‘Any red-blooded man on God’s own eart gwan get excited bout de view stretch out before mi.’ Im nyah crazy fe wantin te stay on de islan. ‘Oh, di ‘ s islan,’ Nathanial Robinson whisper softly te imself. Nathanial lives in Kingston with his wife, who is teaching him to read and dreaming of England. This technique is notable in ‘Big Islan’, which illustrates the temptation to leave home for something bigger. Clarke spells out accents and, before we know it, we’ve internalised the voices on the page. The ear for how people speak – in London, in Jamaica, in Mississippi – is a great strength of this collection. A Mississippi mother in ‘Gaps in the Hickory’ muses:Īn that mama, in the Bible, she float that baby right on down the river, away from the strife that was headin to him, even though it broke her heart. Clarke’s stories contain despair, enormous love, seething resentment, and hope for a better future they speak to emotionally intense human experiences.Ĭlarke is a prize-winning spoken word performer, as well as a poet, and this lends a certain rhythm to her pieces. These stories add complexity to racial and cultural stereotypes and explore a wide range of human experiences.įoreign Soil won last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and for good reason. Tags: Australian women's fiction/ Maxine Beneba Clarke/ short stories
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