First Nations Classics

In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven leads readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real. Over three parts, van Neerven takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ' Heat' , we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ' Water' , a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ' Light' , familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging. Heat and Light is an intriguing collection that heralded the arrival of a major new talent in Australian writing.

When the Blackouts' star player Nevil Dooley wakes one morning to don a frock and 'eyeshada', his mother's idle days at the bingo hall are gone forever. Mystified and clueless, single parent Mavis takes to bush-cunning and fast footwork to unravel the mystery behind this sudden change of face. Funny and cleverly covert, too, this is a truthful rendering of small-town prejudice and racist attitudes. Hilarity prevails while desperation builds in the race to save Nevil from the savage consequences of his discovery in a town where a career in footy is a young black man' s only escape. Neither pig shoots, bust-ups at the Two Dogs, bare-knuckle sessions in the shed nor even a police siege can slow the countdown on this human timebomb.

Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza' s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers' stories. Exploring works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, Behrendt looks at the stereotypes embedded in these accounts, including the assumption of cannibalism and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Finding Eliza shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – and how, in Australia, this has contributed to a complex racial divide.

A Stolen Generations story of astounding courage: three Aboriginal girls, taken from their mothers, escape barefoot back to their beloved homeland in East Pilbara. This is the true account of Nugi Garimara' s mother, Molly, made legendary by the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. In 1931 Molly led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1600-kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. Aged eight, eleven and fourteen, they escaped the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it would lead them home. Their journey – longer than many of the celebrated treks of recognised explorers – reveals a past more cruel than we could ever imagine.

Growing up on the Mission isn' t easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn' t know what to say. Papa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn' t help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn' t understand. In Mazin Grace, Dylan Coleman fictionalises her mother' s childhood at the Koonibba Lutheran Mission in South Australia in the 1940s and ' 50s. Woven through the narrative are the powerful, rhythmic sounds of Aboriginal English and Kokatha language, Mazin Grace is the inspirational story of a feisty girl who refuses to be told who she is, determined to uncover the truth for herself.

' Is that you … ?' Matron' s voice would ring out across the dormitory. In that pause sixty little girls would stop in their tracks, waiting to hear who was in trouble. All too often the name called out would be that of the high-spirited dormitory girl Ruthie. In the Depression years, Queensland' s notorious Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission became home to four-year-old Ruth until her late teens when she was sent out to serve as a domestic on a station homestead. Ruthie is the central character in this lively and candid memoir of institutional life. Her milestones and memories reflect the experiences of many dormitory girls. The strong and lasting bonds that developed between them all helped to compensate for family love and support denied them by the government's disruptive removal policy. An inspiring life story, this remarkable memoir won the David Unaipon Award in 1998.