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Keywords: Memoir

  • AUSTRALIA

    When life begins in an ICU

    • Jen Vuk
    • 15 September 2008
    12 Comments

    Photos of my son taken just after birth show an unconscious newborn fighting for his life. Last week, as the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Bill was passed in the lower house, I caught myself siding with Peter Costello.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Film of the week

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 August 2008

    One was shot on location in Pakistan by an amateur Sydney filmmaker. The other is a cartoon made by an Iranian expatriate about life in Tehran. What do such different films have to tell us about humanity in the Middle East?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Murder sequel has charm galore

    • Tony Smith
    • 18 July 2008

    Marion Halligan has a fine appreciation of the literary process linking author and reader. In Murder on the Apricot Coast she teases with a critique of sequels and argues that only the reader's imagination can extend the lives of literary characters.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Aboriginal voices resist colonial history

    • Kevin Brophy
    • 27 June 2008

    Since the 18th century, Aboriginal writers have used the English language to make their presence felt in the face of colonisation. This anthology of Aboriginal writing goes beyond 'literature' to suggest a national counter-narrative.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Incivility trumps the empty dance of manners

    • Brian Doyle
    • 25 June 2008
    5 Comments

    One time we were in a meeting when a very important person proposed a very stupid idea. We knew our uncivil friend would pop a gasket, and he did, albeit in memorably incisive fashion. The silence that followed was a remarkable sound.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Young writers uncaged

    • Gabrielle Bridges
    • 28 May 2008
    1 Comment

    One of the teenage mums writes poetry. The Goths are into dragons and wizards. A girl in a wheelchair says, 'Melanie. A novel.' A tattooed youth drawls, 'Sean. Dirty realism.' Reading work aloud is voluntary but most are keen.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lotus flowers bloom regardless

    • Anne Carson
    • 15 April 2008
    3 Comments

    Our musician guide tells how he was made to smash his violin, his love. Fifty years on and grief still shapes his hands; splinters in his palms.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Glamour returns to post-war Australia

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 27 March 2008
    3 Comments

    This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first showing of Christian Dior's New Look fashion designs in Sydney. After years of wartime material restraints the New Look offered Australian women a fresh way of expressing their individuality and sensuality through fashion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    World War II refugee's light touch

    • Brenda Niall
    • 22 February 2008
    1 Comment

    Irina Sibley experienced hunger, displacement and bewilderment as a child in war-torn Lithuania. But the first two sentences of her memoir are optimistic: 'A girl-child is born,' she announces. 'It is me.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making obligation mutual

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 14 November 2007

    For the unemployed, single parents and people with disabilities, mutual obligation is about pushing income support recipients into the labour market. It’s a combination of help and hassle — but with the emphasis increasingly on hassle.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Biopic avoids venerating troubled artist antihero

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 October 2007
    6 Comments

    The 'troubled artist', creative but self-destructive, looms large in pop culture. The film Control offers sympathy for the artist's love ones, who are left bruised and bleeding.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Uncovering Nobel laureate's Nazi past

    • Gary Pearce
    • 08 August 2007

    Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s memoir became controversial last year due to revelations that he had been a member of the Waffen SS. It reveals that he feels both intimately connected with, and uncomprehending of, his younger self.

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