The Place of Purple Threads in Australian Literature
Most of the famous works of Australian literature have been written by non-indigenous Australians. Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane is then not only a great memoir, but also an important example of indigenous Australian literature. It gives a perspective of Australian history and life that’s outside the normal scope of most Australian books found on our shelves. In addition, Purple Threads is also a truly indigenous piece of writing due to the way Leane approaches the telling of her story. Ideas about Aboriginal perspectives of truth and historical accuracy are brought into the spotlight through her book.
As a memoir, Purple Threads aims to give an impression of a certain event in a person’s life. Some memoirs have narrow timeframes in which this takes place, and others take longer to tell their story. Often there is a theme or main point running through a memoir; versus an autobiography, which is generally more of a straight-forward telling of the progress of a persons life. Much of Purple Threads is centred around how Jeanine Leane’s experience as an Aboriginal child was shaped by her status as an outsider in the small New South Whales community she grew up in. It also shows how her family played a large influence in raising her.
It is helpful to learn about other views or experiences of the past as it enriches and broadens our view of the present. Each family has its past, and in Purple Threads we catch a glimpse of Leane’s personal history. However, the histories of whole people groups are also important to consider. In particular, it is valuable to learn about Aboriginal Australian histories. The aim of this is not necessarily so that we can then feel guilty about the things that happened in the early days of the white colonisation of Australia, but so that we can gain an understanding that the past continues into the present and that indigenous issues are still a responsibility that all Australians face today.
Views of Australian history have divided the nation for years. There are two main ways of seeing the past: the first sees our national history as one of tragic violence, and the other sees our history as one of triumphant progress. These are of course two extremes, and many people would hold a view somewhere between the two. The most famous recent example of this split was debated heavily during John Howard’s time as Prime Minister. He saw views that accepted the violence of Australia’s past as being negative, and called this type of thinking ‘black armband history’. In his opinion, the history of Australia’s settlement reflected the values of hard work and perseverance that we value today.
There are other ways of thinking about the past, though. Australian poet Robert D. Fitzgerald wrote a poem called ‘The Wind At Your Door’ in 1958, which offered an interesting perspective on how we as Australians today can view the past. ‘None know what in his place they might have done. I’ve my own faults to face,’ was one of the lines in his poem. By this he means that while he may not agree with what his relatives had done in the past, he didn’t condemn them for it. The past has happened, and we live with it today.
Ultimately it is very difficult for anyone except for Aboriginal Australians to truly write about what their experience in the nation’s history has been like. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this issue with perspective would be to quote Herman Hesse, from his novel Demian: ‘To us all the same origin is common, our mothers—we all come out of the womb. But each of us—an experiment, one of nature’s litter, strives after his own ends. We can understand one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.’ However, this hasn’t stopped lots of authors from trying to imagine or envision what the lives of others have been like in history. David Malouf is one author who has attempted to address the early period of Australian settler history in his novel Remembering Babylon.
The characters in Remembering Babylon are perhaps the biggest obstacle in making the story seem realistic. How realistic a book or work of art seems is often referred to as verisimilitude, which is something Malouf struggles to create with the overbalanced perspectives provided by his set of characters. This being said, the way Malouf paints the land, the respect he pays the indigenous people and their relationship and inhabitation to the land, and the vivid portals into characters’ lives make the book a rich and ambitious read; not to mention a great starting point for discussion as to how its themes might apply to us today.
After all, the ways in which we live our day-to-day lives don’t always seem to be affected by the past, but really everything around us is the product of things that happened in a time before now. American author Jonathan Safran Foer summarised this beautifully by writing the line that, ‘Everything is illuminated in the light of the past’. In Purple Threads, Jeanine Leane is not only illuminating her childhood, but also the experience of an Aboriginal person who feels like an outsider or minority in the same country her family was born in. Her indigenous perspective grants readers an insight into her life, weaving the themes of Aboriginal experience and notions of country together.
Jeanine Leane’s book Purple Threads is an elegant elegy to her early life in Gundagai, and the grandmother and aunties who raised her. Her memoir is written simply, and performs the important role of writing Aboriginal perspectives into Australian literature and history. The book’s tone is reflective and occasionally bittersweet, but the insights of her matured self are skilfully woven into the tale of her younger self. For example, her description of the Reverend’s disconnection from the rural landscape is achieved through the naive questioning of his ovine allegories, neatly critiquing the difficulties religious institutions found in sharing or identifying their messages with Aboriginal audiences, who often have their own beliefs regarding spirituality.
In a recent article for the Journal of the Association for the Study of Aboriginal Literature Leane wrote that the ‘journey for settlement and resettlement is ongoing’. Throughout Purple Threads, she is able to weave together the story of her childhood with the history of the nation as a ‘settling’ land. Allusions to government practices, prejudice, and regional pressures are all subtly and poignantly achieved through the use of literary devices within the story of her memoir. She engages in the process of writing Aboriginality into the national ideology with a delicate and touching style, throwing more dust in front of the rising sun that is the Australian literary landscape.
References
Fitzgerald, Robert D. (1958). The Wind At Your Door. In N. Jose (Ed.), Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hesse, Herman. (1923). Demian. New York: Boni & Liveright.
