AustLit

An adopted Aboriginal boy, Russell is a troublemaker who has been suspended from school and arrested. The narrative sees him fly to Bourke, the town where he was born, with his white foster father, John. The trip is John's way of trying to find an opportunity to communicate with his foster son before it's too late. For John the trip is simply a tick-off list - visit the Bourke District Hospital, visit the Aboriginal reserve, go for a swim, etc. For Russell, however, the trip is much more personal. When John leaves him alone briefly Russell tries to get hold of as much as he can, including his birth mother's name and a handful of earth which he puts into his pocket. He also experiences racism by a white hotel manager.

Ten-year-old Jenny sees her mother Patsy crying as she reads a letter. Determined that this won't happen again, Jenny waits for the mailman to pass by and begins collecting all the letters of the neighbourhood, which she stashes in an electrical distribution box. When Patsy finds the letters, she realises that she all but abandoned Jenny while allowing herself to be consumed with emotion following the end of a relationship. The story ends with mother and daughter sitting on a bed sorting through the letters.

Party Shoes allows us the opportunity to not only enter the private world of a girl who is seeking nurturing and purpose in the absence of her mother's attention, but to also explore the relationship between a mixed-race child and her white mother.

A ten-year-old girl living in Redfern is obsessed with Ralph Macchio.

Set in the 1940s, Jacob tells how the joy of a young boy's birth quickly disintegrates for both the mother, Gina, and father, Max, when his fair skin reveals a rape by a white man.