One Bright Spot (Highlight) - Softcover

Haskins, V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1403947449 ISBN 13: 9781403947444

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Synopsis

For every Aboriginal child taken away by the state governments in Australia, there was at least one white family intimately involved in their life. One Bright Spot is about one of these families - about 'Ming', a Sydney wife and mother who hired Aboriginal domestic servants in the 20s and 30s, and became an activist against the Stolen Generations policy. Her story, reconstructed by her great-granddaughter, tells of a remarkable, yet forgotten, shared history.

About this title

About the Author

VICTORIA HASKINS was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1967 and lived in the East Kimberley in Western Australia as a child, until moving to Sydney, New South Wales as a teenager. She was educated at Ku-Ring-Gai High School and the University of Sydney. Having worked in bookshops for many years, Victoria moved to the North Coast of New South Wales to run a travelling bookshop there, when she discovered the papers on which this book is based.
Later, Victoria worked as a curator of Australian Social History at the National Museum of Australia, in Canberra, before taking up a History lectureship at Flinders University in South Australia. Victoria now lives in Adelaide with her partner, Indigenous historian John Maynard, and their three children. This is her first book.

Review

'Victoria Haskins' fine book fills a much-needed gap in our understanding of Australia's history. For too long we have heard the stories of one side or the other; colonised or colonisers. One Bright Spot delicately rounds out our understanding by revealing to us the complexity of the relationships that emerged through the cross-cultural interactions of the early part of the twentieth century. The evocative prose resists sentimentality and romanticisation and delights the reader with an exquisite novel-like writing style. At the end of it one is struck by Haskins' rare combination of scholarly rigor, passion and a personal connection, which she both embraces and critiques'. Professor Lynette Russell, Monash University

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1403947449
• ISBN 13: 9781403947444
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292