Leane, Jeanine. (2012). Purple Threads. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Leane, Jeanine. (2014). Tracking Our Country in Settler Literature. JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Aboriginal Literature 14(3), 2.
Safran Foer, Jonathan. (2005). Everything Is Illuminated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
As a memoir, Purple Threads aims to give an impression of a certain event in a person’s life. Some memoirs have narrow timeframes in which this takes place, and others take longer to tell their story. Often there is a theme or main point running through a memoir; versus an autobiography, which is generally more of a straight-forward telling of the progress of a persons life. Much of Purple Threads is centred around how Jeanine Leane’s experience as an Aboriginal child was shaped by her status as an outsider in the small New South Whales community she grew up in. It also shows how her family played a large influence in raising her.
It is helpful to learn about other views or experiences of the past as it enriches and broadens our view of the present. Each family has its past, and in Purple Threads we catch a glimpse of Leane’s personal history. However, the histories of whole people groups are also important to consider. In particular, it is valuable to learn about Aboriginal Australian histories. The aim of this is not necessarily so that we can then feel guilty about the things that happened in the early days of the white colonisation of Australia, but so that we can gain an understanding that the past continues into the present and that indigenous issues are still a responsibility that all Australians face today.
Views of Australian history have divided the nation for years. There are two main ways of seeing the past: the first sees our national history as one of tragic violence, and the other sees our history as one of triumphant progress. These are of course two extremes, and many people would hold a view somewhere between the two. The most famous recent example of this split was debated heavily during John Howard’s time as Prime Minister. He saw views that accepted the violence of Australia’s past as being negative, and called this type of thinking ‘black armband history’. In his opinion, the history of Australia’s settlement reflected the values of hard work and perseverance that we value today.
There are other ways of thinking about the past, though. Australian poet Robert D. Fitzgerald wrote a poem called ‘The Wind At Your Door’ in 1958, which offered an interesting perspective on how we as Australians today can view the past. ‘None know what in his place they might have done. I’ve my own faults to face,’ was one of the lines in his poem. By this he means that while he may not agree with what his relatives had done in the past, he didn’t condemn them for it. The past has happened, and we live with it today.
Ultimately it is very difficult for anyone except for Aboriginal Australians to truly write about what their experience in the nation’s history has been like. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this issue with perspective would be to quote Herman Hesse, from his novel Demian: ‘To us all the same origin is common, our mothers—we all come out of the womb. But each of us—an experiment, one of nature’s litter, strives after his own ends. We can understand one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.’ However, this hasn’t stopped lots of authors from trying to imagine or envision what the lives of others have been like in history. David Malouf is one author who has attempted to address the early period of Australian settler history in his novel Remembering Babylon.
The characters in Remembering Babylon are perhaps the biggest obstacle in making the story seem realistic. How realistic a book or work of art seems is often referred to as verisimilitude, which is something Malouf struggles to create with the overbalanced perspectives provided by his set of characters. This being said, the way Malouf paints the land, the respect he pays the indigenous people and their relationship and inhabitation to the land, and the vivid portals into characters’ lives make the book a rich and ambitious read; not to mention a great starting point for discussion as to how its themes might apply to us today.
After all, the ways in which we live our day-to-day lives don’t always seem to be affected by the past, but really everything around us is the product of things that happened in a time before now. American author Jonathan Safran Foer summarised this beautifully by writing the line that, ‘Everything is illuminated in the light of the past’. In Purple Threads, Jeanine Leane is not only illuminating her childhood, but also the experience of an Aboriginal person who feels like an outsider or minority in the same country her family was born in. Her indigenous perspective grants readers an insight into her life, weaving the themes of Aboriginal experience and notions of country together.
Jeanine Leane’s book Purple Threads is an elegant elegy to her early life in Gundagai, and the grandmother and aunties who raised her. Her memoir is written simply, and performs the important role of writing Aboriginal perspectives into Australian literature and history. The book’s tone is reflective and occasionally bittersweet, but the insights of her matured self are skilfully woven into the tale of her younger self. For example, her description of the Reverend’s disconnection from the rural landscape is achieved through the naive questioning of his ovine allegories, neatly critiquing the difficulties religious institutions found in sharing or identifying their messages with Aboriginal audiences, who often have their own beliefs regarding spirituality.
In a recent article for the Journal of the Association for the Study of Aboriginal Literature Leane wrote that the ‘journey for settlement and resettlement is ongoing’. Throughout Purple Threads, she is able to weave together the story of her childhood with the history of the nation as a ‘settling’ land. Allusions to government practices, prejudice, and regional pressures are all subtly and poignantly achieved through the use of literary devices within the story of her memoir. She engages in the process of writing Aboriginality into the national ideology with a delicate and touching style, throwing more dust in front of the rising sun that is the Australian literary landscape.
References
Fitzgerald, Robert D. (1958). The Wind At Your Door. In N. Jose (Ed.), Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hesse, Herman. (1923). Demian. New York: Boni & Liveright.
Leane, Jeanine. (2012). Purple Threads. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Leane, Jeanine. (2014). Tracking Our Country in Settler Literature. JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Aboriginal Literature 14(3), 2.
Safran Foer, Jonathan. (2005). Everything Is Illuminated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.