Posts tagged memoir

A Shocking Memoir From a Stolen Generation

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Marie Munkara and her mother Judy

I learnt about Of Ashes and Rivers That Run to the Sea from Emma’s excellent review on Book Around the Corner. It’s a very moving memoir by a woman, Marie Munkara, who was taken from her Aboriginal family in northern Australia at the age of 3 and placed with a white foster family in Melbourne. The Stolen Generations Munkara was one of thousands of members of the “Stolen Generations” of Aboriginal children taken from their homes by the Australian government or church missions. According to Wikipedia: “Official government estimates are that in… Read More

“On Writing” by Stephen King

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This is a book of two halves: part memoir, part writing advice. When I first read it, about ten years ago, I think I was so desperate for someone to tell me how to be a writer that I skipped all the memoir stuff and just went straight for the advice. The only part that I remembered was the advice to “write with the door shut”, i.e. not to show the work to anyone or even talk much about it while you’re working on the first draft. Later on, other… Read More