Six Degrees of Separation: Stasiland to The Arrival

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. 

Normally when I participate in this my links are somewhat random. It could be locations, author names, titles, etc but this month I am going with a specific theme which is the immigrant experience, with a specific focus on Australian immigration, although I must admit the first couple of links might be a bit tenuous!

This month's starting point is Stasiland by Anna Funder. It's not a book that I have read but I have read All That I Am by the same author. All That I Am explores the story of a young woman who fines herself mixed up in anti-Nazi circles in the late 1930s. When telling the story she is an elderly woman who has lived in Australia for many years.  There's not a lot of detail about her life here though.

The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by Victoria Purman is predominantly set in a post WWII immigration camp in country Victoria. Here immigrants from many different war ravaged European countries are forced to come together as they wait for their new lives in Australia to really start. In the camp, they begin to learn English, the families wait for news of a job before they spread out across the country. The main characters are young women who become lifelong friends despite the fact that there are language and cultural differences.

The Women in Black by Madeleine St John also features immigrant characters  who are trying to make a new life here in Australia and how it was sometimes difficult to be accepted when there were so many cultural differences. This book was made into a movie last year and it is a lovely film. One of my favourite lines is where an Australian woman is meeting an immigrant man for the first time, and she asks him if he speaks English. His response is that he speaks several languages! Watch the trailer below to see it. It makes me smile every time.

Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung - Now a couple of non fiction entries featuring Asian Australians. I read Unpolished Gem a long time ago now. I think it might have been a book club read. I found this one interesting because Alice's family settled in Melbourne which is where I live.

The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do - Anh Do is arguably one of  the most famous Vietnamese Australians. He is a stand up comedian who has appeared in numerous TV shows, is a successful artist including having a TV show where he paints the portraits of famous Australians as he interviews them. It's one of our favourite shows to watch each week when it was on. He came to Australia on a boat as a very young boy. It was a harrowing journey where his younger brother nearly died, and where the young boys struggled to fit into such a different country. Despite this or maybe because of the struggles Anh became who he is today, and his younger brother was nominated as Young Australian of the Year in 2005. This book tells their story.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan -  My last book is a bit different in that it isn't an Australian immigrant story. It is a book with no words, just amazing art, which tells the story of a man who leaves his country to start a new life. Everything is different, from the food to the language. I know it's a bit presumptuous to quote from my own review but this is what I wrote when I originally read this book twelve years ago:

There are literally no words at all in this book, at least not words that we can recognise. Where there are words on buildings and things they are in a strange symbolic language. The images and the storyline represented are so strong that no words are necessary. The use of elements of fantasy to represent the threat in the old homeland and some of the things that are found in the strange new world are a very strong symbolic reminder to us that for many people who migrate to countries like Australia the things that they find here that are every day to us are sometimes completely foreign to the migrants.

And just because talking about it has made me want to watch the movie again, here is the trailer for Ladies in Black.

The starting point for next month is The Road for Cormac McCarthy - there's a fair chance it will be a long and winding road (to quote The Beatles) through the chain.