The author Tyree Barnette casts a sharp light on the perspective that’s been missing from race discussions in Australia, one that focuses on how privilege snd race shifts across time and borders.
STOLEN MAN ON STOLEN LAND is a love letter to Australian multiculturalism and a deep-probe into its successes and failings. Tyree saw the darker seams of Australia’s relationship with African-American culture-a relationship that segues from admiration to fetishisation, as he watched the undercurrents of racism in Australia, as did his affinity to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous Australians against injustice.
When Barnette moved to Sydney from North Carolina, he knew little of his new home, leaving behind a USA shifting its place on the global stage with the rise of Trump, the Black Lives Matter Movement, plus a new era of political polarisation which he watched from a distance, making migration such a boon while a tug-of-emotional-war balancing a home left and the possibility of a new life which he explores with nuanced, self-awareness and kindness.
He arrived in Australia in 2012 with rose-coloured glasses for the laid-back egalitarian nation. Finding himself being African-American on stolen land was more complex than he ever envisioned. Being black as an American and also being black among indigenous friends and colleagues is what he questions in his book. The move with his wife looking to get more experience for their resumes and settling somewhere without social complexity and certainly as Australia proved, not a major culture shift. Within a short time frame they formed social relationships with the Afro-American community allowing for celebrating similar cultural sharing. He found Australia had a black hierarchy, how whites compared to black perspectives and curiously how Blacks are perceived, compelled him to instil in his two boys a sense of their heritage, history and elements of Blackness.
STOLEN MAN ON STOLEN LAND is written in the first person following the young couple with the reader given an insight into life in the USA for people of his culture and not born in Australia it reveals a bounty of discovery about themselves and how they find their new environment. Its both a documentary and a commentary on race relations generated through personal experience. He and his wife came from a poor background, both had good educations which allowed them to work in Australia.
The first section of the book describes the reaction of friends and neighbours to the couple’s decision to emigrate based on the popular online image presented in movies, songs and popular heresay. On arriving in Sydney they wondered how different it is to pronounce Aussie slang, in names, places generated by the Australian penchant for abbreviation. Even though the English language is shared by both countries, its interesting to note how different meanings are given to certain words. The book’s cover gives an impression that the thrust of its contents would be about First Nation Peoples but its more to do with comparisons that are made between the dark-skinned people in both countries. The author was surprised to learn that blonde hair in aboriginal people was evidenced before colonisation.
The book does promote multiculturalism in Australia and explores privilege and race with this policy. The couple are surprised as they travelled around Australia and neighbouring countries at how racial progress in the US moves at a mere shuffle compared to this part of the world.
Tyree Barnette lives with his family in Sydney, working in Student Services at Western Sydney University and is a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. He has written several papers for publication.
This is an easy book to read.
Featured image : Author Tyree Barnette. Pic Nathaniel Palmer
