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Writing to Heal—The Emergence of Foster Care in Literature

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The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood ((PSHC))

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Abstract

In this chapter, Musgrove and Michell identify the paucity of Australian literature taking up stories of foster care. The chapter relates this partial silence to fashions in publishing, but also points to a failure on the part of Australian audiences to embrace the few examples of foster-child heroines in Australian works, even those whose appeal appears very similar to hugely popular figures such as Anne of Green Gables. This matters, they argue, because rethinking representations of foster care in popular literature could play a role in challenging the stigma so often associated with being in out of home care. The capacity of recent autobiographical and testimonial trends to change public perception is examined to conclude the chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Lemn Sissay ’s Origin Stories” (BBC4, 2015).

  2. 2.

    TED.com, “Lemn Sissay : A Child of the State,” in TEDTalks (2012).

  3. 3.

    Dennis Leoutsakas , “Contemplating Fictional and Nonfictional Orphan Stories,” in 29th IBBY World Conference (Cape Town, South Africa 2004), 3, 4.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 5–7, 9.

  5. 5.

    FosterClub, “Foster to Famous,” available at https://www.fosterclub.com/blog/foster-famous, last accessed 23 April 2018; Foster Focus, “Famous Former Foster/Adopted Kids,” available at https://www.fosterfocusmag.com/famous-foster-kids, last accessed 23 April 2018.

  6. 6.

    Lanai Vasek, “The Secret History of Me,” Australian 24 June 2010. Victoria Hannaford, “From Foster Child to Super Mum: Future Looks Bright for Lanai Scarr’s Triple Delight,” Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2016 (Lania Scarr is Lania Vasek’s married name); “Dragon’s Den—Richards’ Story,” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGdFccdm3wg2010, last accessed 25 Apirl 2018; “There but for Fortune [The Story of Richard Farleigh],” in Australian Story, http://www.abc.net.au/austory/there-but-for-fortune/9169936, last accessed 25 April 2018; “Vanishing Act [The Story of Karise Eden],” in Australian Story, http://www.abc.net.au/austory/vanishing-act/5808066, last accessed 25 April 2018; “Seriously Funny [The Story of Corey White],” in Australian Story (http://www.abc.net.au/austory/seriously-funny/6718852) last accessed 25 April 2018; and “Steve Irons MP: Biography,” http://steveirons.com.au/steve-irons/biography/, last accessed 25 April 2018.

  7. 7.

    Australian Journal (Melbourne, VIC: Clarson, Massina & Co., 1865–1955). The journal was also published in Sydney at the same time by Gibbs, Shallard and Co. between 1955 and 1962 it was published in Melbourne by Southend Press.

  8. 8.

    Bruce Bennett, “The Short Story, 1890s to 1950,” in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. Peter Pierce (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009), 157; Elizabeth Webby, “The Australian Journal Periodical” (2004), https://www-austlit-edu.au.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/austlit/page/C498899.

  9. 9.

    Heather Julien, “School Novels, Women’s Work, and Maternal Vocationalism,” NWSA Journal 19, no. 2 (2007): 122.

  10. 10.

    Margaret Barbalet , Far from a Low Gutter Girl: The Forgotten World of State Wards: South Australia 1887–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 195. Despite the fact that this was a most unlikely outcome for Australian foster children, it remained a popular trope and the Australian press enthusiastically reported a small number of cases in which former foster children discovered unknown wealth. See Chapter 7: Rediscovering Foster Care.

  11. 11.

    Christine Trimingham-Jack, “‘A Dose of Castor Oil’: Teachers and Teaching in the Writings of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce,” History of Education Review 34, no. 2 (2005): 1–2.

  12. 12.

    Clare Bradford, “Australian Children’s Literature,” in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. Peter Pierce (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009), 283–84.

  13. 13.

    Melanie Kimball, “From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children’s Literature,” Library Trends 47, no. 3 (1999): 561.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 559, 573.

  15. 15.

