Steam Pigs

by Melissa Lucashenko

Sue Wilson, young and Aboriginal, escapes her 'too-large, too-poor family in a too-small' north Queensland town for Logan City's frontier sprawl. Entering 'the mythic world of Work' she discovers that the view from behind the bar is less than glamorous, but pays the rent. When she meets Roger the good times begin to roll until she finds herself starring in a feature with medium level violence.

Genres: Indigenous, Australia, Fiction

Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Melissa Lucashenko is an Australian writer of European and Goorie heritage. She received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University in 1990. In 1997, she published her first novel Steam Pigs. It won the Dobbie Literary Award for Australian women’s fiction and was shortlisted for both the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Steam Pigs was followed by the Aurora Prize–winning Killing Darcy, a novel for teenagers, and Hard Yards, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Courier-Mail Book of the Year and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Too Flash, a teenage novel about class and friendship, was released in 2002. Her latest novel is Mullumbimby published by UQP. Melissa lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation.

Reviews

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steam Pigs is the story of Sue, an Aboriginal girl from Townsville who moves south to Logan to get away from her past. It starts fairly gently - she lives with her brother and helps care for her nephews, gets her first ever job, and has fun. She meets a man and falls in love. Things don't go so well from there.

Steam Pigs is a book about intersectionality, published in 1997 before that concept was discussed much (by white people at least). It covers issues ranging from domestic violence to racial profiling and police violence. It isn't preachy - Sue makes friends with a feminist from work, and becomes part of some explicit conversations about equality and justice, but mostly they recognise she needs to learn things for herself.

It also carefully handles issues like colourism - differential treatment based on the lightness or darkness of your skin - and what it is like to be an Aboriginal person raised in a context where culture and Aboriginality is discouraged.

I suspect some people would criticise the tell-not-show nature of some of the book. There are lots of time jumps where you catch up with Sue as she reflects on some violence the night before. This felt real to me, similar to friends of mine who have experienced DV. Sue began mentioning her experiences casually, in passing, as something that wouldn't happen again. In addition to feeling authentic, it also saves the reader some harrowing scenes.

Lucashenko has created a really interesting novel that covers a lot of ground and deals with some pretty important topics, and she does so with compassion for her characters and without creating space for internal hierarchies.

[Tanya Sinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this novel by Melissa Lucashenko. As a non-Indigenous reader who has grown up in Logan and Brisbane's southside, I found this book to be an important re-orientation of the places I have lived, live and travel in. I really liked the protagonist character Sue whose strength and vulnerabilities were beautifully drawn out on the pages. Following Sue's critical feminist conscious awakening was exciting to read,
and also felt familiar. Lucashenko is one of my favourite writers from the australian continent, and their first novel is a must read for anyone else located in SEQld and Qld in general.

[Karen]

Read fo RH prompt #8 #ownvoices - Oceania and RE prompt # 16 book by indigenous woman author.

[Venky]

It a good book

[Dani Ringrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I DNFed it at 40%, for no particular reason. It felt like a warm up for the master Lucashenko I know and love today.