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John Lester: Larissa, this is a great opportunity to catch up once again. Thanks very much for doing the interview.
Just briefly, you come from a strong Aboriginal family background. How does that influence your work?
Larissa Behrendt: Well it influences it in a couple of ways.
Obviously it's the thing about my identity that's the strongest.
I've grown up in an Aboriginal community and I'm really proud of my heritage.
It makes me very comfortable about being an Aboriginal person.
I don't feel like I need to conform to anyone else's stereotypes so it's given me a lot of freedom to feel like
I belong to a community and to make the choices that I've made.
But it's also obviously influenced my politics.
I've grown up around very strong Aboriginal rights activists, both within my family and close associations and as a child I guess I was able to watch
how my father's generation, including you John, worked really hard to give access to my generation and I feel really committed to making sure that I'm
part of the continuing activism, that these aren't just opportunities that we get and that's the end of the story.
I think I was brought up with really strong Aboriginal values and that's really influenced me as well.
I think things like respecting our history and respecting our elders is really important to me.
Respecting country and kinship is really important.
The idea of reciprocity is really important.
And also I guess for somebody who's had an academic career and who's a lawyer, there's a really nice value in
the Aboriginal community that values life experience as much as that and that's been very grounding for me.
So even though I've done a lot of great things so far, there's a lot of people in the community who always remind me and say, 'That's really great Bub,
but what are you going to do next?' And I think that's really good.
And of course the other way that it really influences me is that it gives me the content for what I want to write about, both in my academic life where
I write a lot about Aboriginal legal and policy issues, or in my fictional writing where I've written a book that looks at the history and the impact
of the stolen generations.
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John Lester: Just in relation to the inspiration, that obviously it's deeply centred in your own family and personal background and commitment to
Aboriginal issues, how do you transfer that sort of knowledge in two different literary styles in terms of the academic and the novel?
How do you wind that into it?
Larissa Behrendt: Well I always feel like the nonfiction writing I do about rights and the fictional writing I do where I tell stories about the lives
of Aboriginal people is really intertwined.
I think it's a lot easier to convince people why a law is unjust and unfair if you can actually tell a story about how that law or that policy is going
to actually impact on people in the most profound ways.
So there's a real sense that the storytelling that you can do through fiction can really drive what you think is a just outcome for Aboriginal people and
of course the stories that I tell are all based on the things that I've seen in my life that make me so passionate about social justice for Aboriginal
people. And also I come from a wonderful culture that values storytelling and storytelling has always been a really important way in which we communicate
a message and I see fiction as being a way in which we can continue to do that.
John: It also increases your audience, doesn't it, from the academic?
Larissa: Yes, it certainly does. There are a lot of people who will fall asleep if you focus just on the academic.
And there are good reasons for that because sometimes it is really impersonal.
But stories can really carry people with you because they're about the most human of things and things that can touch us or shock us or make us laugh.
And you're right, absolutely right that the ability to engage the audience is something that fiction can really
help you do, whatever you want to write about.
John: Mmm, so a greater capacity to affect a broader group in Australia as well.
Larissa: Mmm.
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John Lester: Just in relation to your influences, has any particular reading or background outside of that strong
family connection influenced your writing at all?
Larissa Behrendt: Well, my father used to have me read George Orwell a lot when I was younger and I used to
read a lot of his books, so I was sort of influenced by that.
But I did really love reading when I was a child and I lived in a lot of places where I didn't always feel like I fitted in.
I grew up in an area where there weren't a lot of other Aboriginal kids and I used to really like reading as a way
of escaping, so I used to read everything from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen to whatever the most popular
book at the time was and I would just read lots of things. I'd read comic books.
I used to like to write stories myself.
My brother and I would write stories for each other.
There was a whole range of things that I used to like reading and writing as a child that probably gave me a really broad understanding or appreciation
of literature but also the importance of telling a story and also the comfort it can give you.
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John Lester: One of the difficult parts that people have is, how do you develop a plot and the characters to go with it;
and how much of that is you and your home and family connections?
Larissa Behrendt: That's, yeah that's a really interesting question because I'm sure that's different for every writer. For me, I always find
at the beginning of the story I know the basic thing about what I want to write about. So, with my novel 'Home' I knew I wanted to write a story
about the stolen generations and I knew I wanted to track loosely what I knew about my grandmother's life and what I would imagine would happen
to some of my father's brothers and sisters. A lot of that I didn't know from fact, as a factual thing, so I had to imagine it.
And then how that affected my generation.
So that was sort of the bare bones, the sort of skeleton of the story. And it built up the more I would write bits and pieces of it.
The story started to come together.
I'm often astonished when people go back and look at it and they'll pick up themes that are through it that I didn't actually realise.
But the characters particularly, especially the personalities of the characters, any sort of idiosyncrasies they might have or funny little habits,
they tend to come along the way. So it's been the experience I've had that I'll be thinking about a character and thinking,
'Gee I wonder what they would be like.'
And then suddenly, sometimes it's somebody I know really well and I think, 'That's the character.' And then you adopt their mannerisms or their style
or something about them that's quirky. Other times I've seen something in a movie or on television or read in a book, something that's sort of peaked my
Interest and thought maybe having a character who's interested in this sort of thing would be an interesting thing to do. So I've always felt that
when I'm developing a character I have to be really open to looking at things around me to help sort of spark along a little bit of
inspiration to round them out. Otherwise it's a bit hard to get them with a lot of depth.
John: Yeah, there's a lot of evolution of characters, too. How do you cope with that?
Larissa: You have to be very fluid as a writer. I find that even though I've got the bare bones of the story, as I've developed, especially with a large project
like a novel, you have to be really dedicated to being able to make hard choices about the fact that you might have gone off on a tangent
so you have to chop off something that you've written, that you love but doesn't fit the story. And similarly, you have to be prepared
to look at the way the characters are forming and perhaps something's not right about the way that you've developed them, they don't work.
Perhaps you've got them as two brothers who are close and you've developed them in ways that make that a little bit unlikely.
So you have to be very intuitive but that also means you have to be able to let go a little bit and you have to trust your instincts
and it means you have to be prepared to make changes and be flexible.
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John Lester: How long did the process take, to write 'Home'?
Larissa Behrendt: Well over all it took about seven years because I didn't start to write it -
John: It's no simple task.
Larissa: Yes, because I didn't start to write it as a novel. I didn't sit down and think, 'That's it, I'm going to write a book.' I started to write bits and pieces
when I was overseas about my family. And then it was really, because so much of that was talking about the impact of the stolen generations on my family,
I became more committed to making sure it was a story that could be told when the Australian Government pretty much rejected the 'Bringing them Home' report
and turned around and said it was only one in ten children who were taken away from their families and most of it was for their own good
and we're not going to say sorry. And I felt that to say that it was only one in ten people meant this was an attempt of the Government
to turn the stories into statistics and I became really committed to doing that. So I wrote it. I was doing other things, I would write it from time to time.
But I had to really focus on it. I submitted the manuscript in to a writing competition and I won the prize, which included publication.
So for something that was sort of a project that I really loved working on but something that I hadn't made a priority, it was about four and half years
and then I did the rest of it in the two and half where I had to sort of knuckle down. I had about a third of the book written when I submitted it for the prize.
So there was quite a bit of writing to do. Since then and even when I look back on the book now I can see, because it was over such a long period of time,
I can even see my own development as a writer. There are parts in the book where I feel I try and tell the reader a lot more about what the story is
and then there are other parts where the dialogue between the characters will push the plot forward, and it's the latter that is a bit of an indication
that you're maturing as a writer. So I can still go back and look at it and think, 'Oh, if I was writing that now I'd write that differently.' But I kind of like
that it was a long journey for me because it was such an important story to tell that I'm glad I spent such a long time trying to learn how to tell it the right way.
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John Lester: I was just trying to explore the concept of how you write from a different person's perspective, and the classic one would be male/female;
John: how you I suppose need to get inside the minds of somebody that's quite different - in your 'Home' the Indigenous and non-Indigenous stories.
Larissa Behrendt: Yes and it's a real challenge and you have to work at it I think, and the further away the character is from who you are,
the more you have, the more work you have to do on it. I always spend a lot of time researching my characters,
even the ones who are fairly close to who I am. I'll try and put myself in their mind.
I'll write things additional to the story that is about their history that might not be covered by the book.
I'll try writing from their perspective. I try and think about what their voice is like. And I think especially if you're crossing genders or crossing cultures
it's a very hard thing to get it right because when a reader reads your book, you need to be able to make what you write have a ring of truth to it.
And that's often why when people write about Aboriginal people and they're not Aboriginal,
it never, it doesn't work because even what they think would be Aboriginal
isn't right and it's very hard to get that truth so that when an Aboriginal person reads it they think, 'Oh yes, I identify with that experience.'
But that's what you're aiming to do and it's not always easy to do it. It's not always easy to know if you get it right. I find that if I'm writing a male character
it's always good to get a male person to read it to see if it has a resonance. I do write from male and female perspectives and I write from Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal perspectives. I've even got a Chinese character in the novel 'Home' and I think for me that was the hardest one because
it was the culture I knew the least about. When you're Aboriginal you see a lot of non-Aboriginal things and you're bombarded with non-Aboriginal
points of view so it's very easy to understand that mind-set.
But when you're looking at other points of view that are masked, that's where it becomes much harder.
So it's the only way to try and do it is to work really hard at finding the voice of your characters and doing all of the research that you need to do
to start to understand how it is that somebody's mind would work, how they would see the world. So there's a lot of work that goes into that
if you're ambitious to want to cross those divides. And you know I think that any good writer can do that.
So walking in other people's shoes is really important.
Mmm, that's right. Yeah, so I'm not somebody who says if you're not Aboriginal you can't write about Aboriginal people. I don't think it's,
I think it's rarely done well because people don't understand Aboriginal people and,
but I think in theory a good writer should be able to cross any divide.
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John Lester: You use certain techniques and, obviously writers have a number of techniques.
You use the flashbacks, recalling, those sorts of things. Are they critical to engaging readers or positioning readers?
Larissa Behrendt: They are and I felt that they were a really important part of writing a book that was an Aboriginal story. I tried to make the timeline in the book
non-lineal so there is that going backwards and forwards and there's that going backwards and forwards on a particular,
geographical place because I wanted to have my writing reflect an Indigenous world view that was non-lineal.
So those sorts of devices were important. I also used the device of putting traditional stories through the book to help
drive the narrative, to show I guess another aspect of our culture and to weave in the stories of old with the new stories
because the story of the stolen generation is a new story of Aboriginal culture and I wanted it to sit side by side with our old ones.
And I use repetition a lot. There are words and images that repeat over time through the book and that was a deliberate literary device as well.
In a way it was to try and show the continuity of the story and the fact that there is an Aboriginality that is going through the book,
that goes through generations and continues on and that's, I've tried to make
that one of the positive things in the book which has a lot of sad things in it,
sad experiences that the positive things through the repetition and the tradition and the fact that the path of the grandmother
ends up being the path of the grand-daughter.
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John Lester: You talked earlier in the interview about, you know, the great richness of culture and the background in the telling of this story.
Will your works into the future, and I would hope that there are going to be many more, would there be a general message or theme, and in saying that,
do you picture yourself moving into a totally different genre and maybe outside of the domain of Indigenous?
Larissa Behrendt: I certainly feel like I've got more books in me and I'm writing a second novel now which is looking at the legacy of the tent embassy
on my generation. For me, that storytelling that allows you to look at very complex issues in a way that's not always easy in a nonfictional way,
is something that I'll always want to be engaged with. I'm certainly interested in exploring other issues around what I know
but unlike other Indigenous authors who I think have been able to push the envelope a little bit more and go into different,
Larissa: unexpected genres for Indigenous writing, I really like writing stories about relationships and I like writing stories about families.
So I think that's going to keep me firmly planted in a particular idea of what Indigenous writing would be.
Would you perceive moving into children's literature?
I think for me personally, because of the nature of what I like to write about, it's things that are really looking at social change
and I like to look at fairly complex ideas so I think that that means that I'm pitching my work very much at an adult audience.
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