    A. T. Yarwood, “From a Chair in the Sun. The Life of Ethel Turner” (Ringwood, VIC: Viking, 1994), 85. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was an American novelist and author of the highly successful Little Women, published in 1868 and set in Concord, Massachusetts. Australia writer Geraldine Brooks drew on Little Women for her Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel March (2006) which expanded on Alcott’s story by foregrounding the father figure.

  16. 16.

    Trimingham-Jack, ‘“A Dose of Castor Oil’: Teachers and Teaching in the Writings of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce,” 6. For more on the iconic Seven Little Australians, see Bradford, “Australian Children’s Literature,” 287–89.

  17. 17.

    Yarwood, “From a Chair in the Sun. The Life of Ethel Turner,” 87.

  18. 18.

    Trimingham-Jack, “‘A Dose of Castor Oil’: Teachers and Teaching in the Writings of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce,” 5.

  19. 19.

    Brenda Niall, “Writing from Home: The Literary Careers of Ethel Turner and L. M. Montgomery,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1990): 175.

  20. 20.

    Christine Trimingham-Jack, “Education and Ambition in Anne of Avonlea,” History of Education Review 38, no. 2 (2009): 112; L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Roberston Publishers, 1987), originally published 1908.

  21. 21.

    Trimingham-Jack, “‘A Dose of Castor Oil’: Teachers and Teaching in the Writings of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce”; Ethel Turner, That Girl (London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1908).

  22. 22.

    Jeanne Klein, “Without Distinction of Age: The Pivotal Roles of Child Actors and Their Spectators in Nineteenth-Century Theatre,” The Lion and the Unicorn 36, no. 2 (2012): 129.

  23. 23.

    Yarwood, “From a Chair in the Sun. The Life of Ethel Turner,” 59–60, 136, 191–92.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 199, 230.

  25. 25.

    Eleanor Spence, The Switherby Pilgrims (Bathgate, ND: Bethlehem Books, 2005); Eleanor Spence, Jamberoo Road (Bathgate, ND: Bethlehem Books, 2007).

  26. 26.

    H. M. Saxby, The Proof of the Puddin’ Australian Children’s Literature 1970–1990 (Sydney, NSW: Ashton Scholastic, 1993), 473.

  27. 27.

    Eleanor Spence, “Profile of an Author,” Reading Time. New Books for Boys and Girls 38 (1970): 33–34; Eleanor Spence, “Thirty Years of Writing Fiction for Children” (Melbourne, VIC: Collins Dove, 1988); Eleanor Spence, “Thirty Years of Writing Fiction for Children,” Reading Time. The Journal of the Children’s Book Council of Australia 100 (1986); and Helen Blenkiron, “Eleanor Spence—A Woman Ahead of Her Time,” Reading Time. The Journal of the Children’s Book Council of Australia 31, no. 4 (1987): 18.

  28. 28.

    Spence, The Switherby Pilgrims, 129; Spence, Jamberoo Road, 9.

  29. 29.

    Eve Pownall, “Happy Families—With Extras: A Look at the Writing of Eleanor Spence,” Reading Time. New Books for Boys and Girls 38 (1970): 37.

  30. 30.

    Saxby, The Proof of the Puddin’ Australian Children’s Literature 1970–1990, 380.

  31. 31.

    There are more items in the Auslit Database filed under “orphan” instead of “foster families,” the category used for this chapter. In both categories, however, there are errors. For example, Bernard Smith ’s The Boy Adeodatus is listed under “orphans” but Smith was not an orphan and was raised in foster care from when he was a baby. Also omitted from the “foster families” category is Ethel Turner ’s That Girl, yet the story revolves around an informal foster care situation. Sumner Locke Elliott’s novel Careful, He Might Hear You has been listed under foster families, and yet, strictly speaking, that autobiographical story is about kinship care . For more on this, see Deidre Michell, “From Hagiography to Personal Pain: Stories of Australian Foster Care from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century,” Adoption & Culture 5 (2017).

