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Roots: Home Is Who We Are
Roots brings us thirty of the best short memoirs chosen from more than 2000 entries in the inaugural SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition.
Offering a snapshot of contemporary Australia, this diverse collection of stories explores love, family, loss, culture, sexual awakening and the abiding connections to people and place that make us who we are. Told with utterly fresh perspectives and a rich vein of literary talent, these stories are an invitation into the unique and intimate worlds of everyday Australians.
Hardie Grant and SBS champion the voices of often underrepresented Australians, and support the discovery and development of emerging talent to contribute to greater diversity in Australian storytelling
Offering a snapshot of contemporary Australia, this diverse collection of stories explores love, family, loss, culture, sexual awakening and the abiding connections to people and place that make us who we are. Told with utterly fresh perspectives and a rich vein of literary talent, these stories are an invitation into the unique and intimate worlds of everyday Australians.
Hardie Grant and SBS champion the voices of often underrepresented Australians, and support the discovery and development of emerging talent to contribute to greater diversity in Australian storytelling
304 pages, Paperback
Published July 28, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 16, 2022
Had me tearing up. Beautiful and raw collection of short stories and memoirs of a diverse range of Aussie childhoods.
July 18, 2023
When SBS launched its inaugural Emerging Writers’ Competition in August 2020, inviting submissions of short memoirs on the topic of “Growing up in diverse Australia”, there was public outcry led by Melbourne-based writer Kelly Bartholomeusz.
Published by Overland Literary Journal on October 5, 2020, Bartholomeusz’s essay was titled “Stop asking ‘diverse writers’ to tell you about their lives”. Her words are worth quoting to some length:
“It is frustrating to see opportunities for ‘diverse writers’ linked to their willingness to write narrowly about their diversity. This approach disqualifies the many talented writers who have already processed or written about these experiences, and who have bigger visions or better imaginations to endlessly revisit the same questions. Who want to see themselves in Australia’s future as well as its past.”
“I imagine there are also writers who do not wish to revisit their childhoods because they do not want to be retraumatised. I reflect regularly and deeply on my upbringing as a Sri Lankan-Australia. I’ve also written about it. It’s worth exploring and rich in its own way, but that does not mean I care to pick it apart in a mainstream public forum or to hinge my public identity with it.”
Bartholomeusz may have a point, but the 30 short memoirs collected in Roots: Home is Who We Are: Voices from the SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition (2021) – selected from more than 2,000 entries from across the country – are proof that human courage and resilience should never be underestimated.
Contrary to Bartholomeusz’s presumption about mainstream media’s “restrictive briefs and loaded questions”, judges sought and found “courageous and original voices, writing with a sharp take on modern Australian life, and nuanced views on our diverse realities”.
More importantly, instead of “marginalisation and otherness”, these emerging writers have explored universal themes such as place, era, sexuality, religion, neurodiversity and disability, ethnicity and culture, and the myriad ways we can call Australia home.
As the book’s subtitle “Home is Who We Are” suggests, these stories have highlighted individual journeys of self-discovery. They mirror our own life-long attempt to find out who we are – not just defying how others define us, but also seeking an honest way to define ourselves.
Having relentlessly dissected the nature and significance of identity, these writers have empowered and entitled themselves as part of Australia’s future. It is a birthright that they have fiercely defended and will continue to safeguard.
Instead of “retraumatising” themselves, these writers – wielding the Power of Words and supported by families and communities – celebrate our commonalities and embrace our differences as Everyday Australians. In the words of competition judges Melissa Lucashenko and Benjamin Law: “This is storytelling that requires you to see the world from a different perspective.”
These writers have boldly started a conversation about diversity being both an ambition and a strength. Their stories are an invitation to examine our own unique and intimate worlds as Australians. Who are we, and what kind of Australia do we want for ourselves?
Note: This review was originally published under the title “A snapshot of contemporary Australia” by Ranges Trader Star Mail on December 7, 2021, P.10.
Published by Overland Literary Journal on October 5, 2020, Bartholomeusz’s essay was titled “Stop asking ‘diverse writers’ to tell you about their lives”. Her words are worth quoting to some length:
“It is frustrating to see opportunities for ‘diverse writers’ linked to their willingness to write narrowly about their diversity. This approach disqualifies the many talented writers who have already processed or written about these experiences, and who have bigger visions or better imaginations to endlessly revisit the same questions. Who want to see themselves in Australia’s future as well as its past.”
