Novel
Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter
Doris Pilkington Garimara · 1991
Synopsis
Kate was raised in an institution for Aboriginal people, where she was taught Christian doctrine and domestic work. As an adult, she sets out to find her family and her origins: she traces back to her grandmother, Lucy, a domestic servant, then to the brief life of her mother, Peggy, in love with a young Aboriginal stockman. Little by little, she sheds the narrow identity she had been given and takes the road home, through the towns, cattle stations and institutions of Western Australia. The narrative follows three generations of women.
Context
The book appeared in 1991 from the University of Queensland Press, in St Lucia, in 84 pages; its author's first book, it opened a body of work drawn from her family's history. This continued with the account of her mother's escape, as a child, from a camp where the administration had placed her, which Phillip Noyce took to the screen in 2002 and which appeared in French in 2003. AustLit classes it as a novel, a fictional account of a quest for family and heritage. The presentations make Kate a Mardu or Yamatji woman depending on the source.
Who it is for
A short novel in English, in the first person; the BnF records no French translation of it.
Prizes and reception
David Unaipon Award 1990, given to the still unpublished manuscript, reserved for Indigenous writers.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.