June’s Burns Bay Bookery Book Club – Taking to My Country

 

Joining a book club is a great way to meet people and keep up to date with your reading.  If you’re new to Lane Cove or your friends are not book club people, you can always join the Burns Bay Bookery Book Club.  The ladies who own the Burns Bay Bookery are very passionate about their books and they want to share this passion with you. With winter finally making its thunderous arrival, there is no better excuse to be all curled up with your nose in a book. This month, they are diverting from their usual fiction and whimsy and taking on a brilliant Australian journalist’s powerful inquiry into what it means to be Australian.

The June Book of the Month is Talking to My Country By Stan Grant.  Stan Grant is an indigenous journalist. However, he has never promoted himself in that way. He always preferred to be known as an award-winning journalist who worked for several high-profile news organizations such as CNN.  

Talking to My country
Image Harper Collins

In July 2015 Stan Grant,  wrote a piece for Guardian Australia condemning the way in which Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes was being treated by some members of the crowd.  Every time Adam Goodes played football he was loudly booed by a certain element in the crowd.  Adam Goodes is a dual Brownlow medal winner and an Australian of the Year.  Has any other Brownlow medallist been treated this way?  In his Guardian article, Stan Grant wrote: “To Adam’s ears, the ears of so many Indigenous people, these boos are a howl of humiliation. A howl that echoes across two centuries of invasion, dispossession, and suffering.”

Stan Grant  won the 2015 Walkley award for coverage of Indigenous affairs  His article was described as a “game-changer” by the judges.  Grant is also the Indigenous affairs editor of Guardian Australia.  This year, a speech Stan Grant gave, arguing that racism was “the foundation of the Australian dream”, became an internet sensation (just in time for Australia Day 2016).

Talking To My Country is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country.

https://youtu.be/fwToUEW2Bqw

June’s Book of the Month is Talking To My Country by Stan Grant. 

Date: Wednesday 22 June 2016
Time: 7pm – 9pm (ish)
Venue: The Cake Man’s outdoor seating area in Lane Cove Plaza

RSVP is essential. Please send your name to [email protected] to confirm your attendance.

 

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