Purple Threads

by Leane, Jeanine

• ISBN13: 9780702266027
• ISBN10: 0702266027
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-03-01
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Summary

Winner of the David Unaipon Award, an engaging, moving and often funny yarn about growing up in the home of two Aunties running a sheep farm in rural Gundagai. Growing up in the shifting landscape of Gundagai with her Nan and Aunties, Sunny spends her days playing on the hills near their farmhouse and her nights dozing by the fire, listening to the big women yarn about life over endless cups of tea. It is a life of freedom, protection and love. But as Sunny grows she must face the challenge of being seen as different, and of having a mother whose visits are as unpredictable as the rain. Based on Jeanine Leane’ s own childhood, these funny, endearing and thought-provoking stories offer a snapshot of a unique Australian upbringing.

Author Biography

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from south-west New South Wales. Her first volume of poetry, Dark Secrets After Dreaming, won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry, and her first novel, Purple Threads, won the David Unaipon Award. She has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative non-fiction. Jeanine was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Evelyn Araluen 1 Women and dogs in a working man’ s paradise 2 God’ s flock 3 Waiting for Petal 4 Lilies of the field 5 Coming home 6 Marching with Hannibal 7 Purple threads 8 Lying dogs 9 Land grab 10 The National Sheep Dip Alliance Party Epilogue – Country turns Acknowledgements