Benang: From the Heart

by Kim Scott

Harley, a man of Nyoongar ancestry, finds himself at a difficult point in the history of his country, family and self. As the apparently successful outcome of his white grandfather's enthusiastic attempts to isolate and breed the 'first whiteman born', he wants to be a failure. But would such failure mean his Nyoongar ancestors could label him a success? And how can the attempted genocide represented by his family history be told?. "
Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.

Genres: Australia, Fiction, Indigenous, Race, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Historical

500 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Born in 1957, Kim Scott's ancestral Noongar country is the south-east coast of Western Australia between Gairdner River and Cape Arid. His cultural Elders use the term Wirlomin to refer to their clan, and the Norman Tindale nomenclature identifies people of this area as Wudjari/Koreng.

His novel Taboo won the Victorian premier’s literary award for Indigenous writing in 2019.

His other novels include True Country and Benang. He also writes poetry and short fiction. His professional background is in education and the arts.

Reviews

[Velvetink · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Baldwin once said that there are no white people, only people who think they are white. (James Baldwin, 'On being "white" and other lies' reprinted in David Roediger (ed.), Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to be White).

So one could say, then, that to think of oneself as white is fantasmatic? If whiteness is a cultural "ideal", it can not be achieved only approached - never arrived at. What then of Aboriginality? Of other shades?.

Harley the central character in Benang stumbles on to the discovery of his bloodline,and his perceptions change paradoxically losing himself while uncovering his history.

Meanwhile I find myself stuck in a similar paradox finding some personal meanings in Scott's Benang whilst becoming further lost in a labyrinth of narratives (and pages of notes I have written for this review) - I thought this might be a quick review to write but it's going to take longer than I thought & deserves more time.

so till then I can only say the effect Benang had for me was profound and most likely life altering. (i am continuing to arrange my thoughts to complete this review).



Library discard. 1 of 12 for $6. Mine has a different cover.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote this review back in 2002 when I read this book but have just posted it to my blog because I'm currently reading the author's second book (That Deadman Dancing) and I thought other readers might be interested.

I see this review as a bit naive now, but I'm sharing it anyway because there don't seem to be any reviews of the book online and it's better than nothing (I hope)!

So, from my reading journal of September 2002, here it is:

This is a most interesting and challenging book, the sort of fiction that simmers in one’s consciousness, changing one’s view of long-held ideas and assumptions.

The prose is beautiful. Oceanic, as the blurb tells us. The lyricism enables us to see the landscape through different eyes – the seas, the bush, the caves and rocks and creeks. Better than Winton, I reckon, and about more interesting people than the self-indulgent losers than Winton writes about.

The Aborigines of Benang are certainly not losers. The novel, a work of fiction, reads like an autobiography of a family since white settlement. Scott, who might or might not be the narrator, seeks to explore his antecedents and the family history which has labelled him ‘the first white man’.

To read the rest of this review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

[Joey Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know how some things are so complex that answers will only annoy you and insult many who know more?
no answers here and once I stopped struggling to understand who everyone was and what was happening I realised how this is the perfect book about assimilation, protection, dispossession, family, knowledge, settlement and everything else that a Nyoongar might want to tell you about southwestern australia. Needless to say it's brutal and sad.

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

superb novel of aboriginal experience in western (southwestern?) Australia. it is not pretty and i think we all know what happened, as it did in Georgia, Nevada, Idaho, Texas, Sonora, Bolivia, new guinea,
why does this list go on and on? i want to read more by Kim Scott.

