Writers on Writers: Tony Birch on Kim Scott

~ This Reading Life

I was first struck by the power of Kim Scott’s writing while I was far from home, in both a physical and cultural sense. In 2003, I was in the US, staying at Harvard University, outside Boston. I’d been invited to speak at an Australian Studies conference.

During the final stages of our recent move, I found that reading non-fiction worked better for me than fiction. Tony Birch on Kim Scott was one of those most excellent choices for this time, being as it was, non-fiction about a fiction writer who I admire tremendously.

Black Inc., in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria, created the Writers on Writers series back in 2017 to allow “leading authors [to] reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them.” This book is the thirteenth, and apparently penultimate book in the series (one more is due in October about Alexis Wright).

Both Lisa @ANZ LitLovers and Kim @Reading Matters have already written two very fine posts about this book, so I will centre my response around a recent conversation I listened in on, between Tony Birch and Ruby Lowe, as part of the Carlton Library After Dark sessions.

One of the constants that ran through the hour long talk was Kim Scott’s generosity.

Firstly, his generosity to other Aboriginal writers (this was the naming convention that Tony Birch used throughout the talk, rather than First Nations or Indigenous, so I will use it here to reflect as accurately as I can his words and thoughts) as a mentor to younger writers as well as with his work on the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories oral history project. Birch also felt that Scott was generous towards non-Aboriginal Australians by challenging them AND inviting them to have a conversation about history from an Aboriginal perspective. Furthermore, Scott was then offering this challenge and invitation to Aboriginal Australians (especially in Taboo) to talk about the complexities of modern Indigenous life.

Birch then elaborated on the trajectory shown in Scott’s three last books (Benang, That Deadman Dance and Taboo) that he explores in the book. He explained that Benang (1999) was written, in part, as a response to the History Wars and the murky public discourse that occurred after the Bringing Them Home report, which outlined the impact on generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had been separated from their families and communities. Benang was a challenge. It was political and personal. And it was a way to allow historical characters a chance to speak their truth.

Birch called That Deadman Dance (2010) a generous story and one that offered hope and redemption. But more importantly, he felt that Scott was opening up the idea that there had been a chance or the possibility of another outcome. A sliding door moment where the potential for reciprocity was possible between Aboriginal Australians and the newcomers. It’s a hypothetical ‘look at what could have happened’ moment. For his readers, Scott asks us to consider the idea that there was once a chance, a previous moment in history, where a different outcome was possible, and if it might have happened once, then maybe it can happen again now to help us find a way to work together.

Taboo (2017) is a contemporary novel that highlights the friction (and fiction) ‘within and without’. Not only between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals (in the form of historic massacres and present day injustice) but also within contemporary Aboriginal relationships (in the form of addiction and violence). My memory of Taboo is about the power of language – on the one hand how language can be used to dissimulate and obfuscate and on the other how it can reconnect to Country, culture and ancestral stories. As we are seeing in the news and on social media every single day now, language can be used for truth-telling and for covering up the truth.

This dichotomous approach to truth, facts and history is the exact opposite to what Kim Scott does with his perceptive, multifaceted books. Birch believes that he is ‘inviting us to think’, not telling us what to think.

I was attracted to Scott’s writing not only for its rich approach to storytelling but also for the way he understood the power of the colonial archive. Rather than regard it as a set of neutral and objective facts, Scott knew that paper, ink and the written word produced highly selective and subjective stories of Australia’s colonial past. He also realised that if he were to extract a counter-narrative from the archive, to force it to confess to truths camouflaged by bureaucratic language, he could use fiction to great effect.

The conversation finished by going back to the beginning of the book and Birch’s story about his 2003 Harvard University talk on Kim Scott. He explained that it was his way of getting the personal stuff out of the way so that he could get out of the book and focus entirely on Scott.

After we all finished having a chuckle, Birch reminded us that humour is often used as a survival mechanism and that Kim Scott, like many of his characters, displays a cheeky side, but there is also a weight that he is carrying. I feel that it is this weight that is at the heart of his stories. It’s what makes his novels challenging, disturbing and confronting but also ‘intellectually exciting’ and ’empowering’.

ISBN: 978176064479
Imprint: Black Inc.
Published: 30th Apr 2024
Format: Hardback
Pages: 89
Dates Read: 1st - 13th May 2024

This post was written in the area we now call the Blue Mountains within the Ngurra [Country] of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. This Reading Life recognises the continuous custodianship & connection to Country of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for the lands, seas & skies on which we live. They are this nations first storytellers.

