AustLit

'' You ask too many questions, Matilda. It' s not becoming in a girl.' But Matilda is full of questions. It' s the late 1800s in rural New South Wales and Matilda, as the oldest daughter, is expected to cook, clean and help Mama with her brothers and sisters. But her inquiring mind will not be stilled nor her rebellious spirit tamed. When frustration overcomes her, she finds escape in the land she loves and in her imagination, nourished by books. In the rust red landscape, both striking and harsh, and against the backdrop of World Wars and a changing Australia, Matilda is torn by her desire for freedom and allegiance to her growing family. With their never-ending demands, and crises of poverty, drought and illness, what Matilda really wants seems further from her reach. Will she ever see the sea? Have a vocation and earn her own money? Have the time to read? This sweeping novel brings to life the injustices faced by women in the 1800s and 1900s. Punctuated with betrayal and loyalty, hope and despair, love and loss, Matilda and her family come alive showing how the grip of patriarchy tried to strangle the ambitions of women, but there were women who refused to give up.' (Publication summary) 

'Chinongwa Murehwa was nine, but her age was not vital. Just her virginity.’ In the village where Chinongwa lives, her family, displaced from their lands, are very poor. One desperate solution to hunger is to trade young daughters into marriage. At first, to their shame, her father’ s and aunt’ s attempts to marry off their youngest child fail. No one is interested in this small, thin girl. Eventually, a childless woman, Amai Chitsva, offers Chinongwa as a second wife to her own husband who is old enough to be the girl’ s grandfather. Chinongwa is forced to grow up very fast and rely on her survival instincts. She does her best to do what is expected of her and become a good wife and mother, but being very young, very alone, and a girl, the odds are stacked against her. Eventually, after spending her whole life doing the bidding of others, all Chinongwa wants is her independence. But how can one gain such a thing as a woman? Will she ever truly be free? 'My only dream that’ s ever come true, and one I relish with a vengeance, is being able to whistle like a man. I was told a woman fit to be married should not whistle. I don’ t want to be married so the more they point at me, the louder I whistle. My load is still heavy on my head, but my heart is light, for I know, like the sun, that I shall rise every morning. Be it cloudy, cold or wet, I shall not fail to rise. And I shall whistle as loudly as I like. To me, it is the sound of freedom.'' (Publication summary)

'Feminists have long known that it's all connected. "The stories, the families, the country, the River". In this anthology, poets and short story writers create worlds with words. This book includes stories that draw on mythic traditions rewritten for our time.

'There are thieves, grandmothers, teenagers breaking out, dark caves to explore and real estate to sell; there are mysteries from the grave, experiments that go wrong, road trips, a circus, an opera, families that break and families that hold together; there are birds and animals and babies, and there is the pandemic. There is stillness and movement; closeness and distance.

'This eclectic range of authors brings their unique perspectives to storytelling as they each grapple to understand the past and meet the challenges ahead, daring to share their joy and pain, their fear and anger, their hopes and disappointments. These are women who dare to remember, to claim their own stories and to wonder what may have been.' (Publication summary)

 (Publication summary)

'think of my body as a shell
that I could vacate, not as metaphor, or symbol
but as a real possibility

'Body Shell Girl is a memoir in verse about the first two years of a decade that Rose Hunter spent in the sex industry in Canada. When Rose walked into a massage parlour in Toronto in 1997, she was looking for a temporary fix to pay rent and avoid having to go back to her home country of Australia.

'Awkward, shy and looking for a place to belong, she found herself in a strange world she understood little about, other than here she could make more than rent. She planned to use her earnings to buy herself an education that would secure the career of her dreams.

'Naively believing she could do only what was required of her, without trauma or side effects and leave the industry on her own terms, she was shattered by what unfolded.

'This is her story. It is also a searing portrayal of this dehumanising industry in all its destructive power.' (Publication summary)

'As a young unmarried mother in the 1960s, Maureen faces stifling disapproval and condemnation from mainstream society. Desperate to create a new life for herself and her baby, she rekindles an old romance and moves to South Africa under Apartheid.

'But her precarious journey to Africa’s Eden is not the paradise she anticipated. Cultures smash against each other, family relationships are strained, there is death and despair, violence and injustice. But there is also humour, fun, family and friendship, as Maureen has to decide where her future lies. Is it in Africa or back home in distant Eden, in her Australian homeland?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The tide is going out but a rogue wave crashes over the pool wall and over me, and I gasp as the colder water foams like seltzer on my skin.—Stephanie Wood

'The history of McIver’s Ladies Baths in Coogee – affectionately know as the Women’s Pool – is eloquently told in these stories by women who have found friendship, sanctuary and simple pleasure as they have gathered and swum there.

