Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with your Country

Description

"Convincing Ground" pulses with love of country. In this powerful, lyrical and passionate new work Bruce Pascoe asks us to fully acknowledge our past and the way those actions continue to influence our nation today, both physically and intellectually. The book resonates with ongoing debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community. Pascoe draws on the past through a critical examination of major historical works and witness accounts and finds uncanny parallels between the techniques and language used there to today's national political stage. He has written the book for all Australians, as an antidote to the great Australian inability to deal respectfully with the nation's constructed Indigenous past. For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the furnace of Murdering Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but believes we can bring in our soul from the fog of delusion. Pascoe proposes a way forward, beyond shady intellectual argument and immature nationalism, with our strengths enhanced and our weaknesses acknowledged and addressed.

Bruce Pascoe is a widely published and award-winning writer, editor and anthologist. A dictionary of the Wathaurong language has been compiled by the author.

."..This beautifully written book, with its fierce determination to recognise and right the wrongs of history, is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where Aboriginal people are coming from." --Paul Burns, "Reviews in Australian Studies", Vol 2, No 7, 2007 "In prose of lyrical clarity and uncompromising honesty, Bruce Pascoe invites readers to be awakened, enthralled by fresh and breath-taking truths about the story of Australia. "Convincing Ground "is unique. --"Carmel Bird" "The author's greatest strength is his construction of a narrative comparing contemporary Australian politics, culture and identity with the formative years of contact histories." --Steve Kinnane