[Bree Pollard · Rating 5 out of 5]

uncomfortable, gritty, and heartbreaking

[Sabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a complex read indeed. The prose does seem a bit dramatic but I guess with dual timelines and various characters handling the themes of cultural assimilation and trauma, it's what the author intentionally went with.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story spanning generations of a Nyoongar family through white settlement. Their treatment by whites, even whites who are family (often through the routine rape of Aboriginal women) is abhorrent. Ern was a hideous character throughout. And yet this story is much more about identity, and how the young narrator Harley, born out of his white grandfather Ern’s experiments to produce the ‘first white man’, ultimately finds his true place within his Nyoongar heritage. I enjoyed this exploration of identity, of the struggle to find our place when we may have lost chunks of ourselves along the way: our culture, lost languages, separation from family. I really enjoyed the way this was portrayed with Harley literally floating away – it showed perfectly, beautifully, how it feels to be without an anchor of knowing and of feeling where you belong. Beautiful prose – another reviewer describes it as ‘oceanic’, and that’s true, in terms of style but also in terms of structure. The story was built like the tides drawing in and out, sometimes covering the same ground from a different angle, or adding slightly more detail each time the swell comes in. While feeling organic and interesting, it also added some confusion in following the story. Also adding to the confusion was keeping track of the numerous family members throughout the generations, and how they were all related. Although I empathized with the characters, I never truly felt like I knew any of them except in a rather superficial manner (Ern, perhaps the most fleshed-out character, was also the most odious). I would really like to have known at least a few of the other family members (especially the narrator) better. Ultimately, I enjoyed it, but it didn’t all come together as a whole quite as neatly or with as much impact as I would have liked, and I really just wanted to feel more for the characters and for the journey.

[Gabby gcdeditorial · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Leanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neville argues that the 'breeding out of colour' by careful control of part-Aboriginal people - where they lived, whom they married - would ultimately lead to the day where we could 'forget there were Aborigines in Australia.' Could there be a book more essential to the reading lists of White Australia, who grew up under the exclusive singularity of the policy of the same name.

[Natasha Hurley-Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this pretty hard going to start with, but the book grew on me over time. What would have been hugely helpful was a family tree, but I realised as I read that I would be best off drawing one out myself, following the narrator's journey in discovering his ancestry.

I enjoyed the aspects of magical realism, the wonderful picture painted of the Australian landscape, and the honesty of the story, told by an unreliable and damaged but earnest narrator. I appreciated (enjoyed is hardly the right word) the 'inside look' at the events of the colonial period, in all of its depressing racism, brutality, societal and environmental destruction.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was extremely difficult to read. Firstly, the subject matter is very confronting; secondly, the book keeps jumping between time periods, making it hard to keep track, and lastly, the main character floats, as if gravity did not apply to him, which made it very difficult for me to assimilate the goings on as real.

[Kirat Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want a good read of the lives of aboriginal and especially mixed-race aboriginal people and their day-to-day struggles in a changing Western Australian landscape, and are sick of colonialist narratives, this is the perfect book. Kim Scott writes beautifully.

[Calum · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Australians should know this history. Especially those of us who are white.

Benang hurts, Benang bleeds. It seeps out the painful truth of our nation through its pages.

We must listen, we must look back.

[Rivqa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benang is a difficult read, as one would expect from a novel about the attempted genocide of Aboriginal people through "biological absorption". The matter-of-fact narration of the layers of tragedy only add to the grimness. And yet there is also joy, survival and triumph. Every word of this heartbreaking book is placed so deliberately and perfectly. Scott's prose is a constant reminder that the past is the present, and is likely to be the future too.

[Beatrice Blackwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautiful, and heart breaking. If you haven't read it please do yourself a favour and pick up a copy.

[Peter Mathews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kim Scott writes quite beautifully, and that is the most obvious strength of his prose. The political and historical critique he makes here of the treatment of the Indigenous peoples is also a pressing and valid theme. Together, however, these elements are not enough to make a good novel.

Where Scott is particularly weak is his inability to create a coherent plot. I don't mind a disjointed but cleverly-planned story-line, such as you find in, say, Zadie Smith's White Teeth. The narrative of Benang, however, meanders here and there without any discernible aim or pattern, and after a while I simply felt lost in the narrative, as if I were walking around in circles. I felt overwhelmed and dizzy by the novel's end.

Scott is also weak at characterization. Yes, from the outside, figures like Jack Chatalong or Harriette had potential, but the problem is that Scott *keeps* us, the readers, on the outside. The only character into whom we get any real insight and depth is Ern, the protagonist's grandfather, and that makes him - despite being the novel's main villain - its most relatable character.

