At times Jo feels lonely, but she has a group of close friends and two siblings who share parts of her life. Her anger does not stop her, however, from having white individuals as friends, though she may grumble about how their whiteness limits their understanding. Generally, she tries to keep the white establishment at a distance. She is quick to explode over the unfairness of white domination and to blame whites for her losses. Understandably, anger at what the Europeans have done to her and her people runs deep in Jo. Her understanding of her world is neither “magical realism” nor the one mapped by white scientists. When she listens, she can understand what she needs to know from the world around her. She can meditate into a still listening place, similar to that of Buddhists and Quakers. Her aunt taught her the fundamental spirituality of her people. Although she had never wavered in her sense of herself as Indigenous, she moves into a stronger sense of belonging to an Indigenous community. Jo’s life is full of crises and tragedy as well as hope and joy. Jo struggles with how to protect and nurture her in this new phase. Her daughter, Ellen, however, has just outgrown the sweet nature of her childhood and turned into a complaining adolescent, constantly blaming and challenging her mother. For her the land and its quietness give her a welcome space, away from the clamor of other people. She is working hard to restore it for herself, her daughter, her siblings, and her beloved horses. Jo has bought a small, neglected farm near Mullumbimby. They simply do not take European institutions and world views as the norm.

Her views and Lukashenko’s do not romanticize Indigenous life or view it as uniformly tragic. At her core, she views the world from an Indigenous perspective which shapes her values and her dreams. Yet her perspective is shaped by what she learned from the Indigenous aunt who raised her. Her major character in Mullumbimby, Jo Breen, faces the same problems as many single mothers coping with her teenage daughter, working to make ends meet, and deciding if she dares fall in love with a man again. In doing so she challenges the assumed normality of whiteness. As a child, she could pass for white, but as an adult she has committed herself to the culture and values of Indigenous Australians. Melissa Lucashenko is the daughter of Indigenous and European parents. University of Queensland Press (2013), Kindle Edition, 288 pages.Ī beautiful, brilliant novel that provides insight into the life of a contemporary Indigenous woman, raising her daughter on the lands of her Bandjalung ancestors in northern New South Wales.

Mullumbimby lucashenko