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    Benevolence: A Novel
    Benevolence: A Novel
    Benevolence: A Novel
    Ebook366 pages5 hours

    Benevolence: A Novel

    By Julie Janson

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    “How good it is to hear a Darug voice speaking of Darug history.”—Kate Grenville, author of The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize

    Blending the mythical power of Téa Obreht and the epic scope of Min Jin Lee, a searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done before—a beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world.

    For all known time, Muraging’s people, the Darug, have lived on this land between the river and the sea. But change comes swiftly in the early years of the nineteenth century when White settlers begin to arrive, laying claim to the continent, long inhabited by Aboriginal tribes like Muraging’s, for the British empire. 

    At ten years old, Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her father, where the missionaries call her Mary James, force her to abandon her culture and language, and teach her subjects they believe will save her soul: English, Christianity, and housework. Six years later, seeking a brighter future, Muraging flees the school, embarking on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place in an unfamiliar and unsteady new world—an odyssey far more winding and treacherous than she ever dreamed. 

    Spanning two decades, from 1816-1835, and set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people in Parramatta and Sydney, Benevolence sheds light on the heartbreaking violence and erasure of colonization, as well as remarkable survival and resistance—a vivid and compelling portrait of the  Aboriginal Australians whose way of life is forever altered. 

    Award-winning Australian writer Julie Janson’s draws on historical events to recreate this pivotal time—things that may have happened to her own ancestors—giving voice to an Aboriginal experience of early-settlement in Australia.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 16, 2022
    ISBN9780063140974
    Author

    Julie Janson

    Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation. Her career as a playwright began when she wrote and directed plays in remote Australian Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. She is now a novelist and award-winning poet. She was corecipient of the 2016 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize and winner of the 2019 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Julie’s novels include The Crocodile Hotel (2015), The Light Horse Ghost (2018), and This River of Bones (2022). She has written and produced plays, including two at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney NSW, Black Mary and Gunjies Two Plays, published by Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996.

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    3/5

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    • 2/5
      Ten year old Muraging is given by her native father to the Parramatta Native School in Australia. There, they rename her Mary James, try to erase her "barbaric" ways and try turn her into a proper Christian girl. At the age of 16 she runs away, marries and has a child. When her husband sets out to fight, she is lost and returns back to society with her daughter. From there she goes back and forth from "civilization" to native society. I found this book very hard to get through. It felt very disjointed at times. The characters were hard to get a feel for and did not come across as realistic. I'm sure there are others who will appreciate the book and enjoy it. Unfortunately, this book was not for me.
    • 5/5
      The author tells us at the end of the book(in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS) that this "is a work of fiction based on historical events of the early years of British invasion and settlement around the Hawkesbury River in Western Sydney, New South Wales.... Muraging is based on my [the author's] great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas, who was a servant on colonial estates in the Hawkesbury area. The other characters in the novel are inspired by historical figures and [my] imagination, except for the governors who are based on historical documents."BENEVOLENCE relies heavily on research and the author's family history, and there is no denying the value of the perspective it gives us. The British invasion had a huge impact on the local Aboriginal tribes, not only with the declaration of the policy of "terra nullius" which gave white settlers the right to claim the land, but also with their so-called "benevolent' practices which put aboriginal babies into orphanages where they died, took children away from their families and put them into schools, brought with them diseases like measles, small pox, and the common cold which decimated the populations, and carried out war against those who resisted.The novel is very graphic in the story that it tells, and will stay with readers well after reading it.

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    Benevolence - Julie Janson

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