Towards an Australian "voice"

18 May 2006

Butterfly Song, Terri Janke, Penguin 2004, ISBN 0-14-300262-7, rrp $22.95

Behind the Moon, Hsu-Ming Teo, Allen and Unwin 2005, ISBN 1-74114-243-1, rrp $22.95

By emphasising cultural distinctiveness, recent novels by two young female authors advance the development of an Australian ‘voice’. Literary voice expresses social mores, represents characters and creates a space and language for dialogue between subcultures. The central characters in Terri Janke’s Butterfly Song and Hsu-Ming Teo’s Behind the Moon are young people exploring their identities within a diverse and dynamic Australian society. The novels demonstrate that while there are some common Australian traits, there is no one way to look, sound and behave as an Australian. Australian writing is similarly difficult to define but is distinguished by freshness, a dry sense of humour and an understated anti-authoritarianism.

The narrator of Butterfly Song, a young Murri named Tarena, attends a ‘tombstone unveiling’ on Thursday Island. Although Tarena has just completed her final law exams, Tarena’s mother urges her to investigate the ownership of a butterfly carved from pearl shell and turned into a brooch. Tarena’s mother and uncle believe that their father Kit made the carving for their mother Francesca, and as it was neither sold nor given away, it is rightfully theirs. Tarena’s search is engrossing enough, but several sub-plots and analogical themes enrich this thought provoking novel. Gazing towards the ocean Tarena says: ‘I see other islands in the blue distance…. like stepping stones to another world’. Tarena’s hunt for the provenance of the brooch leads to discoveries about her family and herself. Becoming more secure in her family relationships, she forms a constructive attitude to her future within a legal system that in 1992, before the ‘Mabo’ decision, seemed hostile to Indigenous people.

This novel is a stepping stone to entertainment but also to knowledge, empathy and understanding. Janke writes engagingly and her story tells itself. She does not preach, but rather recounts good humouredly, with this gentle humour even extending to Tarena’s experience of racism. While some non-Indigenous people deny the truth of dispossession, no fair minded reader will be threatened by Janke’s understated style. At school, asked about Katherine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo, Tarena lazily objects that being by a non-Aboriginal writer, ‘that’s got nothing to do with me’. As with the output of so many other Indigenous writers, such as Colin Johnson, Kevin Gilbert, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Philip McLaren and Sam Watson, pigeon-holing belittles Janke’s work. While

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Towards an Australian "voice"

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