The other problem with this book is that it is so unnecessarily long. Yes, it draws on a complicated history, but a greater sense of narrative direction and tighter editing could have made this a genuine classic about the "first white man born." As it stands, the book is an unstructured, bloated mess.

Benang is so transparently based on Scott's life and history that I wonder why he didn't write a memoir instead of a novel (at one point the narrator says: "Some of these, my people—let us call them ‘characters’..."). As a novel, it falls far short of my standards of both enjoyment and intellectual stimulation, which is truly a pity, for Scott's message is one that certainly needs to be heard in Australian literature and culture.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"‘Must’ve been a couple of the old people survived, after all,’ he said. Ernest did not ask for an explanation. Did not say, ‘Survived what?’ Even then it was obvious. It was not the sort of question anyone bothered to put, and very few people wanted it answered. "
The first half of Benang, I struggled to find the rhythm - the book's traumatised narrator, the constant switches in timeframe, the lack of clarity of who was related to who made it often confounding. I suspect that is partly the point - the book's characters do not have stability or certainty, and so neither does the reader. "Look at us, stuck out in the sky like branches from which the rest of the tree has been cut and carted away."
I found myself more engrossed as it progressed. Around the halfway mark, I was deeply absorbed in this family saga, and the various strands of experience Scott draws together. There is pleasure in putting together the pieces, heartache at the loss, humour from our protagonists predicament, discomfort and intense joy at survival. It's not the least demanding read, but it provides rich rewards.
"There is no other end, no other destination for all this paper talk but to keep doing it, to keep talking, to remake it. For Sandy and Fanny it was companionship, it was reminders that somehow this was the same story despite the surface confusion. Even where strange animals had stripped the land to its essentials, to bone, to the bare contours of the land, it just made you turn inward all the more, to the bones of yourself."

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, haunting and confronting but also a book that can help offset the lies of 'history'. I read constantly, amongst other reasons, to try to know or understand things. 'Benang from the Heart' took me to my country and my Australian identity and then took me much, much further. This is added later - I am not indigenous Australian, my predecessors came here from Raasay, unwillingly, but we came and survived. I chose this book because I find reading fiction and non-fiction written by indigenous Australians to be vital for developing a clearer and more real picture of Australian history, having been fed only one side for most of my life, and that heavily shaped by a desire/need to justify this country being taken over without permission firstly. Secondly, bad things being done, and hidden or glossed over. And thirdly, the truth of indigenous Australia today still being warped by self justification and unthinking racism of the most insidious kind, especially that within those like me. This book is excellent for anyone else on a similar search for more about what really happened back then, and is continuing to happen today.

[Cathryn Wellner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging and heartbreaking book, Benang draws the reader through the fire and mud of history. Every colonized country has its own share of depredations on indigenous populations. Australia's record is as savage as any. In comparison with the tens of thousands of years the First People have lived on this land, settlers are newcomers - ones that wasted no time in transforming the land with non-native flora and fauna and dismissing the original inhabitants as sub-humans. Inter-marriage created its own problems for those caught between two worlds. To read Kim Scott's novel is to understand viscerally how destructive White Australia's policies have been and what a long way we have to go before we newcomers achieve real reconciliation with those whose roots are deep in the land.

[Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to read horror, read history.. This particular book by Kim Scott is about a genocide. But this genocide is not done through gas chambers, but rather through the process of forced assimilation by “breeding of the colors” and separating individuals from their indigenous families and origins.

It is a brutal and painful book to read. But it is one that screams out to you so that you don’t forget.... so that we don’t forget.

[Anna Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it mean when you take a country away from people and the only way they have worth is to make them just like you.

[Nadia King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite, heartbreaking writing. Essential reading. Highly recommended.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a concoction of countless Noongar voices from the past and today. Consequently, the narrative progresses with an interplay between dialogue and intertextuality. The dialogue-generated competition between the colonisers colonised, subject and object, centre and margin, white and the Noongars, is portrayed in this multivoiced narration that provides the textual frame a varied topography.