  32. 32.

    Clowning Sim was initially produced as a feature, Clowning Around, and shot in Perth and Paris by Barron Films, but shown as a mini-series on television in 1992. For further details see: Paul D. Barron, “Australasian Cinema,” available at http://australiancinema.info/producers/barronpauld.html, last accessed 23 April 2018.

  33. 33.

    We have discussed the issue of stigma associated with foster care and its harms in Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.

  34. 34.

    Kylie Tennant, The Missing Heir: The Autobiography of Kylie Tennant (Melbourne, VIC: Macmillan, 1986), 35–36; Deidre Michell, “Divine Horizons: Religion and Social Class in the Lives of Two Leading Australian Women, Betty Archdale and Kylie Tennant,” in Seizing the Initiative: Australian Women Leaders in Politics, Workplaces and Communities, ed. R. Francis, P. Grimshaw, and A. Standish (Melbourne, VIC: Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2012), 185, 190–91.

  35. 35.

    Jane Grant, Kylie Tennant: A Life (Canberra, ACT: National Library of Australia, 2005), 2, 23, 32, 44; Tennant, The Missing Heir: The Autobiography of Kylie Tennant, 132. Michell, “Divine Horizons: Religion and Social Class in the Lives of Two Leading Australian Women, Betty Archdale and Kylie Tennant,” 191–92.

  36. 36.

    After completion, Tell Morning This was pared back and published in 1953 as the Joyful Condemned, partly because of post-war paper shortages. Tennant’s “author’s note” at the beginning of the 1967 full version says she is re-publishing the story at the behest of friends, perhaps in response to the growing opposition in Australia to conscription and the Vietnam War given that part of the story explores the imprisoning of a conscientious objector to the Second World War. See Kylie Tennant, Tell Morning This (Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1967). Also see Deidre Michell, “Traces of a Feminist Protest: Kylie Tennant’s Novel Tell Morning This,” in Silent System: Forgotten Australians and the Institutionalisation of Women and Children, ed. P. Ashton and J. Wilson (Melbourne, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014).

  37. 37.

    Tennant, The Missing Heir: The Autobiography of Kylie Tennant, 132; Grant, Kylie Tennant: A Life, 44; and Michell, “Traces of a Feminist Protest: Kylie Tennant‘s Novel Tell Morning This,” 193–208.

  38. 38.

    See for example Geoffrey Hutton’s review “A Pungent Kettle of Misfits” in the Melbourne Argus (25 April 1953) which opens with a description of The Joyful Condemned as a rollick in the gutter, and the one in the Adelaide Advertiser of 18 April 1953, entitled “Sordid Life of Mean Streets.”

  39. 39.

    Lisa Featherstone, “Sexy Mamas? Women, Sexuality and Reproduction in Australia in the 1940s,” Australian Historical Studies 36, no. 126 (2005). William Hatherell, “The Australian Home-Front Novel of the Second World War: Genre, Gender and Region,” Australian Literary Studies 23, no. 1 (2007).

  40. 40.

    Michell, “Traces of a Feminist Protest: Kylie Tennant‘s Novel Tell Morning This.”

  41. 41.

    “Olga Masters Short Story Award,” http://www.olgamastersshortstoryaward.com.au/wp/. Also see “Masters, Olga Meredith (1919–1986),” National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/masters-olga-meredith-14948; Olga Masters, Home Girls (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1982).

  42. 42.

    Julie Lewis, Olga Masters: A Lot of Living (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1991), 122.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 22.

  44. 44.

    John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health: A Report Prepared on Behalf of the World Health Organization as a Contribution to the United Nations Programme for the Welfare of Homeless Children, in Mongraph Series (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1952); John Fogarty, “Some Aspects of the Early History of Child Protection in Australia,” Family Matters, no. 78 (2008): 52–59.

  45. 45.

    Chapter 7: Rediscovering Foster Care.

  46. 46.

