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My Best Friend the Suffragette
1913. Mary and Christine have different views about 'Votes for Women', but that doesn't stop them from becoming penfriends. In their letters, the girls try to make sense of the suffragettes, from smashing windows to blowing up golf courses. Then Christine's cousin sneaks out one night, and the fight for the vote is on the girls' doorsteps...
- GenresHistorical Fiction
128 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2018
38 people want to read
About the author
Sally Morgan
415 books138 followersSally Morgan is recognised as one of Australia's best known Aboriginal artists and writers. She is one of a number of successful urban Aboriginal artists.
Sally was born in Perth in 1951, the eldest of five children. As a child she found school difficult because of questions from other students about her appearance and family background. She understood from her mother that she and her family were from India. However, when Sally was fifteen she learnt that she and her sister were in fact of Aboriginal descent, from the Palku people of the Pilbara.
This experience of her hidden origins, and subsequent quest for identity, was the stimulus for her first book My Place published in 1987. It tells the story of her self discovery through reconnection with her Aboriginal culture and community. The book was an immediate success and has since sold over half a million copies in Australia. It has also been published in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Her second book Wanamurraganya was published in 1989. It is the biography of her grandfather, Jack McPhee. She has also written five books for children.
As well as writing, Sally Morgan has established an international reputation as an artist. She has works in numerous private and public collections in Australia and the United States, including the Australian National Gallery and the Dobell Foundation collection. Her work is particularly popular in the United States. Her work as an artist is excellently described and illustrated in the book Art of Sally Morgan.
She has received many awards, including from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. As a part of the celebration in 1993 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, her print Outback was selected by international art historians as one of 30 paintings and sculptures for reproduction on a stamp representing an article of the Declaration.
My Place remains her most influential work, not only because of its very wide popularity but also because it provided a new model for other writers, particularly those of indigenous background.
She is currently Director of the Centre for Indigenous History and Arts at The University of Western Australia.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Sally was born in Perth in 1951, the eldest of five children. As a child she found school difficult because of questions from other students about her appearance and family background. She understood from her mother that she and her family were from India. However, when Sally was fifteen she learnt that she and her sister were in fact of Aboriginal descent, from the Palku people of the Pilbara.
This experience of her hidden origins, and subsequent quest for identity, was the stimulus for her first book My Place published in 1987. It tells the story of her self discovery through reconnection with her Aboriginal culture and community. The book was an immediate success and has since sold over half a million copies in Australia. It has also been published in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Her second book Wanamurraganya was published in 1989. It is the biography of her grandfather, Jack McPhee. She has also written five books for children.
As well as writing, Sally Morgan has established an international reputation as an artist. She has works in numerous private and public collections in Australia and the United States, including the Australian National Gallery and the Dobell Foundation collection. Her work is particularly popular in the United States. Her work as an artist is excellently described and illustrated in the book Art of Sally Morgan.
She has received many awards, including from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. As a part of the celebration in 1993 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, her print Outback was selected by international art historians as one of 30 paintings and sculptures for reproduction on a stamp representing an article of the Declaration.
My Place remains her most influential work, not only because of its very wide popularity but also because it provided a new model for other writers, particularly those of indigenous background.
She is currently Director of the Centre for Indigenous History and Arts at The University of Western Australia.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 1, 2021
REVIEW OF KINDLE EDITION
So yes, I have definitely found the total letter format of Sally Morgan’s 2018 My Best Friend the Suffragette to be a very much successful and ingenious narrative tool (although as an older adult reader, I do have to admit that the small font size of My Best Friend the Suffragette on my Kindle is quite annoyingly and frustratingly hard on my ageing eyes, as is the fact that the letters also seem to use a font that is I guess supposed to resemble a handwritten, cursive script, something that might make the featured letters seem more authentic in form but also make reading them much more difficult for those of us with less than stellar eyesight).
But even with my eyes constantly complaining whilst I am reading My Best Friend the Suffragette, I still really do textually adore the back and forth epistles between young Christine Sedgwick and Mary Forrester, their developing friendship, and also how through these letters, both early 20th century British family dynamics, culture and equally the fight to get women the right to vote come both engagingly and generally historically accurately to life (and that with the two girls writing to each other about basically everything, including politics etc., middle grade readers are not only given portraits of the British past, but an introduction to the women’s suffrage movement in the UK, the differences between suffragists and suffragettes, and indeed that there actually were also many men, like for instance Christine’s father who totally supported that women should have voting rights but were not generally prepared to accept the radicalism, the arson and wanton destruction in which many of the more fundamentalist suffragettes engaged). And therefore, while the textual set-up of My Best Friend is a Suffragette as an e-book does indeed quite majorly frustrate me, as the tiny lettering certainly negatively affects my reading pleasure and tends to make both my eyes and my head ache, the actual themes and contents of My Best Friend the Suffragette are both engagingly penned and educational, enlightening, and definitely most highly recommended.
