The Tears of Strangers

Stan Grant

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Paperback

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English

HARPER360
15 July 2023

Autobiography: historical, political & military; Memoirs; History; Colonialism & imperialism; Social discrimination; Indigenous peoples

Where do I belong? Who am I? The blood of my fathers links me to a much older place and time. I've walked in the footprints of my ancestors: I've sat by the riverbank at night and imagined them around me. I am all that they have made me.

Journalist Stan Grant was born in 1963, a son of the Wiradjuri people. By the early sixties these once proud warriors were scattered onto mission camps and the fringes of rural towns. Growing up a Wiradjuri, a tribe ravaged by alcoholism, poverty, abuse and neglect, the young Stan was more familiar with broken glass and mangy dogs than with dot paintings and corroborees.

Yet, while acknowledging the cliched bleakness that was part of his childhood, Grant celebrates the resilience of his family. He champions his sawmiller father - a man whose life is written on his body. A man who lumped logs three times his size at any mill where he could find work and whose missing fingers were a sign of escape not carelessness. He proudly describes his mother - a wiry and tough woman who fell in love with a wild black man, had three children under three years old and who made sure her children's plates were full by keeping hers empty.

The Tears of Strangers takes us to a world of dusty roads, run-down sawmill shacks and rats so big they'd scrape the enamel off dinner plates. It is a world revealed as sad, courageous, joyous and humorous. Stan Grant has confronted the ugliness of his childhood, where violence became a habit, and embraced the good, where blood and love are intertwined, to paint a true picture of what it meant to be born into the Wiradjuri people and to grow up caught between two cultures - a boy who would try to scrub his skin white.

By: Stan Grant
Imprint: HARPER360
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 200mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 245g
ISBN: 9781460765326
ISBN 10: 146076532X
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 15 July 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Stan Grant is a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man. A journalist since 1987, he has worked for the ABC, SBS, the Seven Network and Sky News Australia. From 2001 to 2012 he worked for CNN as an anchor and senior correspondent in Asia and the Middle East. As a journalist, he has received a string of prestigious international and Australian awards. In 2015, he published his bestselling book Talking to My Country, which won the Walkley Book Award, and he also won a Walkley Award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs. In 2016 he was appointed to the Referendum Council on Indigenous recognition. Stan is now Professor of Global Affairs at Griffith University and International Affairs Analyst at ABC.