'Humorous tales of encounters at the pool sit alongside stories of sorrow and regret. There are recollections of the famed ‘Thursday Married Ladies Club’ and accounts of delight at the natural beauty, safety and freedom that Australia’s only ocean pool reserved for women offers.

'In this anthology, writers from diverse cultures reveal the role that the Women’s Pool has played in their lives. From the ‘365ers’ who brave the elements all year round to the women who seek summer sun on the rocks, a picture emerges of a space for women to be themselves.

'The ancient seasonal cycles find their own rhythm at our pool, at our place of ‘women’s business’. In the vastness of the largest Continent on Earth, it is a tiny space of companionship if wanted, or solitude if needed.—Mary Goslett'

Source : publisher's blurb

'The 2020-2021 Covid-19 Pandemic

'What was it like to live in Melbourne during the 2020-2021 lockdowns? Capturing the day-to-day struggles of lockdown, the daily news, Dan Andrews’ 11am morning press conferences, the tensions between Victorians and the rest of Australia, Trump’s chaotic America, the conspiracy theories that circulated and battling her own mental health, Sandy Jeffs takes us through the whirlwind of events in imaginative haiku poems. These became her sanity while the world spiralled into madness.

'First wave fear is back.
Before an end was in sight
now there is no end.

'Trying to make sense
of an unravelling world
that is downright mad.

'This is not only a book about the pandemic but also about political wins and political failures. From Dan Andrews to Donald Trump. Each day brings news that creates despair or joy: the pandemic numbers and the voting numbers side by side. And as the world is in the grip of COVID madness, sanity is found in poetry.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'The sun is our closest star just average a middle-aged dwarf past its prime but still a few billion years to go and fierce is its heat Its domains: interior surface atmospheres inner corona outer corona Did someone say Corona?

'The Wear of My Face is an assemblage of passing lives and landscapes, fractured worlds and realities. There is splintered text and image, memory and dream, newscast and conversation. Women wicker first light, old men make things that glow, poets are standing stones, frontlines merge with tourist lines. Lizz Murphy weaves these elements into the strangeness of suburbia, the intensity of waiting rooms, bush stillness, and hopes for a leap of faith as at times she leaves a poem as fragmented as a hectic day or a bombed street. What may sometimes seem like misdemeanours of the mind, to Lizz they are simply the distractions and disturbances of daily life somewhere. There is a rehomed greyhound, a breezy scientist, ancient malleefowl, beige union reps and people in all their conundrums. You might travel on a seagull’s wing or wing through the aerosphere.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'What was it like to participate in the Women’s Liberation Movement? What made millions of women step forward from the 1960s onwards and join it in different ways? Many of the 56 women in this book were there. They describe how they have contributed in multitudinous ways across politics, the arts, health, education, environmentalism, economics and science and created wonderfully rebellious activism. And how they continue this activism today with determined grittiness. Here are women – all over 70 years of age – still railing against the patriarchal systemic oppression of women, still fighting back. “Don’t Call Me Sweetie,” “Never Waste a Good Crisis” and “Still Here, Still Clear and Still Lesbian” is some of what they want us to know.

'The contributors to Not Dead Yet have created new analyses with new language and new kinds of organisations always aware of the ways in which the system is stacked against us, particularly against radical feminists. But we persist. We share the revolutionary zest we have carried with us over many decades. There is history, there is subversion and there are many extraordinary acts of courage. The language is full of irony and wit – as well as deadly serious.

'The Women’s Liberation Movement has had a profound effect on the lives of millions of women and in turn those women have changed our world. But the struggle continues. May these riveting tales by the foremothers of the movement inspire young women readers. #NotDeadYet'

Source : publisher's blurb

'An oriole sings to a dying father. A bleeding-heart dove saves the day. A crow wakes a woman’s resolve. Owls help a boy endure isolation. Cockatoos attend the laying of the dead. Always there are birds in these linked stories that pay homage to kindness amidst loss, grief, discord and displacement, from Australia to the Philippines, across cultures and species. When we encounter that snag in the breath, that shadow of a wing, we hope to remember kindness. 

'Kindness cannot self-isolate. It moves both ways and all ways, like breath.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Pregnant, abandoned and homeless, Maureen battles to survive a Swedish winter until help arrives in the form of a mysterious woman with a veiled past. With the prospect of being deported, Maureen learns who her real friends are, especially when she faces investigations due to her links to a suspected criminal.

'Meanwhile in Australia, Maureen’s family is scrambling to support her when the health of her unscrupulous father declines and he depends on the clever intervention of his estranged family members to salvage both his dignity and finances.

'In this engaging, rollicking yet poignant sequel to Lillian’s Eden, we see Maureen’s ambition to explore the world encounter its harsh realities, and her mother Lillian using her resourcefulness and intelligence to tackle the ongoing family dramas at home.

