White People Make Me Nervous

Kathleen Mary Fallon

Sydney

:

Polar Bear Press

,

2022

.
First Edition. Signed by Author

19cm x 15cm. [iii], 43 pages, illustrations, some colour. Saddle-stapled wrappers.

“In this finely crafted chapbook Kathleen Mary Fallon shares confronting insights into the ways ‘race’ operates in this country. Insights which have been hard gained over her fifty years as the white foster mother of an Indigenous boy – ‘Mr H.’, and as the partner of an Indigenous man – ‘Shark’. In White People Make Me Nervous and her 2007 novel, Paydirt, we hear that virtually unheard voice – that of the white adoptive/foster mother. What does she have to say from the privleged, white, witnessing position? What she has to say is told in ten autobiographical micro-stories in which Fallon’s intimate insights range in scope from the aluminum mines of Weipa, the asbestos mines of Abryulgil, Cherbourgh’s Aboriginal Mission, Harry Belafonte, Adam Goodes, the Steiner school and an educative T-Shirt. The stories are moving, passionate, angry-making, droll with dry wit, even sexy. They detail her life-long journey educating herself into an understanding of why the phrase ‘white people make me nervous’ is so apt and why a whitefella understanding of its implications is serious business.” (publisher’s blurb) Signed and numbered limited edition of 50 copies.

. New Book.