Email to my local MP

Dear Ms. Berejiklian,

I saw you this morning as you were walking into your electorate office at about 7am. I was the tired looking woman, heading to an office job, after a busy weekend wrangling little kids and a husband. We exchanged a quick smile but it was another microsecond before my un-caffeinated brain put two and two together and I recognised you. It's probably a good thing though, because I would have stopped you in the street, and I'm sure you don't enjoy being accosted by voters before breakfast.

I wanted to tell you that my wonderful father, at 71, had proposed to his girlfriend on the weekend. They plan to marry in April - this will be his third marriage, after two divorces. Needless to say they don't plan to have children, they may not be married in a church, but they do want to have social and legal recognition of their union. Unfortunately my sister, in her twenties, with no history of failed marriages, is denied the right to marry her beloved. I wanted to ask you if you think this is fair.

A quick internet search tells me you have not come out (pardon the pun) as a supporter of gay marriage and I understand that it is something that is decided at a Commonwealth rather than State level but perhaps you could add your voice to that of your leader, Mr. O'Farrell and, even if you personally don't support gay marriage, call for a conscience vote on the issue within the coalition. I also ask you to follow the lead of others in your party and survey your electorate - Hockey, Gambaro and Turnbull have all done this and they have all found that well over 70% of their electorates support marriage equality. I realise that I have mentioned Federal politicians, not State, but as you well know, we live in a representative democracy and you are employed to represent all of us who live in your electorate, and this (along with climate change!) is a significant concern for many of us.


Warm regards,

Keda Chhabra

Indigenous voices in literature and the arts

I just read this column in the SMH (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/answers-dont-roll-easily-off-the-tongue-20110923-1kos3.html) and I thought that it might be interesting to discuss. As part of my undergrad bachelor of science degree I have a major in "Aboriginal studies" (probably now called "Indigenous Australian studies") and I remember doing a subject where we spent our time talking about appropriation and authenticity in Aboriginal art. We were mostly talking about visual arts, but it's the same kind of situation with writing and, to my mind, a similar conversation can be had about pop culture and mass media representation. Read the article and ask yourself these questions: 

• Is it ever OK for someone to speak 'for' Indigenous Australians?
• In your art making would you ever use traditional Aboriginal motifs?
• In your writing would you ever try to get inside the head of an Indigenous Australian? What about a (let's say) recent migrant? Is it different if the migrant is from a place you have some connection to?
•  What about speaking for people/getting in the head of people with a different gender identity or sexuality? Why is it more OK (in my mind) for me to write as a man than, for instance, my lovely brother Michael to write as a woman? 

I think this whole vexed question is wildly interesting because I look at my own reactions and can only see wild inconsistencies. I would never presume to speak for Indigenous Australians in pretty much any context (except to remind people that 'they' are not any more a homogeneous unit than 'us') and I freak out a bit when I hear of other people doing it. And yet I support Michael going to Q&A/Insight/whatever as part of their 'Aboriginal' audience - he is, however loosely, a very peripheral part of an Aboriginal community. So no, it's generally not OK for anyone to speak unbidden for others, but I guess it is sometimes OK.

I can't imagine a situation where I would include traditional Aboriginal motifs in any art-making that I do, however, worry that blanket statements are generally a bad idea when we talk about art. No one can argue that child porn is a good thing, but to prohibit any images of naked children would decimate my photo albums, eliminate huge quantities of religious art (naked baby Jesus anyone?) as well as harass artists like Bill Henson and there is no reason to suppose it would stop child pornography. How do we find the right balance? How can we support the rights of people to speak for themselves without prohibition?

Historical fiction is plentiful - why is it uncontroversial for, for instance, Kate Grenville to write from the perspective of a fictional white male from history but not OK for her to speak for fictional historical Indigenous Australians? I really like her answer in the article: "we had stolen enough from them already, we shouldn't also steal their stories" and I agree wholeheartedly. But how do we move on from that point to creating a shared Australian history and identity? I read recently (on the SMH I think - I can't find a reference though) that stories by Patricia Wrightson like The Nargun and the Stars that I loved as a child are now thought by some to be cultural appropriation. I don't want to claim Dreamtime stories as my own, but I want to acknowledge that they are part of this country, that the history of Aboriginal Australia is part of my history.

It's easier for me to speak (and think) about the similar issues that feminism has brought up. Easier because I'm a woman, and I know I can't speak for all women, but I can speak for me. I find men that speak 'for' woman pretty painful, but I'm sometimes not sure if it's just in situations where I don't agree with what they are saying. I find Alexander McCall-Smith speaking in an African woman's voice grating, and I'm not sure whether it is because it is a man speaking as a woman, or because it's a white European speaking with the voice of a black African.

How do *you* put your thoughts around these issues into practice in *your* writing or art-making? Do you avoid the problem by avoiding reference to Indigenous Australians? I confess that that's what I tend to do, because the alternative is so damn difficult. Unfortunately that isn't the way to create an Australia as a place for Indigenous people, those with colonial heritage and also more recent migrants. Let's start a conversation about the way forward...

Five Books That Changed Me

I read Leslie Cannold's recent blog post about books that 'changed her' and thought it was a great meme, so here are my picks. These are not necessarily my favourite books, just some books that were important in shaping the way I think or defined a point in my life.


James Thurber: The 13 Clocks
"The cold duke was six foot four and forty-six and even colder than he thought he was" makes me think that Thurber is the grand-master of the perfectly turned phrase. This book is a favourite of my fathers and a favourite of mine. The book is aimed at children but is so lovely to read out loud that it appeals to adults as well. It is a simple fable about the power of love, but the language is so wonderful that it literally makes me tingle.

