One Bright Spot [Paperback]

For every Aboriginal child taken away by the state governments in Australia, there was at least one white family intimately involved in their life. One Bright Spot is about one of these families - about 'Ming', a Sydney wife and mother who hired Aboriginal domestic servants in the 20s and 30s, and became an activist against the Stolen Generations policy. Her story, reconstructed by her great-granddaughter, tells of a remarkable, yet forgotten, shared history.Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction: More Than My Own Mother to Me PART I: MARY My One Bright Spot All Girls Shall Leave the Reserves If I Am Coming Back to You All Again PART II: ALMA So Desperately Hard to Understand A Better Chance PART III: DEL Was Fearfully Shocked This Afternoon A Perfect Farce She Loves Pretty Things and Knows How to Wear Them You Must Not Go Against These People There is a Lot of Dark Girls That Went Through It And So We Are 'Slave Owners' It Makes Me Rage A Devotion I Hope I May Fully Repay PART IV: PEARL GIBBS Just Ordinary Justice The Stone of Anthropology Miss Pink Wants My Help PART V: JANE A Free Australian Citizen The Bitter Disappointment of Trying to Help Then We Must All Be Insane Epilogue: She Learnt Her Lessons Well A Note on Sources Notes Bibliography Index

'Victoria Haskins' fine book fills a much-needed gap in our understanding of Australia's history. For too long we have heard the stories of one side or the other; colonised or colonisers. One Bright Spot delicately rounds out our understanding by revealing to us the complexity of the relationships that emerged through the cross-cultural interactions of the early part of the twentieth century. The evocative prose resists sentimentality and romanticisation and delights the reader with an exquisite novel-like writing style. At the end of it one is struck by Haskins' rare combination of scholarly rigor, passion and a personal connection, which she both embraces and critiques'. Professor Lynette RusselllC