    “Tom Hope” and Nelligang read as much orphan literature, that is, as a way to open a story and/or drive the story forward, see Leoutsakas, “Contemplating Fictional and Nonfictional Orphan Stories,” 8.

  47. 47.

    Chapter 4: Remembering and Forgetting Foster Care.

  48. 48.

    “Hannah Kent,” https://hannah-kent-author.squarespace.com/burial-rites-reviews, last accessed 26 April 2018. Also see Stephen Romei, “Hannah Kent’s Debut Novel Burial Rites Is Written in Cold Blood,” The Australian 2013; Paramita Ayuningtyas, “Deconstructing the Stereotypes of Women through a Female Voice in Burial Rites (2013) by Hannah Kent,” Lingua Cultura 9, no. 2 (2015): 80.

  49. 49.

    By mid-2010 the novel had sales of one and a half million copies across various formats. See: Shannon Maughan, “It’s a Wonderful (Sales) Life: The Staying Power of ‘the Book Thief’,” Publishers Weekly 257, no. 34 (2010).

  50. 50.

    TED.com, “Lemn Sissay: A Child of the State.”

  51. 51.

    Peter Kelso, “Peter Kelso: Lawyer Peter Kelso Shares His Memories About Growing Up in State Care,” Kelso Lawyers.

  52. 52.

    Andrew Harvey et al., Out of Care, into University: Raising Higher Education Access and Achievement of Care Leavers” (LaTrobe : LaTrobe University, 2015), 6. Also see Andrew Harvey , Lisa Andrewartha, and Patricia McNamara, “A Forgotten Cohort? Including People from out of Home Care in Australian Higher Education Policy,” Australian Journal of Education 59, no. 2 (2015). For a discussion about the longstanding problem of stigma and its effect on those raised in foster care, see Dee Michell, “Foster Care, Stigma and the Sturdy, Unkillable Children of the Very Poor,” Continuum. Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 29, no. 4 (2015); Deidre Michell and Pamela Petrilli, “Similarities in Difficulties: Australians Raised in Out-of-Home-Care,” in Challenges to Living Together. Transculturalism, Migration, Exploitation, ed. Susan Petrilli (Italy: Mimesis International, 2017). For a discussion about how stigma continues to effects young people who have recently exited Out of Home Care, see Dee Michell and Claudine Scalzi, “I Want to Be Someone, I Want to Make a Difference: Young Care Leavers Preparing for the Future in South Australia,” in Young People Transitioning from Out-of-Home Car, ed. Philip Mendes and Pamela Snow (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

  53. 53.

    CREATE Foundation , “The Power Within Portrait Exhibibition Launch,” (Online 2013); CREATE Foundation , “Issue: Stigma in Out-of-Home Care,” (Online 2015).

  54. 54.

    CREATE Foundation , “Help Change Preconceived Views of Young People in Care #Snapthatstigma,” https://create.org.au/resources/snap-that-stigma/, last accessed 26 April 2018; Michell, “Foster Care, Stigma and the Sturdy, Unkillable Children of the Very Poor.”

  55. 55.

    According to Daniel Heath Justice, the earliest book by an Aboriginal woman was From Old Maloga: The Memoirs of an Aboriginal Woman by Theresa Clements, written in the 1930s but not published until 1954, see Richard Pascal, “Audible in the Silence: Douglas Lockwood, Waipuldanya, and the Postwar Aboriginal Life Narrative,” Life Writing 3, no. 2 (2006): 76. However, Monica Clare is usually positioned with Margaret Tucker (1904–1996) and Oodgeroo Nunuccal (Kath Walker) (1920–1993) as the three earliest Aboriginal women writers. Tucker’s book If Everyone Cared: Autobiography of Margaret Tucker (1977) has not been included in this discussion because, upon forcible removal from her parents at the age of 12, she was sent to the infamous Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and then sent to work as a domestic servant at the age of 13. Oodgeroo Nunuccal grew up in the care of her family, but also went out to work as a domestic servant when she was 13, see Sue Abbey, “Noonuccal, Oodgeroo (1920–1993),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Century of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/noonuccal-oodgeroo-18057, last accessed 26 April 2018.