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children
This book smacked me upside the head with its layered complexity. It also made me crave samosas. It's another beautifully written book and taught me a lot about magical realism as a genre. I read it when I was at Uni, and really trying to understand post-modernism and relativism and I think in this book Rushdie crystallizes some of these ideas into novel form. Having visited India after reading the book I feel that immersing yourself in this novel is good practice for dealing with immersing yourself in India.

Marilyn French: The Women's Room 
This blew my mind at the time I read it (toward the end of high school) and inducted me into the world of the card carrying feminist.

Peter Carey: Bliss
I read this while I was still at school and Carey is a very grow-up author. This story introduced me to a whole level of adult uncertainty and gave me the idea that the adult world is just as messy and difficult as the world of adolescents.

William Gibson: Neuromancer
Introduced me to 'cyberpunk' and Gibson's special form of page-turning prose. It's a dense, cool book and I love it. In some ways it defined my entry into the world of being a professional Internet person.

And number six, the non-fiction book that has changed the way I think the most:
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: Half the Sky
This book has completely changed the way that I look at the idea of 'helping those less fortunate' in developing countries. None of the stats or stories were a big surprise to me, having studied similar stuff at uni, but the presentation of the material made me look at aid on a micro rather than macro level. Think of that hippy story about the hundred starfish....



Now, write your own list, like my friend JM has, and leave a link to your blog in the comments (No blog? Then comment with your whole list!).

Load sharing - Paid work, parenting and the 'Mommy Track'

I came home from work today, at about 6:15pm to find all the lights on, mess everywhere and no one home. Normally at that time of day there are kids eating, a father in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and a mother racing around bribing kids to eat another mouthful while tidying up toys and putting a load of laundry on. It was obvious that the house had been abandoned in haste and my mind jumped straight to the worst conclusions. Horrible images of ambulances and glaring hospital lights were immediately running through my head. Of course, it was fine, Sanjay had just dropped the baby-sitter at the train station and no one had tidied up the toys during the day.

But when I’m at work during the day who is responsible for the cleaning and tidying that I do when I’m at home? At our house both adults have reasonably flexible work arrangements, and both contribute to the running of the house and the care of the children. I’ve started working three days a week, sensible hours, for a government department and Sanjay does wine sales for a small company. He works from home (they have no office) and there is heaps of flexibility for him, because it’s all about the sales results. So far this is working really well.

So what happens with the kids now that I’ve started a day job? Asher is in preschool three days per week, 9am til 3pm but because I couldn't get Kiz into any local childcare on such short notice we have a babysitter. She is a family friend who doesn’t have regular work at the moment. She knows the kids and she knows our routines and our arrangement has been working brilliantly so far. She arrives around 10am (I leave the house at 7am but Sanj is around) and hangs around playing with Kiz, doing her own work when he’s asleep and until it's time to pick up Asher then she hangs out with the two of them until we get home. We haven’t noticed any behavioural changes in the kids, and they both seem to really love the babysitter and get a lot out of their time with her. As I think I said before, it's a really good arrangement.

Since I’ve started at this job I’ve again raised the possibility of me being the primary income earner. Despite taking time off during these early years of my children’s lives I would like to remove myself from the ‘mommy track’ and get back into what? A career track? A daddy track? Why is it so hard to have meaningful work with adequate remuneration and some level of flexibility? I want to be able to deal with the dramas that inevitably crop up with young children and aging parents and I want to be able to spend time with my kids but that doesn’t mean I don’t have valuable skills. In my personal experience mothers who are coming back into the workforce and mothers who work part time concentrate more fully on the work they are doing and waste less time while at work. Mothers get very used to being efficient and might be more reluctant to ‘waste time’ changing jobs if they have the option of staying put. Is it up to mothers (and fathers!) to ‘sell’ these advantages to employers? Is it up to savvy employers to work this out? Will we continue to see amazingly innovative small businesses started by parents who want greater flexibility in their work arrangements?

I don't know where I was going with this post anymore - I've been writing it over several days, with work, kids and the usual chaos. Which is kindof an pertinent to the subject of the post, really...

Quote of the....

OK, since I don't seem to have many words at the moment I'll just use someone else's words. When I thanked Karen for helping me out while I was helping someone else out she said "if you can't help another woman with kids...." and to me this was a lovely example of The Sisterhood in action. It made me so happy!

My life's work

For my school's 50 year anniversary I was asked, along with everyone else who ever went to the school, to put together a little blurb about what we "do in the world" now and what we got from the school along with a picture from then and one from now. As I was writing I was overcome with the depressing feeling that what I'm doing looks insignificant and incredibly boring. Despite paying lip service to rights of women to choose whether they worked outside or inside the home, I remember feeling scathing about women who gave up work when they had their kids. I felt like they were taking the easy way and although the work of bringing up children was important it also rotted ones brain and made one insular and concerned only with ones immediate environment. I think I have internalised my anti-full-time-mother stance - as I was writing I kept wanting to defend and justify by talking up the work that I used to do before I became a mother. I wanted to let people know that I used to be well paid and well thought of in the work that I did. This is not the first time I've felt negatively judged or wanted to let people know that I wasn't always 'just a mum' but this is the first time that my internalised mum-a-phobia has been this clear to myself.

I'm not sure where I want to go with this, but I suspect it's time for me to re-read Alison Osbourne's book 'The Post-Baby Conversation' to try and sort through a few things. I wonder what else is on the reading list for the course on cutting oneself a bit of slack?