Reimagining the inheritance of loss of country: Stan Grant’s Talking to my country

Abstract

Reading Walkley award winning journalist and Wiradjuri man Stan Grant’s latest book Talking to my country (Grant 2016a) can be a sharply contradictory experience. On the one hand, the book’s short, brisk sentences and emphatic, conversational style (you can almost hear him talking) might tempt you to read it in a single sitting. And on the other, it is advisable to digest its searing contents – phrases, images, metaphors, bleak statistics delivered wrapped in masterfully told stories – at a measured pace. The most poignant aspect of this riveting personal account of growing up Aboriginal in Australia is that it comes from a highly credible professional known for his “inclination to look for common ground, to be diplomatic” (Grant 2015). This is why Stan Grant’s part-memoir, part-polemic achieves the effect it sets out to create – for people to listen.