The Inclusive Voice

The following extract originally appeared in Books Up Front, published by the School Library Association of Victoria.(see below for details)

Reading Maybe tomorrow, Meme McDonald's and Boori Pryor's first book together, is a consciousness changing and challenging occasion for adolescents and adults. My Girragundji and The Binna Binna man offer the same experiences to younger readers. They are unique books that tell, from reconstructed true experiences, what it is to be young and Aboriginal in contemporary Queensland. Using Aboriginal English and interspersed with Aboriginal vocabulary they invite young readers inside a Murri family through a young boy whose experiences, while unique to his culture and spiritual beliefs, are simultaneously the experiences of any childhood. It is the dual nature of these books, written collaboratively by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, that mark them as special. The blending of the stories of the two authors takes readers out of their own cultures and offers an encounter with another's, yet prompts us to see the universal experiences common to all. Funny to the point of being outrageous, straight talking, simply and eloquently told, these two books are appealing, accessible and important literary events. Conversation with their authors was full of laughs and insights, hopefully conveyed in this record of interview.

Q: The voice of the boy in the two stories is distinctive and appealing- naive, direct yet also insightful, vivid and funny. Was it hard to find and maintain that voice?

Meme: One of the advantages of writing with Boori is that the voice is around me when Boori is here. The voice is largely Boori's. Once I start writing the voice almost possesses me and takes on a character of its own. So a lot of the stories are from Boori's childhood but they are an amalgam of other voices too like his nieces and nephews whom we spend time with up north. It is like an independent voice that lives with you that you can go to immediately. With Boori I always have a reference and even when he is away I'll be on the phone asking "How would you say this? What would be an expression to use here?"

Boori: We had a friend over yesterday who lived in the Gulf for a while. I started telling stories and she said "Oh, I've missed that". That's what Meme is saying: there's a distinctive way of telling stories that my whole family has, that Meme is a part of and around. Grace, Meme's daughter, is the one who got the story of the frog out of me. We were watching Essendon and Carlton and she wanted a story but Carlton needed my help and I didn't have time for a traditional story.

Meme: Boori said "I'll tell you a story about my pet frog" and that's how the story started, about it being eaten by a snake. I was listening and thinking about issues that aren't dealt with often. In this instance it was the death of a pet that also symbolises more. But in our culture, not Boori's, death is often pushed away and when it does happen it is often very hard to know how to deal with it. I love writing about death for adults and children because it is an important issue to come to grips with. And here was this story of a beautiful, little pet being eaten by a snake. Every child has the experience of a pet dying but how do you make a book about it that is positive and takes you beyond the tragedy? That was the challenge.

Boori: I remember Grace asking "and then what happened?" And the Hairy Man came out. As I went along I remembered lots of other things. These memories only come out when I'm telling the story. Meme and Grace made me dig back in my retelling, and how it came out is as I told it to Grace. Meme was always circling, listening.

Q: Although the voice is that of a young person, the writing is very immediate and rich and one of the clever narrative devices to achieve this is the use of lively metaphors and similes. How conscious was that?

Meme: A conscious way that I write is, rather than telling directly, to paint pictures. I am a visual person and love trying to match the images of seeing that moon over the ocean and trying to put words to it. Often metaphors and similes are the way to do it. I don't consciously think of writing for children so in writing this story I didn't write consciously for publishing either. I think Allen & Unwin took a punt on these books. They didn't fit into a category: they're not traditional Aboriginal stories, they're written by black and white together which can be a tricky thing; they're negotiated; they're a mixture of things. For me, I hear a story and then I'm set a challenge by that story to describe it in words. So you experience it or observe it in someone else's life and then the challenge is how to make it beautiful for yourself. For these books as for any books that are marketed as children's books, we know that adults get a lot from them too. As a writer and an adult I'm really writing them for myself.

An example to explain it further: we were editing The Binna Binna man which for me is about faith and how you have faith in something that is then challenged by people around you. You begin to think it is a bit daggy and you push it aside but what you're left with is even scarier if you don't have that strength within. How do you find that again? I'm exploring that in my forties and we are also exploring it with a fourteen-year-old boy in the book. One of the editors said "Yes, I suppose you are exploring that issue at fourteen" and it suddenly occurred to me that she was talking about a fourteen-year-old boy but I was talking about myself in my mid-forties.

Boori: A story about that: Mum was in hospital reading the books and another woman about the same age - seventy-odd - said "What you got there?". This woman had not been able to sleep for months and had been taking sleeping pills. Mum said "Some books my son wrote". So this lady read My Girragundli over and over and that night she had the best sleep - didn't need any drugs and was clutching the book in the morning. Having breakfast with my Mum she said "It's wonderful, that little frog". And Mum said "Well, the frog works in different ways for different people". I think the book is a contemporary story with traditional flavours. The last book of the three that we are going to do will have more traditional language with some Aboriginal English. Meme and I are going to do a picture book which is a traditional story with contemporary flavour. In The Binna Binna man there's McDonalds, the huge multinational company, and then you go over the hill and there's a 40,000 year old spirit, which is a pretty amazing mixture of events.

These interviews were constructed and conducted by Pam Macintyre. Pam teaches in the Department of Language, Literacy and Arts Education at The University of Melbourne. With Stella Lees, she wrote The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature. She is the editor of Viewpoint: on books for young adults, and reviews for the Australian Book Review and the Australian's Review of Books.

The complete article 'The Inclusive Voice' first published in Books Up Front, published by

The School Library Association of Victoria
150 Palmerston Street
Carlton, Victoria 3053.

slav@netspace.net.au

Books Up Front
ISBN 0-9099978-22-0

copyright meme mcdonald 2002