Goodreads | Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with Your Country by Bruce Pascoe — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with Your Country
by Bruce Pascoe
really liked it · Rating Details · 12 Ratings · 8 Reviews
A wide-ranging, personal and powerful work that resonates with historical and contemporary Australian debates about identity, dispossession, memory, and community. Ranging across the national contemporary political stage, this book critiques the great Australian silence when it comes to dealing respectfully with the construction of the nation’s Indigenous past.
Paperback
Published April 1st 2007 by Aboriginal Studies Press (first published January 1st 2007)
(showing 1-30 of 39)
Well I learnt about the houses that the Wathaurong people built in the Western District. That's just for starters. Fucking genius book. Fucking devastating record of dispossesion. So much great primary source material and I love his strange ramblings as well.
Despite the enticing feminine and cultured image of the introduction, this book is a difficult read. Perhaps it should be for all the horrors of history which have so long been passed over or minimised in our national conscience. But Pascoe actually challenges further by his peppering of current political opinions and events into this already angry volume. Personally I find the assumption of such an attitude jarring me into resistance against the history he is attempting to bring to light. I don’t agree with the alignment of one era with another in this way. There is much more to the story than presented here and I am inclined to look into his references rather than listen further to his own version. And that seems a wasted opportunity. And he is wrong about democracy. This was a system devised in Greek culture where slaves were part of the invisible picture. To equate indigenous culture in Australia with democracy is actually a denigration of their valuing of all members of their society.(less)
Mar 08, 2013Maree Kimberley rated it really liked it
This is a book that will upset some people. But I find Pascoe's central argument - that Australia needs to face the truth about how Aboriginal land was stolen from them in order to come to terms with what it means to be Australian - a valid one.
'Australia has a black history' is not just a slogan on a t-shirt, and Pascoe's book addresses some elements of this statement by writing frankly about the circumstances under which many early white "settlers" took possession of land. In terms of history, Pascoe mainly focuses on incidents that happened in Victoria, in particular those massacres and battles that occurred under Batman and LaTrobe although he does refer to a few other incidents (such as the Coniston Massacre, which was the topic of a documentary released in 2012).
In the six or so years since Pascoe's book was published more about the true history of white invasion in Australia has been released (for example, Rachel Perkins brilliant DVD series and book, The First Australians). However there is still a long way to go in facing up to the realities of the violent nature of black and white relations in the late 1700s, 1800s and 1900s.
Pascoe offers up some good research and some alternative viewpoints but I'll admit his style is at times confronting. But I like his tell it like it is style. Other reviewers have described his writing as rambling but I prefer to call it conversationalist. Pascoe knows he upsets people with some of his views, and he doesn't apologise for this, but at the core of this book is his love for the land of Australia and his sincere wish that through acceptance and acknowledgement of the past, Australians can heal their relationship with this country's First Peoples, and with the land.
If you want to challenge yourself as an Australian, and challenge what you thought you knew about Australian history, read this book. But read it with an open mind, and use it as a catalyst to find out more about the history of Australia, from its ancient history until now.(less)
'Australia has a black history' is not just a slogan on a t-shirt, and Pascoe's book addresses some elements of this statement by writing frankly about the circumstances under which many early white "settlers" took possession of land. In terms of history, Pascoe mainly focuses on incidents that happened in Victoria, in particular those massacres and battles that occurred under Batman and LaTrobe although he does refer to a few other incidents (such as the Coniston Massacre, which was the topic of a documentary released in 2012).
In the six or so years since Pascoe's book was published more about the true history of white invasion in Australia has been released (for example, Rachel Perkins brilliant DVD series and book, The First Australians). However there is still a long way to go in facing up to the realities of the violent nature of black and white relations in the late 1700s, 1800s and 1900s.
Pascoe offers up some good research and some alternative viewpoints but I'll admit his style is at times confronting. But I like his tell it like it is style. Other reviewers have described his writing as rambling but I prefer to call it conversationalist. Pascoe knows he upsets people with some of his views, and he doesn't apologise for this, but at the core of this book is his love for the land of Australia and his sincere wish that through acceptance and acknowledgement of the past, Australians can heal their relationship with this country's First Peoples, and with the land.
If you want to challenge yourself as an Australian, and challenge what you thought you knew about Australian history, read this book. But read it with an open mind, and use it as a catalyst to find out more about the history of Australia, from its ancient history until now.(less)
Dec 27, 2014Nike Sulway rated it really liked it
Shelves: australian, non-fiction, book-club, male-writers
"We can make a great nation here, one worthy of the land, but we must be honest with ourselves and learn how we were lucky enough to live here. It won't be easy and sometimes we will be hurt and confused, but nations are not forged without the metal getting hot." (page x)
Lots of people have talked in their reviews about the circular, ambling, personal nature of the writing in this book, and how -- for them -- this detracted from the quality of the work. I'm not going to do that, though it's true that if that's enough to put you off, you will probably struggle with this work. On the other hand, if you are willing to suspend your expectation that a work of history HAS to be linear, impersonal/objective, and unemotional then this book is for you. It is a moving, confronting, didactic, heartfelt, and energetic book about the way Australian history has been written -- what has been left, how and why -- and why it's important for you -- yes you -- to learn the truth. To seek out the truth of the history of your country. And to know that despite the many terrible things that happened here, it is still your country. And you can fall in love with it.