  56. 56.

    Jennifer Jones, “Reading Karobran by Monica Clare: An Aboriginal Engagement with Socialist Realism,” Overland, no. 161 (Summer 2000). Jennifer Jones, “Yesterday’s Words: The Editing of Monica Clare’s Karobran,” Journal of Australian Studies 24, no. 64 (2000). Also see Jack Horner, “Clare, Mona Matilda (Monica) (1924–1973),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clare-mona-matilda-monica-9750, last accessed 26 April 2018; Naomi Parry, “Halloween Children’s Home (C. 1925–C. 1938),” Find & Connect, https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE01120b.htm, last accessed 26 Apirl 2018; and Barbalet, Far from a Low Gutter Girl, 153.

  57. 57.

    Monica Clare, Karobran: The Story of an Aboriginal Girl (Chippendale, NSW: Alternative Publishing, 1978).

  58. 58.

    Jones, “Reading Karobran by Monica Clare: An Aboriginal Engagement with Socialist Realism.”; Jones, “Yesterday’s Words: The Editing of Monica Clare‘s Karobran.”

  59. 59.

    Sheridan Palmer, Hegel’s Owl. The Life of Bernard Smith (Sydney: Power Publications, 2016), 1; Bernard Smith, The Boy Adeodatus (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin, 1984); and Bernard Smith, A Pavane for Another Time (South Yarra, VIC: Macmillan Art, 2002).

  60. 60.

    Sheridan Palmer, Email correspondence with Deidre Michell, 2013.

  61. 61.

    For more on the circumstances leading to Smith’s placement with Tottie Keen, and his experiences of stigma in foster care, see Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.

  62. 62.

    For more on the role of education in Smith’s life, and the significance he attributed to his wife’s knowledge of social etiquette among the upper classes, see Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.

  63. 63.

    Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith, Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 3, 15. Kate Douglas, Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 1.

  64. 64.

    Walter Jacobsen, Dussa and the Maiden’s Prayer (Melbourne: The Law Printer, 1994), 2.

  65. 65.

    Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.

  66. 66.

    James Waghorne, Email correspondence with Deidre Michell, 2014.

  67. 67.

    Rosamund Dalziell, Shameful Autbiographies. Shame in Contemporary Australian Autobiographies and Culture (Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 1999), 11.

  68. 68.

    Ibid. For more on the emotional and psychological benefits of writing about trauma , see Louise DeSalvo, Writing as a Way of Healing (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999); James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth, Opening Up by Writing It Down, Third Edition: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain, 3rd ed. (New York: The Guilford Press, 2016).

  69. 69.

    Jan Owen , Every Childhood Lasts a Lifetime. Personal Stories from the Frontline of Family Breakdown (Brisbane, QLD: Australian Association of Young People in Care, 1996), 215. About the lack of voice in research of children and young people in state care, see Cas O’Neill, “‘I Remember the First Time I Went into Foster Care—It’s a Long Story …’: Children, Permanent Parents, and Other Supportive Adults Talk About the Experience of Moving from One Family to Another,” Journal of Family Studies 10, no. 2 (2004); Alexandra Osborn and Leah Bromfield, “Participation of Children and Young People in Care in Decisions Affecting Their Lives,” in National Child Protection Clearinghouse Research Brief (Online: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2007); and Jill Chaifetz, “Listening to Foster Children in Accordance with the Law: The Failure to Serve Children in State Care,” Review of Law and Social Change 25, no. 1 (1999).

  70. 70.

    For more on the long term alienation of children in state care from their birth parents, see Deidre Michell, “Systemic Familial Alienation and the Australian Foster Care System,” in Challenges to Living Together. Transculturalism, Migration, Exploitation, ed. Susan Petrilli (Italy: Mimesis International, 2017). For specific Aboriginal examples see Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, “Bringing Them Home: A Guide to the Findings and Recommendations of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families” (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997), 135, 136, 204–6, 209.