Published by This Reading Life

14 thoughts on “Writers on Writers: Tony Birch on Kim Scott”

  1. Pingback: May 2024 | The Books – This Reading Life

  2. Thanks for the mention 🙂

    It’s that generosity that appeals to me. In some First Nations/Aboriginal writing, there’s a trend for anger, bitterness and scorn towards the rest of us, and while I understand that anger, bitterness and scorn is justified I feel that this is not helpful, not in the wake of the referendum which was such a shock because I thought everyone else wanted what I did. I wanted reconciliation, justice and fairness, and I still do.

    I think that the model for achieving that comes from Nelson Mandela and writers like Birch and Scott because they offer generosity and inclusivity.

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    1. When I was reading Chelsea Watego’s book last year, she clearly stated that her reading audience was not white, that

      We simply don’t need more texts that teach whitefullas about us on their terms….We need stories that are written by us and for us, that challenge us and nourish us…they are stories told by Black people to and for Black people exclusively. Black stories are stories that don’t require attending to a white audience.

      And I figure that this is fair enough. A white reader can then read on if they so wish.

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      1. Yes, fair enough, though I wouldn’t be surprised if other First Nations readers and authors might contest the idea that her way of writing is nourishing and healing. ‘Reading between the lines’ as it were, I got the impression from hearing Tony Birch at the Sorrento Writers Festival that he would not concur. He said (twice, in different sessions) of his latest book Women & Children that he did not want to write an ‘angry’ book.

        It’s an interesting issue, and one perhaps that is, sadly, indicative of the rifts in First Nations politics more broadly.

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        1. As I’m sure we’ve discussed previously, no one group is homogenous in their political beliefs. Every group has rifts and differences of opinions and disparate lived experiences that inform these beliefs. As I get older though I am becoming increasingly wary of the extremes.

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  3. Lovely post Brona. I have heard Kim Scott speak in person, albeit about his Noongar language work, but I agree re his generosity. It’s a strong feature in That deadman dance.

    I have heard other First Nations writes use the term Aboriginal. I would have done what you did here for the post because you are reporting on that event, but I think in general I will probably stick with First Nations Australian unless things change?

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  4. Deadman Dance was a book I struggled with… I did not find it an easy read… but it did shift something inside me and made me see things in a new way. And it was the sliding doors moment you mention here. That has stayed with me ever since and I’ve long thought if the rest of the country could recognise this, then there was hope of a new outcome, that we could change things for the better if we opened our hearts and were prepared to accept the generous offering made to us by First Nations people.

    On the subject of terminology, it’s always best to depend on the preferences of the peoples involved. At my last job we tended to use First Nations but I had a colleague who wanted to be known as an Aboriginal Australian because that’s what she preferred and had used her whole life.

    The government style manual has some great advice on this: https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/accessible-and-inclusive-content/inclusive-language/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples

    Finally, thanks for pointing to my review. I really do love this series but feel it’s important to be familiar with the author’s work to get the most out of it.

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    1. Thanks for link Kim, it’s very useful and a good one to check in with regularly as preferred usage and naming protocols do change.

      The previous two books in the series were about authors I had not yet read any of their work and they made me more determined to read them (I’ve managed to do that for Hazzard but not yet Farmer). This one though, did have more to offer the reader who was already familiar with Scott’s work.

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    2. “Best to depend on the preferences of the peoples involved.” Yes, but that’s the tricky thing.

      I wrestled with this naming issue when I was hosting Indigenous Literature Week. My problem was that, for a blog which can be read by anybody anywhere, there wasn’t an audience I could consult. I knew my readers included Indigenous people from different places in Australia, and that the respectful thing to do with Indigenous authors was to name their country if that information was in the public domain (as in Noongar man, Wurundjeri woman) but still, I needed an all-inclusive term to name the week.

      It didn’t occur to me to consult my copy of the style manual but I Googled it and found multiple competing perspectives, some held very fiercely. In the end I went with Indigenous, and then when First Nations began to be used I renamed the week. And I know that some people object strongly to both of my choices, but …

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  5. I found That Deadman Dance a challenging book – not in the in your face in the way that Benang is – but precisely because of that ‘sliding door’ moment when we were offered generosity and we knocked it back, took everything.

    As to Scott’s generosity I can cite two instances –

    I wrote to him and he provided me with a lot of written material so that I could write up the Cocanarup (Kukenarup) Massacre which is at the heart of Benang (and Taboo).

    And he always credits my brother in law, his lecturer in teachers college, with putting him on the path to becoming a writer.

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    1. As I think I have talked about elsewhere (on my Benang post perhaps?) I had a rather embarassing meeting with Scott as a newby bookseller where he was nothing but kind and generous in the face of my inexperience.

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