Stan Grant in the Forest. "The Tears of Strangers: A Memoir", by Stan Grant. [review]

Abstract

In a climate where race relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians have become a lapsed opportunity for genuine reconciliation, television journalist Stan Grant’s "The Tears of Strangers: A Memoir" offers readers and himself alike ‘healing and hope’, a sentiment reinforced by the words of James Baldwin, reminding us that in the end ‘we are part of each other’. But, as any biography written by an Aboriginal person too often stands in place for unwritten history (we do stories, not history), Grant’s part autobiography may also receive currency as a legitimate representation of both Aboriginal and colonial history. This is more than the book deserves. Rather than being a personal memoir, as the title indicates, "The Tears of Strangers" is actually a show bag of genres, including autobiography and tragedy, a populist and at times lurid historical narrative, with a few drops of tabloid journalism and Mills & Boon romance thrown into the mix.