In this dialogue, the dominated group is able to transform and problematize the colonial and modern practises and assumptions.

The archive writings on which this novel relies are miniature representations of European / colonial / modern meta-narratives, which are subsequently "written back" by incorporating marginal stories that had previously been left out. In effect, Harley's "basic family history, most local of histories," which he reconstructs from his grandfather Ern's records and his uncles, Will and Jack's stories, undermine Ern's Nevillian eugenic project. It covers the lives of four generations.

Ern believed that this Noongar controlled breeding arrangement would standardize the birth of the "first white guy" in his family. This "narration" or "performance" of the current hidebound philosophy that the white state supports / regulates is a counter-discourse. In a sneaky "performative" way, Harley's memory, which is a combination of more than a few ancestors' and existing voices from his community - crosses the immovable, parallel, didactic white past, causing constant slippages.

However, what makes the storytelling more idiosyncratic and characteristic is its employment of the elements of intertextuality, irony, allegory, magic ory, magic realism, and Aboriginal English. Harley's or Scott's use of storytelling technique may be in effect a strategy to bring to the forefront the quintessential Aboriginal element and thereby create a counter discourse to the linear documented history of the colonial whites.

A word on Scott's use of intertextuality in the novel: - Well, the polyphonic community voice is ventilated through oral histories and the memories of Noongar Elders if intertextuality includes the use of the language of the state and its apparatuses, such as newspaper rticles, notebooks kept by State employees, eugenicist records, and anthropological notes.

The use of irony and metaphor is a noteworthy postcolonial stylization that gives Soctt's writing a poetic, yet politicised, essence. Ernest Solomon Scat is a moniker Scott decisively chose as a hurtful irony at the man.

The articulation of cultural distinctions results in the creation of Harley's identity. Instead of attempting to define what it means to be Noongar or Indigenous, Scott views indigenousness as a cultural construct that is repetitively embryonic. Harley is unaware of his identity.

He must, in a sense, start over, though not with the "clean slate" Ern imagines, but rather by developing his ability to pay close attention, feel, and be open to new ways of knowing and being. ‘Who am I now?’ might be asked in the exposed, unconsolated speaking position. How should I say this?

Scott has the opportunity to reconnoiter the convolution of postcolonial Australia by speaking from a position of vulnerable identification. We must look at the connectivity that history has forced upon us because it is too late for us to forget one another.

Through his unconsoled narrator, who barely has any real authority, Scott investigates this interwoven history. Harley's indistinctness, however, draws attention to the wide range of opt of options that are open to him.

The potential for Australia to transcend current racial tensions and shed the mindset that confines man to a past that forbids him from becoming anything other than what they are, is sufficiently made clear to Scott's readers.

By writing from a liminal place, Scott enables the Nyoongar people in Benang to express alternate conceptions of identity and belonging, which will work to undermine white domination.

[Noor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me quite amount of time to finished. I have a love-hate relationship with this book. Not gonna sugarcoat it: this is a difficult book in so many ways. I found it difficult to read and I struggle to continue reading it at the beginning. I kept re-read the first few chapters over and over, started it from the beginning multiple times...that I almost gave up reading it completely. It took me a full force to grab this book again after leaving it on a shelf unattended for several months (until I ran out of other books to read) and I’m glad I did it. Once I get used to the writing style, I found the story telling was compelling. It’s hard, it’s brutal, but it’s an honest story from the heart. It’s a difficult story to tell and I cannot think of a better way to tell it than the author’s way: the nyoongar’s way. The story will keep the readers afloat with many stories and makes you confused, overwhelmed and sick. You will even get confused with their family trees and members of the family at the beginning... uncles aunties etc...who’s who, which one is which... it’s alright. That’s exactly what the main character felt and what the author want the readers to feels: to be in the shoes of a fair skin nyoongar, trying to understand his story and where he’s belong. The ending is heartwarming and I love it. I only gave it 4 instead of 5 because I cannot ignore the fact that it was so difficult to read at the beginning. But I did not regret it. Thank you for a beautiful story from the heart.