'This is a novel about women in the world in the 1960s, both in Australia and abroad, and their resilience and capacity to manage their lives at a time when others want to take that independence and decision-making from them.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'I can see how I carry Yiayia’s war
in the ample dunes of my belly,
the moment she smelt the guns,
she pinched the candle’s wick,
gathered the startled shadows of her children,
flung my baby-mother onto her back
and sprinted towards the neutral moon—'

'Migration and the memories of women’s traditions are woven throughout these poems. Angela Costi brings the world of Cyprus to Australia. Her mother encounters animosity on Melbourne’s trams as Angela learns to thread words in ways that echo her grandmother’s embroidery. Here are poems that sing their way across the seas and map histories.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'How did we move so far from love that a mother’s grief became the vehicle with which to punish her?

'Losing a baby during childbirth is one of the most heartbreaking things imaginable. But to then be accused of causing that death is nothing short of soul-destroying.

'Janet Fraser’s story shows what happens when private grief is turned into a public accusation against a woman who dared to exercise choice about how and where she gave birth.

'This sobering book demonstrates the penalties dished out to women who question medical orthodoxy and to make decisions for themselves about their own bodies.

'When things go wrong in a hospital, it is seen as unavoidable, and no one is to blame, as the medical institutions are seen as the arbiters of decision-making. The layers of bureaucracy protect insiders.

'Yet if a baby dies in a home birth, the full weight of the law comes down upon the woman who dared to give birth outside a hospital.

'Janet Fraser is that woman and this is her story of injustice, loss and grief. This painful yet enlightening book shows that the patriarchy still wrestles for the control of women and their bodies —and punishes them with every tool in the legal handbook when they contest the view that their bodies are public property.'

Source: publisher's blurb

'“I am in the very fortunate position of having been able to contribute to two waves of feminism: The Women’s Liberation Movement and the new wave that is taking place now.”

'Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life is both an engaging autobiography and a fascinating account of feminist history. From the heady days of the Women’s Liberation Movement through to the backlash against radical feminism as neoliberal laissez-faire attitudes took hold. Fast forward to the current re-examination of feminism in light of the #MeToo movement and an emerging new wave of radical feminism.

'Sheila Jeffreys' bold account makes it clear that the feminism and lesbianism she has championed for decades is needed more than ever. With honesty and frankness, she tells of victories and setbacks in her unrelenting commitment to women’s freedom from men’s violence, especially the violence inherent in pornography and prostitution. We also learn what her steadfastness has cost her in terms of personal and professional rewards.

'Trigger Warning places radical feminism within a cultural, social and intellectual context while also taking us on a personal journey. Sheila Jeffreys has tirelessly crossed the globe to advance radical feminist theory and practice and we are invited to share in the intellectual and political crossroads she has encountered during her life.

'Accessible yet detailed and rigorous, this landmark volume is essential reading for everyone who has ever wondered what radical feminism really is.'

Source: publisher's blurb

'For the first time since he'd left the island he thought of the starlings massed at dusk in the winter trees behind the children's home. He remembered the rustle of their wings when they twisted in skeins over the fields, or swelled and contracted high above the cliffs, dark wave after dark wave, lifting and falling in a kind of dance. Sister Lucy had said it was a murmuration. He was still quite young, and he had thought the birds were showing him a sign, that there was something written in their fluid patterns. Lives merge and diverge; they soar and plunge, or come to rest in impenetrable silence. Erris Cleary's absence haunts the pages of this exquisite novella, a woman who complicates other lives yet confers unexpected blessings. Fly far, be free, urges Erris. Who can know why she smashes mirrors? Who can say why she does not heed her own advice? Among the sudden shifts and swings, the swerving flight paths taken, something hidden must be uncovered, something dark and rotten, even evil, which has masqueraded as normality. In the end it will be a writer's task to reclaim Erris, to bear witness, to sound in fiction the one true note that will crack the silence. (Publication summary)' 

'It’s winter 1999 and Harry is homeless in Bondi, with seagulls for company and just a small plastic bag containing all his possessions. When the girl on board the bus sees him, lonely and cold in the bus shelter that he calls home, she thinks about how she can help him. She decides to write him a symphony.

'So begins a poignant and gritty tale of homelessness and shelter, of the realities of loneliness and hunger, and the gestures of care and friendship that can transform the struggles of daily life. This is the story of two people - one a young woman struggling to find her place in an alien world, one an older man seeking refuge and solace from a life in tatters. Both outcasts in the world, they have dreams of a better future and nurture hope for the possibilities of what can be. Will she write him a symphony? And does it matter?

'An uplifting and heartbreaking story that demands empathy. Amid the struggles to belong and fit in, we are reminded that small acts of kindness matter. And big dreams are possible.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.