobiography
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 19-25 February no. 968 2014; (p. 7) -
More Than a Writer
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 12 March no. 571 2014; (p. 21) Includes portrait of Anita Heiss -
Up Close : Sisters Bound by Books
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: Good Reading , March 2014; (p. 32-33)'ANITA HEISS – author, tireless advocate for Aboriginal rights and author of a new novel, Tiddas – talks to ROB KENNEDY about the challenge of counterbalancing the tone of
chick lit with meatier social comment.' (Publication abstract)
-
Educating the Reader in Anita Heiss’s Chick Lit
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 10 no. 3 2016;' In this essay, I use a close reading of Anita Heiss’s five chick lit novels to argue that racial identity profoundly affects the relationship between the chick lit novel and advice manual genre. In Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, Caroline Smith contends that the chick lit novel critiques and satirizes regimes of female control through its engagement with the domestic advice manual. This relationship, however, does not always work in the way Smith assumes because the protagonist is not always white: she may be Latina, Chinese, South-East Asian, or, as Anita Heiss shows, Aboriginal Australian: Heiss’s fiction serves as an advice manual, designed to expose readers to the correct norms and behaviors for interacting with Australia’s First Peoples.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
-
Considering Sameness
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Long Campaign : The Duguid Memorial Lectures, 1994–2014 2017; (p. 155-166)‘In ‘Considering sameness’, author and activist Adjunct Professor Anita Heiss confronts the challenges of writing and talking complex Indigenous characters into mainstream Australian literature and public discourse. Her ‘sameness’ does not ignore or oppose expression of ‘difference’. She looks for common ground from which to take a broader view of human interaction than is permitted in oppositional same-different debates underpinned by competing hierarchies of value. In doing so she surrenders neither space nor place. She discusses the approaches taken in 13 books of poetry, adult and young readers’ prose, and autobiography and essays to be found in the AustLit/Black Words database, to challenge and reverse dominant literary stereotypes in mainstream literature by arguing that – in all genres of writing and reportage – stereotypes have influence on identity construction, perception and reception: good and bad.’ (16-17)