[Julianne Quaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult review to write as this is a challenging though brilliant and important book to read. Harley the narrator is descended from Nyoongar people but his family have tried to keep that from him. As he works through his grandfather's papers and spends time on country with his Uncles Will and Jack Chatalong and his aging grandfather after his father's untimely death he starts to learn his family history as we the reader learn of some of the atrocious behaviour of early colonists.

interspersed with actual correspondence of the time from the so-called Aboriginal Protector AO Neville (remember Kenneth Branagh in the film Rabbit Proof Fence?) and his henchmen and believers (one of whom is Harley's paedophile white grandfather) the impact of state sanctioned efforts to either assimilate the Nyoongar people or wipe them and their culture out is slowly revealed. Scott depicts so clearly the impossibility, the hypocrisy and the oxymoronic nature of the protection and assimilation policies - Nyoongar people who tried to assimilate - ie comply with the desire of white people for them to live like whites - were still relegated to the fringes of society, unpaid or poorly paid for their work, unable to get their children educated or access protection from the police when needed.

While Benang covers the period from the 1900s to perhaps the 1960s some things remain the same - even high profile First Nations people in our country have to perform to a white standard or be rejected - think Adam Goodes lauded AFL star until he expressed his strong dislike of racist taunts on the field, or as so sharply satirised in the recent ABC show Preppers by the very clever Nakkiah Lui.

The closing words summarise the survival, noting Benang means tomorrow: 'Speaking from the heart, I tell you that I am part of a much older story, one of a perpetual billowing of the sea, with its rhythm of return, return and remain...We are still here. Benang'

[em · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benang: from the heart is a complex and thought provoking story regarding the mistreatment of Noongar people at the hands of the colonial Australian government. I found Harley’s story the most interesting to follow and found his physical and mental journey and re-tellling of history to be extremely powerful. The book exposes the horrifying lives realities of Aboriginal children and women, using real historical documents to highlight the government’s creation of a system in which sexual abuse is encouraged. Benang is a hard read which stirs feelings of distress and sadness. However, this feels necessary.

I did struggle at times to understand what was being said due to the less-linear style of story telling. However, I found it to be overall extremely coherent and well-connected.

3.75

[Frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a lot from this book, and I’m glad I read it. It’s deeply affecting and sad and important and made me think about the impossibility of forgetting what hasn’t even been remembered. When your ancestors are both abusers and abused, the deep damage that can do. The rotten lie of Australian settler culture. The magical realism elements are effective. I only give it three stars because very often I could not follow it for many pages at a time. Temporally and in terms of relationships described it was deeply disorienting - likely intentional, but it really made it hard to stay engaged.

[James Connolly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kim Scott is an excellent writer and I understand the choices made with form, which were thematically consistent with his ambition. This is a good novel that didn't work for me. I found the structure and temporality distancing and disorientating when it should have conveyed the throughlines of identity and historic trauma. If those stylistic choices work for the reader, which they clearly have for many, then the reader will be rewarded.

[Susan Tremblay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powerful, informative, and often devastating, 'Benang from the Heart' is a challenging read. While the fragmented and cryptic narration may be intentionally disorienting, I personally found the lack of clarity around characters and their connections distracting. It made it difficult for me to fully connect with the story. While I appreciate the intent, the fluid style became tedious, and I struggled to finish.

[Salomeja Sandroschvili · Rating 3 out of 5]

ანუ, დამღალა… გავიგეთ, რომ დისკრიმინაცია, გენოციდი და განადგურება ცუდია და ფუფუაა, მერე? რას გვეუბნება ეგ სამყაროზე, ღმერთზე, ადამიანის ბუნებაზე… ასეთი ცალმხრივი აზროცნება, რომ ვიღაც ტიპები პროსტა იყვნენ ცუდები, ინფანტილური, განაწყენებული ბავშცის მსჯელობაა, 18 წლის რომ ხარ და მასე ფიქრობ, ბუნებრივია, მაგრამ 40 წლის კაცისთვის მეტისმეტად ენისმოჩლექვაა. სადაა შენი პრეფრონტალური კორტექსი, ბიჭოუ?