  71. 71.

    Jeannie Dee, “The Healing Is in the Writing,” in Every Childhood Lasts a Lifetime, ed. Jan Owen (Brisbane, QLD: Australian Association of Young People in Care, 1996), 188.

  72. 72.

    Shurlee Swain , “History of Australian Inquiries Reviewing Institutions Providing Care for Children” (Sydney, NSW, 2014), 10.

  73. 73.

    Anne Surma, “Stolen Stories Returned: Bringing Them Home,” in Telling Stories. Australian Life and Literature 1935–2012, ed. Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Press, 2013), 494.

  74. 74.

    David McCooey, “Autobiography,” in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. Peter Pierce (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009), 341; Schaffer and Smith, Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition, 106; Kay Schaffer, “Stolen Generation Narratives in Local and Global Contexts,” Antipodes 16, no. 1 (2002): 6.

  75. 75.

    McCooey, “Autobiography,” 341. The Bringing Them Home Oral History Project ran from 1998 to 2002, conducting oral history interviews with Indigenous Australians in order to preserve their stories, along with those of white Australians, for example, police , missionaries and administrators of the forcible removal policies and practices. Further funding by the Federal Government in 2009 has enabled access to many of the interviews online, and follow up interviews were also conducted with some of those citizens whose testimony formed Bringing Them Home , see National Library of Australia, “Bringing Them Home Oral History Project,” https://www.nla.gov.au/oral-history/bringing-them-home-oral-history-project, last accessed 24 April 2018. Our focus in this chapter is life story/autobiography, but there are other examples of Indigenous experiences in foster care, such as singer-song writer Archie Roach’s transmission of story via song. See Gerry Turcotte, “Australian Gothic,” in The Handbook to Gothic Literature, ed. Mulvey Roberts (Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1998); “Archie Roach,” http://www.archieroach.com/, last accessed 23 April 2018.

  76. 76.

    For example: http://www.stolengenerationstestimonies.com/, last accessed 23 April 2018.

  77. 77.

    Rosalie Fraser , Shadow Child: A Memoir of the Stolen Generation (Alexandria, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 1998), 62. As noted in Bringing Them Home , foster care for Aboriginal children was commonplace by the 1970s throughout the country; it was considered better than congregate care. Unfortunately, however, Aboriginal children were often more isolated in foster care, see Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, “Bringing Them Home : A Guide,” 126.

  78. 78.

    Hannah Forsyth, A History of the Modern Australian University (Sydney, NSW: New South, 2014).

  79. 79.

    Donna Meehan , It Is No Secret (Milsons Point, NSW: Random House, 2000), 49, 54. Also see: Donna Meehan , “Donnameehan.Com.Au,” http://donnameehan.com.au/. “Meet the Mob: Donna Meehan ,” in 1233 ABC Newcastle (Online: ABC). Donna Meehan , “Donna Meehan Interviewed by Rob Willis in the Bringing Them Home After the Apology Oral History Project” in Bringing Them Home After the Apology Oral History Project, ed. Rob Willis (Canberra, ACT: National Library of Australia, 2010).

  80. 80.

    Ruby Langord Ginibi, cited by Schaffer, “Stolen Generation Narratives in Local and Global Contexts,” 6. Also see Per Henningsgaard, “Our Cup Runneth Over: Life-Stories from Fremantle Go National,” in Telling Stories: Australian Life and Literature 1935–2012, ed. Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Press, 2014), 436. About the critical and popular success of these books.

  81. 81.

    Douglas, Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory, 109.

  82. 82.

    McCooey, “Autobiography,” 8. Also see Douglas, Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory, 107.

  83. 83.

    For further discussion of Germain Greer and her father’s foster care experience see Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.

  84. 84.

    TED.com, “Lemn Sissay: A Child of the State.”

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Musgrove, N., Michell, D. (2018). Writing to Heal—The Emergence of Foster Care in Literature. In: The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93900-1_8

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