I came to this book after having read a little of Pascoe's fiction, and having had the great honour of meeting him, very briefly, at the Watermark Literary Muster. I have rarely had the honour of meeting a more imposing and gentle man.
It is a peripatetic and partial reconstruction of the history of some areas of Australia, with a particular focus on the south-east coastal areas/Victoria, and Tasmania. In a sense, it is more historiography than history: a book about what happened, but why what happened has disappeared, largely, from the historical record. Or was never part of it to begin with. It is an attempt to begin to recover what evidence there is for a 'history from below'.
The book is rambling, and personal, and shot through with passion -- anger and love. It is an uncomfortable read, if you are a whitefella living on this land with any sense of consciousness about what happened in order for that to be the case.
I am a first generation Australian. My parents came here from Europe after the Second World War. It would be easy for me to say that what was done to the Indigenous peoples of Australia in the early years of settlement is not my responsibility. In a strictly personal sense, it isn't. BUT, my parents were able to come to Australia, and settle here, and flourish, because Australia was 'settled' by the English. The work they did in founding the colony, and the genocidal practices that were included in that action, are part of what made it possible for my Western European/Anglo parents to settle here. To buy homes built on land that was once stolen from Indigenous people, for example.
This is my country, my home, and its history is not an easy one. Few histories are easy to live with, if lived with honestly. And reading this book has been, for me, one small part of facing up to the history of the country of which I am a citizen.
A friend who moved to Australia from Zimbabwe talked recently, following the death of Mandela, about the 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' in neighbouring South Africa. About how her recollection of that process was that it was a period in which people told their stories. And how it was the role of everyone in the country (and many of those outside it) just to listen. To listen well. To pay attention. To acknowledge and receive the history of their country, so that they could face the future with dignity, honesty, and hope for a better world. So that they could know what they had done, or what had been done in their name, or what they had benefitted from, even indirectly.
Reading this book was like reading one testimony from the almost silenced, invisible and unofficial Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Australia. I feel honoured to have read it. Awed by the courage of those who fought in the colonial war. Shamed by the way in which my ignorance has contributed to the ongoing silencing and oppression of the truth about my country's history. Grateful to have my eyes opened. (less
Lots of people have talked in their reviews about the circular, ambling, personal nature of the writing in this book, and how -- for them -- this detracted from the quality of the work. I'm not going to do that, though it's true that if that's enough to put you off, you will probably struggle with this work. On the other hand, if you are willing to suspend your expectation that a work of history HAS to be linear, impersonal/objective, and unemotional then this book is for you. It is a moving, confronting, didactic, heartfelt, and energetic book about the way Australian history has been written -- what has been left, how and why -- and why it's important for you -- yes you -- to learn the truth. To seek out the truth of the history of your country. And to know that despite the many terrible things that happened here, it is still your country. And you can fall in love with it.
I came to this book after having read a little of Pascoe's fiction, and having had the great honour of meeting him, very briefly, at the Watermark Literary Muster. I have rarely had the honour of meeting a more imposing and gentle man.
It is a peripatetic and partial reconstruction of the history of some areas of Australia, with a particular focus on the south-east coastal areas/Victoria, and Tasmania. In a sense, it is more historiography than history: a book about what happened, but why what happened has disappeared, largely, from the historical record. Or was never part of it to begin with. It is an attempt to begin to recover what evidence there is for a 'history from below'.
The book is rambling, and personal, and shot through with passion -- anger and love. It is an uncomfortable read, if you are a whitefella living on this land with any sense of consciousness about what happened in order for that to be the case.
I am a first generation Australian. My parents came here from Europe after the Second World War. It would be easy for me to say that what was done to the Indigenous peoples of Australia in the early years of settlement is not my responsibility. In a strictly personal sense, it isn't. BUT, my parents were able to come to Australia, and settle here, and flourish, because Australia was 'settled' by the English. The work they did in founding the colony, and the genocidal practices that were included in that action, are part of what made it possible for my Western European/Anglo parents to settle here. To buy homes built on land that was once stolen from Indigenous people, for example.
This is my country, my home, and its history is not an easy one. Few histories are easy to live with, if lived with honestly. And reading this book has been, for me, one small part of facing up to the history of the country of which I am a citizen.
A friend who moved to Australia from Zimbabwe talked recently, following the death of Mandela, about the 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' in neighbouring South Africa. About how her recollection of that process was that it was a period in which people told their stories. And how it was the role of everyone in the country (and many of those outside it) just to listen. To listen well. To pay attention. To acknowledge and receive the history of their country, so that they could face the future with dignity, honesty, and hope for a better world. So that they could know what they had done, or what had been done in their name, or what they had benefitted from, even indirectly.
Reading this book was like reading one testimony from the almost silenced, invisible and unofficial Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Australia. I feel honoured to have read it. Awed by the courage of those who fought in the colonial war. Shamed by the way in which my ignorance has contributed to the ongoing silencing and oppression of the truth about my country's history. Grateful to have my eyes opened. (less