“I imagine there are also writers who do not wish to revisit their childhoods because they do not want to be retraumatised. I reflect regularly and deeply on my upbringing as a Sri Lankan-Australia. I’ve also written about it. It’s worth exploring and rich in its own way, but that does not mean I care to pick it apart in a mainstream public forum or to hinge my public identity with it.”
Bartholomeusz may have a point, but the 30 short memoirs collected in Roots: Home is Who We Are: Voices from the SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition (2021) – selected from more than 2,000 entries from across the country – are proof that human courage and resilience should never be underestimated.
Contrary to Bartholomeusz’s presumption about mainstream media’s “restrictive briefs and loaded questions”, judges sought and found “courageous and original voices, writing with a sharp take on modern Australian life, and nuanced views on our diverse realities”.
More importantly, instead of “marginalisation and otherness”, these emerging writers have explored universal themes such as place, era, sexuality, religion, neurodiversity and disability, ethnicity and culture, and the myriad ways we can call Australia home.
As the book’s subtitle “Home is Who We Are” suggests, these stories have highlighted individual journeys of self-discovery. They mirror our own life-long attempt to find out who we are – not just defying how others define us, but also seeking an honest way to define ourselves.
Having relentlessly dissected the nature and significance of identity, these writers have empowered and entitled themselves as part of Australia’s future. It is a birthright that they have fiercely defended and will continue to safeguard.
Instead of “retraumatising” themselves, these writers – wielding the Power of Words and supported by families and communities – celebrate our commonalities and embrace our differences as Everyday Australians. In the words of competition judges Melissa Lucashenko and Benjamin Law: “This is storytelling that requires you to see the world from a different perspective.”
These writers have boldly started a conversation about diversity being both an ambition and a strength. Their stories are an invitation to examine our own unique and intimate worlds as Australians. Who are we, and what kind of Australia do we want for ourselves?
Note: This review was originally published under the title “A snapshot of contemporary Australia” by Ranges Trader Star Mail on December 7, 2021, P.10.
August 5, 2023
I finally did it. I'm a short story lover and this prompt was exactly what I wanted!!
The stories that really got to me so I don't forget:
- Red Plastic Chairs by Amy Duong
Made me think of family and my favourite childhood memories, all my time spent at our Preston market shop
- Love in the Time of Grandmother by Sita Walker
The ending made me cry (obviously) "'you took care of your grandmother every day. We watched you do it.' Funny, I always thought it was the other way around."
- Fish People by Miranda Jakich
I can't explain how this one made me feel but it was like a deep ache. Once again felt like reading about my family.
"'This child smells like a fish no matter what I do.'
I would try harder to make her happy and to look over at my father, not the wall. And every morning I would secretly rub her perfume onto my skin so she could imagine herself back in the village among the oleander trees and forget she was fenced in with fish."
- Learning How to do Sport by Prateeti Sabhlok
Wow this one was like reading about myself and it made me sad.
"No one can see what you look like under the water."
- An Aussie BBQ by Serpil Senelmis
Once again reminded of my childhood
The stories that really got to me so I don't forget:
- Red Plastic Chairs by Amy Duong
Made me think of family and my favourite childhood memories, all my time spent at our Preston market shop
- Love in the Time of Grandmother by Sita Walker
The ending made me cry (obviously) "'you took care of your grandmother every day. We watched you do it.' Funny, I always thought it was the other way around."
- Fish People by Miranda Jakich
I can't explain how this one made me feel but it was like a deep ache. Once again felt like reading about my family.
"'This child smells like a fish no matter what I do.'
I would try harder to make her happy and to look over at my father, not the wall. And every morning I would secretly rub her perfume onto my skin so she could imagine herself back in the village among the oleander trees and forget she was fenced in with fish."
- Learning How to do Sport by Prateeti Sabhlok
Wow this one was like reading about myself and it made me sad.
"No one can see what you look like under the water."
- An Aussie BBQ by Serpil Senelmis
Once again reminded of my childhood
January 31, 2024
It took me a lot longer to read this than Between Two Worlds, but I still found it a beautiful and moving tapestry of 21st century Australia, and a healthy antithesis to the whitewashed and unrealistic depictions of Australia perpetuated by the Herald Sun and Home & Away. There were fewer standout stories for me in this anthology; 'Lions Lie' by Hugh Jorgensen was perhaps my favourite because after lots of intense and sad stories, suddenly one of them made me laugh. And how! It was a brilliant and funny evocation of a biracial childhood as well as an irreverent insight into the Chinese cultural apex of the lion dance.
January 30, 2024
I'll be honest, I didn't read each short submission. But the ones I did read I often had to put the book down and think a minute
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews