Critical Review My Place

CRITICAL REVIEW: MY PLACE, SALLY MORGAN Sally Morgan's My Place, published in 1987, is an autobiography about finding her Aboriginal roots and her identity with the focus on the lives of three generations of Australian Aborigines. Sally’s family never talked about their past and she was brought up thinking she was Indian. But she always felt different than her friends, their way of living was not the same, so her curiosity led her to realizing that she is Aborigine. And then her quest for knowledge of her past begins. My Place is actually a novel about woman’s search to find herself and her place in Australian society. The main themes are discrimination, racism and Aboriginal culture. They are presented through two different versions of autobiographical writing. One is Sally’s first person narration, which is more Western autobiographical and it focuses more on her individual quest to find her identity. The other focuses on the Aboriginal life and more on the community and family life of Aborigines. The novel has 32 chapters, which are divided into four parts: Sally’s narration about her early life, education, family relationship, her perception of herself and her self-discovery; Arthur Corunna’s story, he is a brother of Sally’s grandmother; her mother’s Glady’s story and her grandmother Daisy’s story. Their stories focus on their life when they lived in Aboriginal society. The whole book is a combination of narration, dialogues, descriptions, stories within stories, anecdotes, and personal reminiscences from various characters and also humour. All that provides balance and harmony to the book. The book is easy to read, the language is quite simple, descriptions of the nature are really specific and with the use of metaphors, symbolism and personification, the reader gets a vivid picture of the place that is described. However the first part, where Sally describes her childhood is a little bit boring, because there are mostly descriptions and details about