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Clare Wright

Teoksen The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka tekijä

4 teosta 165 jäsentä 9 arvostelua 1 Favorited

Tietoja tekijästä

Clare Wright is an Australian historian, writer, and broadcaster. She was born on May 14, 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and migrated to Australia with her mother in 1974. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne with a BA (Honours) in history, Monash University with a MA in public history and näytä lisää University of Melbourne with a PhD in Australian studies. She has worked as a speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant, and a radio and television broadcaster. Her first book is entitled, Beyond The Ladies Lounge: Australian Women Publicans. She won the 2014 Stella Prize and 2014 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature with her second book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, which is also being adappted into a TV series. In August 2016, she bwas presented the biennial Alice Literary Award for `distinguished and long-term contribution to literature by an Australian woman¿. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
Image credit: Photo credit: Virginia Cummins. Source: http://www.clarewright.com.au/contact.html

Tekijän teokset

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Syntymäaika
1969-05-14
Sukupuoli
female
Kansalaisuus
Australia
Asuinpaikat
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Ammatit
historian
broadcaster

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

The 1854 miners' rebellion, culminating in the Eureka Stockade, started the journey towards democracy and universal suffrage in Australia. By 1854 the surface gold had been exhausted, and many miners were earning too little to support their families. Living costs were high, and increased further by the 30 shilling per month miner's licence, which many miners had to pay at the expense of feeding their children. Armed soldiers swept the diggings almost daily searching for unlicensed miners who were jailed, their families left to destitution. At the same time police, government officials and soldiers were making a fortune from bribery and corruption.

The forgotten rebels are the women. The Eureka story has come down to us as a story of men's heroism, and the role of women has been ignored. Wright tracks down the women on the Ballarat goldfields, some of whom played important roles in the fight for democratic rights.

We learned about the Eureka Stockade and the miners' rebellion in primary school, but we didn't learn about the government corruption, the arbitrary arrests and convictions of innocent men on trumped up charges, the soldiers' brutality, the bayonetting of unarmed men and women, the firing of tents with women and children inside them.

An interesting and very readable book about an important piece of Victoria's history.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
pamelad | 6 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 14, 2024 |
The amazing thing about reading Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom is the switch from reading the wholly unfamiliar story of Australia’s history of suffrage to the familiar story of English suffragettes in Part III. How has this happened? How come we all know the story of the English suffragettes, but we don’t know about the Australian women (and men) who led the world into modern democracy with votes for women??
Well IMO there are two answers to that and only one of them is that until comparatively recently Australian history took a back seat to British history in the school curriculum. The other reason is that the mayhem and violence of the British suffragette campaign makes a more dramatic story than the story of the Australians who achieved votes for women with principles and logic and strategic nous. Hopefully You Daughters of Freedom will put the tabloid version in its place.

What will help with that, is Clare Wright’s pop-hist-doco style. This history is written with an eye to a young audience. She uses metaphors with jaunty panache, describing, for example, the 1902 Federal Parliamentary debate about who would qualify to vote as
like a game of citizenship Kerplunk: pulling out democratic planks and watching which marbles might fall through the gaps. (p.117)


Senator Pulsford, in the same debate, thought that WA and SA might in their wisdom consider it to drop woman suffrage (which SA had granted in 1894, and WA in 1899). This female franchise was causing trouble because SA was threatening to derail federation if their women were to lose it. Human rights had to be uniform across the nation, but the Parliament could hardly legislate that the enfranchised women of SA and WA could vote in the forthcoming first federal election, but not their sisters in the other states. So yes, as Clare Wright says, the senator was dreaming.

Much later, when the indomitable Australian women were over in England helping Englishwomen with their struggle to achieve the vote, Wright uses a pop term to describe the strategic savviness of the Australians:
The intransigence of the Liberal government had provided fertile ground for activism. Soon there was the Actresses’ Franchise League, with Cicely Hamilton at the helm, and the Writers’ Suffrage League. The WSPU [Women’s Social and Political Union] said that what was needed to wake up the nation was propaganda. Information and posters and badges, banners and essay and plays. A speech was one thing, and lord knows the suffrage leaders had made hundreds of those. But something to hold in your hand, or wear at your breast was another. They needed merch. (p.215)


To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/10/02/you-daughters-of-freedom-by-clare-wright-boo...
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
anzlitlovers | Oct 1, 2018 |
A very approachable history of the 'Ballarat Massacre' of December 1854, better known now as the Eureka Stockade. The use of primary sources sets a real and understandable context for the events, and provides a different perspective to the 'accepted' history of this event.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
buttsy1 | Apr 4, 2017 |
This is the kind of book the Stella Prize is all about - something I'd never have picked up without the prompt of the long list that turned out to be a fascinating account of a moment in Australia's history I knew surprisingly little about. In focussing on the role of women, Wright shifts the story from the standard outline we all learned about at school and brings new and intriguing insight to bear on the goldfields, the Eureka movement and the nascent women's rights movement of the time. It's long and at times dry, but there's a lot to like here.… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
mjlivi | 6 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 2, 2016 |

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Kate Hosking Narrator

Tilastot

Teokset
4
Jäseniä
165
Suosituimmuussija
#128,476
Arvio (tähdet)
3.9
Kirja-arvosteluja
9
ISBN:t
23
Kuinka monen suosikki
1

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