Now I do have one final and obviously also very personal observation to make, and namely that I really do wish that Sally Morgan would not follow the status quo of feminism and make in her My Best Friend the Suffragette the historical Emily Davison into such a heroine and suffrage martyr. For in my opinion, there was and still is nothing even remotely acceptable and pro feminism (and as such also women obtaining the right to vote) about Emily throwing herself in front of King George V’s horse during a race as an act of protest. And really, considering that Emily Davison’s behaviour, that her action could also have hurt and maybe even killed that poor horse and its jockey, sorry, but as a horse enthusiast, I do get kind of furious at Emily Davison and her supporters (both then and now) and consider it really lucky that there was not more carnage, that only she ended up dying (and in particular, I really really do wish that we would look at the horse as a totally innocent victim here).
So yes, I have definitely found the total letter format of Sally Morgan’s 2018 My Best Friend the Suffragette to be a very much successful and ingenious narrative tool (although as an older adult reader, I do have to admit that the small font size of My Best Friend the Suffragette on my Kindle is quite annoyingly and frustratingly hard on my ageing eyes, as is the fact that the letters also seem to use a font that is I guess supposed to resemble a handwritten, cursive script, something that might make the featured letters seem more authentic in form but also make reading them much more difficult for those of us with less than stellar eyesight).
But even with my eyes constantly complaining whilst I am reading My Best Friend the Suffragette, I still really do textually adore the back and forth epistles between young Christine Sedgwick and Mary Forrester, their developing friendship, and also how through these letters, both early 20th century British family dynamics, culture and equally the fight to get women the right to vote come both engagingly and generally historically accurately to life (and that with the two girls writing to each other about basically everything, including politics etc., middle grade readers are not only given portraits of the British past, but an introduction to the women’s suffrage movement in the UK, the differences between suffragists and suffragettes, and indeed that there actually were also many men, like for instance Christine’s father who totally supported that women should have voting rights but were not generally prepared to accept the radicalism, the arson and wanton destruction in which many of the more fundamentalist suffragettes engaged). And therefore, while the textual set-up of My Best Friend is a Suffragette as an e-book does indeed quite majorly frustrate me, as the tiny lettering certainly negatively affects my reading pleasure and tends to make both my eyes and my head ache, the actual themes and contents of My Best Friend the Suffragette are both engagingly penned and educational, enlightening, and definitely most highly recommended.
Now I do have one final and obviously also very personal observation to make, and namely that I really do wish that Sally Morgan would not follow the status quo of feminism and make in her My Best Friend the Suffragette the historical Emily Davison into such a heroine and suffrage martyr. For in my opinion, there was and still is nothing even remotely acceptable and pro feminism (and as such also women obtaining the right to vote) about Emily throwing herself in front of King George V’s horse during a race as an act of protest. And really, considering that Emily Davison’s behaviour, that her action could also have hurt and maybe even killed that poor horse and its jockey, sorry, but as a horse enthusiast, I do get kind of furious at Emily Davison and her supporters (both then and now) and consider it really lucky that there was not more carnage, that only she ended up dying (and in particular, I really really do wish that we would look at the horse as a totally innocent victim here).
October 21, 2023
Good book!
Read
July 17, 2019Christine is brought up in a family against suffrage and makes friends with Mary who is a wannabe detective who is a sufferagette as her family support it. The two communicate with letters back and forth which tell the story as the girls families suffer for the effort of getting the vote even pulling in some historic people references too.
A great way of telling a story which is unique as well as being a gripping but fun historical read children can get into easily and get a taste of the time back then with the dedication it took women to get to vote.
A great way of telling a story which is unique as well as being a gripping but fun historical read children can get into easily and get a taste of the time back then with the dedication it took women to get to vote.
November 15, 2021
this is such a good book!! would definitely recommend it!
February 10, 2023
Amazing 🤩
Based on a true story
Based on a true story
August 18, 2023
I do not care if this is a kids book or not. I bought it in year 5 and it was so good and educating and addicting. I love it to this day
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews