https://shawjonathan.com/2024/03/07/ellen-van-neervens-heat-and-light-page-76/ ( )

Ellen Van Neerven is one of a group of distinctive young Australian voices emerging in our literature. As a queer, indigenous woman, her writing can evoke strong feelings of vulnerability and separation from family, culture and love.

This book is structured in three sections. The first, Heat, contains stories of multiple generations of the Kresinger family, who include in their number the almost mythical and mysterious Pearl.

The Light section contains stories about the impact of poverty and violence on families and the stresses that ensue. These stories have a much harder and grittier edge than those in Heat.

There is a middle section called Water that is quite different to the rest. This section is set in the future, where an indigenous woman accepts a government job to help clear a newly-discovered species of plantpeople away from their lands in order to make way for a major development. The parallels with what was done to her own people in the past are clear, and this leads to some quite conflicted feelings. I liked this section the most; it is beautifully written and the premise is both clever and original. Indeed, I liked nearly all of these stories, and can certainly recommend Ellen Van Neerven as a writer to look out for.
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To whet your appetite for Indigenous Literature Week, (https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/06/announcing-2017-indigenous-literature-week-at-anz-litlovers/) here’s my review of a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while…

If all goes well, I’ll be reading two winners of the David Unaipon Award during Indigenous Literature Week 2017. It’s an important award because as well as a prize of $10,000, the winner receives a publishing contract with category sponsor University of Queensland Press (UQP). Ellen Van Neerven won the award in 2013 for Heat and Light, and I have finally – at last! tracked down a copy of Larissa Behrendt’s Home which won in 2002. I’ve read quite a few of the recent winners, and they’ve all been interesting reading (links go to my reviews):
•Not Just Black and White, by Lesley Williams and Tammy Williams (2014)
•Mazin Grace, by Dylan Coleman (2011)
•Purple Threads, by Jeanine Leane (2010)
•Every Secret Thing, by Marie Munkara (2008)
•Swallow the Air, by Tara June Winch (2004, originally titled Dust on Waterglass)
•The Mish: Childhood Memories of Framlingham Aboriginal Station, by Robert Lowe (2001)
•Sweet Water, Stolen Land, by Philip McLaren (1992)

As it happens, I brought home another interesting book from Bayside Library today. It’s called Black Writers, White Editors, Episodes of collaboration and compromise in Australian Publishing History, (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009 ISBN 9781921509063) and the author is Jennifer Jones, whose research explored the editorial relationship for three foundational Indigenous women writers, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Margaret Tucker and Monica Clare. I’m unlikely to read it all because … a-hem… it is indeed a scholarly work, but it made me realise for the first time that the process of publishing indigenous narratives can significantly alter what is eventually published. Jones’s analysis shows (amongst other things) that for the three authors that she researched, there were numerous alterations which were not just spelling and grammar, including
•changes that increase political impact in a passage;
•insertion of alternative colloquialisms;
•minimisation of character’s emotional expression; and
•standardisation of colloquialisms.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/24/heat-and-light-by-ellen-van-neervan/ ( )

A beautifully crafted book combining family history, speculative fiction, and stories of contemporary life written by a talented Australian Indigenous woman.

Ellen Van Neerven is an accomplished young writer of Dutch and Indigenous descent. She works as an editor for Black&Writes!, an organization encouraging Indigenous writing. In this book, as in many of the books of good non-mainstream writers, she writes about her own people and the problems and joys they encounter—some particular to their identity and others more universal in nature. As Van Neerven stated in an interview with Anita Heiss, she wants “Aboriginal voices to be heard and Aboriginal lives to be represented.”

Although I loved this book, its unique structure makes it difficult to review.

Read more: http://wp.me/p24OK2-1ot ( )

Read 2015. ( )