TELL IT TO THE WORLD :: Stan Grant

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

A television news and political journalist and a member of the Wiradjuri tribe of Indigenous Australians, Stan Grant offers a painfully insightful look at the tragic history of Indigenous people in Australia since the British arrived in the 18th century and started colonizing the continent.

Originally published as Talking to My Country in 2016, the book began as a response to the racist humiliation of Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes. Published in the U.S. for the first time as Tell It to the World, this is a transparent look at the full history of Australia and the historic efforts to marginalize and erase Indigenous people.

Grant's family is a microcosm of the horrors of early settlement. John Grant, a forebear, was an Irish Catholic who rose up against the English. He was convicted and sent to the penal colony, "a man in chains, hounded by tyranny, banished from the soil of Tipperary.... He died the wealthiest Irish Catholic in the colonies." As a white man he thrived, while the Indigenous, including his relations, were slaughtered at places now named for their atrocities, such as Poison Waterholes Creek and Murdering Island.

And still today in Australia, Indigenous people are disproportionately suicidal, imprisoned and "trapped by the tyranny of low expectations." In this memoir of a boy, his family and their land, Grant puts lyrical words and truth to the idea that "a truly great country... should be held to great account."

STREET SENSE: As a half-Aussie, I was aware, yet nowhere near sufficiently aware, of the history of Indigenous Australians. Stan Grant shares an important look at the historical repression of Australia's first people ('The Great Australian Silence") and the idea that a truly great country should be held to great account.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE: As the frontier passed, my people were not fading away. We had become 'the Aboriginal problem' and now there was a solution. It was a great Australian prophecy, written in law and given a name: Assimilation. As the policy stated: '...the destiny of the natives of aboriginal [sic] origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth...' Absorption: Think about that word. To us it meant that we would lose all traces of our culture and our heritage. It meant that we would lose our families.

COVER NERD SAYS: This was a book I chose based on content without regard for the cover. Which is a good thing, because the cover is something of a disappointment. It doesn't evoke any emotion in me, certainly not any emotion that serves the content. It feels cartoony, which doesn't seem right. The leaves feel like an afterthought to paint it with some cultural content. It would have been more powerful without them (just the black and white text), but it also deserved more attention from the get-go.