Benang: From the Heart

I heard Bruce Pascoe talking about Kim Scott's 1999 novel, Benang From the Heart, as a book that touched him very deeply, a book about the Stolen Generations, and I immediately borrowed it from the local library. I suspect that I wasn't the only one who heard that conversation, as there are now three more reserves.

Benang is not an easy book to read. It's challenging in its structure, leaping backward and forward in time, and with a final massive twist at the end, and its story is filled with confronting pain, sorrow, grief, violence and abuse. It opens with a description of the narrator, Harley, as 'the first white man born,' the first of his family to have his Aboriginal heritage 'bred out' to the point of invisibility. However, as we discover, this is not true. Benang wrestles with questions of identity, both self-ascribed and imposed from outside -- and also, now I come to think of it, recognised by communities.

Benang From the Heart traces a complex history of several generations, and I must confess at times I got lost between characters. There are elements of magic realism, and probably also some autobiographical features: the families' names are given as 'Scat' and 'Coolman,' while Scott mentions the Coleman family in his acknowledgements. I imagine this was a hugely difficult book to write, and it's fitting that it's equally difficult to read, technically and emotionally. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this novel before, though I'm familiar with Kim Scott's work, particularly Taboo and That Dead Man Dance, which are perhaps more approachable than Benang. A confronting, but rewarding and illuminating, reading experience.