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'A foreigner’s criticism provides the impetus for Amanda Webster to embark on a long-intended search for two former school friends – Aboriginal kids from the Kurrawang Mission near where she grew up in Kalgoorlie. As a child, Webster supposed Mission kids were well-cared for orphans, however growing awareness forced her to think otherwise. Over the years her questions accumulated: were her friends members of the Stolen Generations? What was life at Kurrawang really like? What are her responsibilities as a non-Indigenous Australian whose family’s privilege was built on stolen land? For an institution that existed for over two decades, Webster finds that Kurrawang was strangely undocumented. Nor can she find any trace of her former friends, including a young Aboriginal girl who went on a beach holiday with Amanda’s family. Then in 2012, Webster meets Gregory Ugle, an older brother of her former friend Tony. After a four-decade absence, Webster returns to her hometown with Ugle to reconnect with her former friends, and to piece together Kurrawang’s story through oral histories and local newspaper archives. Over several trips, a sometimes uneasy tension emerges with Ugle as both he and Webster inch towards a fragile reconciliation.' (Source: Publisher's website)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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[Review Essay] : A Tear in the Soul
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , May vol. 41 no. 2 2017; (p. 273-274) 'A Tear in the Soul is an ambitious book. Amanda Webster, born into a family of Kalgoorlie doctors and a doctor herself, is challenged about Australian racism at an elite writers’ retreat in Hawaii, so sets forth from the exceedingly comfortable surroundings of her eastern Australian homes (plural) to confront the racism she grew up with and reconnect with the mission kids she played with at primary school. The result is a book that is partly memoir, partly exposé of unconscious privilege, partly a means to personal reconciliation. The title comes from Webster’s realisation that hurting others causes “a tear in the soul that allows the essence of one’s humanity to leak out” (112) and that she belongs to a group that has caused such a wound.' (Introduction) -
Reparation
2016
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 387 2016; (p. 54)A Tear in the Soul is a fine example of creative non-fiction that unfolds a personal story but also advances our knowledge of Australian society, past and present. It is a nuanced contribution to the growing body of literature in which contemporary non-Indigenous Australians attempt to make sense of the history of white settlement and take responsibility for our own complicity in the past and current treatment of Indigenous peoples. In combining a personal quest to reconnect to her past with an exploration of 1960s Kalgoorlie and a moral self-examination, Webster has written a book in which story and idea interweave to engage and move us, even while we are forced to confront disturbing material.
(Introduction)
-
Reparation
2016
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 387 2016; (p. 54)A Tear in the Soul is a fine example of creative non-fiction that unfolds a personal story but also advances our knowledge of Australian society, past and present. It is a nuanced contribution to the growing body of literature in which contemporary non-Indigenous Australians attempt to make sense of the history of white settlement and take responsibility for our own complicity in the past and current treatment of Indigenous peoples. In combining a personal quest to reconnect to her past with an exploration of 1960s Kalgoorlie and a moral self-examination, Webster has written a book in which story and idea interweave to engage and move us, even while we are forced to confront disturbing material.
(Introduction)
-
[Review Essay] : A Tear in the Soul
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , May vol. 41 no. 2 2017; (p. 273-274) 'A Tear in the Soul is an ambitious book. Amanda Webster, born into a family of Kalgoorlie doctors and a doctor herself, is challenged about Australian racism at an elite writers’ retreat in Hawaii, so sets forth from the exceedingly comfortable surroundings of her eastern Australian homes (plural) to confront the racism she grew up with and reconnect with the mission kids she played with at primary school. The result is a book that is partly memoir, partly exposé of unconscious privilege, partly a means to personal reconciliation. The title comes from Webster’s realisation that hurting others causes “a tear in the soul that allows the essence of one’s humanity to leak out” (112) and that she belongs to a group that has caused such a wound.' (Introduction)
- Kurrawang Native Mission, Goldfields area, Southeast Western Australia, Western Australia,
