Stan Grant

An extraordinarily powerful and personal meditation on race, culture and national identity. In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australian and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. 'We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier', he wrote, 'We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation's prosperity.' Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country. TALKING TO MY COUNTRY is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country - what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?

Talking to My Country

'As uncomfortable as it is, we need to reckon with our history. On January 26, no Australian can really look away.' Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends. In this book, Australia Day, his long-awaited follow up to Talking to My Country, Stan talks about our country, about who we are as a nation, about the indigenous struggle for belonging and identity in Australia, and what it means to be Australian. A sad, wise, beautiful, reflective and troubled book, Australia Day asks the questions that have to be asked, that no else seems to be asking. Who are we? What is our country? How do we move forward from here? Praise for Talking to My Country: 'A story so essential and salutary to this place that it should be given out free at the ballot box' The Australian 'Deeply disturbing, profoundly moving' Hobart Mercury 'Grant will be an important voice in shaping this nation' The Saturday Paper Talking to My Country won the 2016 Walkley Book Award and the Special Award at the 2016 Heritage Awards, and was shortlisted in the 2016 Queensland Literary Awards, the Nib Waverley Library Awards and the 2017 ABIA Awards.

Australia Day

From Stan Grant, leading journalist and author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers Talking to My Country and Australia Day, comes an extraordinary and powerful call to action. 'History is not weighted on the scales, it is felt in our bones. It is worn on our skin. It is scarred in memory.' The Queen reigned for seventy years. She came to the throne at the height of Empire and died with the world at a tipping point. What comes next after the death of what Stan Grant calls 'the last white Queen'? From one of our most respected and award-winning journalists, Stan Grant, The Queen is Dead is a searing, viscerally powerful, emotionally unstoppable, pull-no-punches book on the bitter legacy of colonialism for indigenous people. Taking us on a journey through the world's fault lines, from the war in Ukraine, the rise of China, the identity wars, the resurgence of white supremacy, and the demand that Black Lives Matter, The Queen is Dead is a full-throated, impassioned argument on the necessity for an end to monarchy in Australia, the need for a Republic, and what needs to be done - through the Voice to Parliament and beyond - to address and redress the pain and sorrow and humiliations of the past. Momentous and timely, The Queen is Dead carries an urgent, undeniable and righteous demand for justice, for a reckoning, and a just settlement with First Nations people.

The Queen Is Dead

A deeply powerful, poetic and compelling book on the challenges facing our world, from one of Australia's most experienced journalists and international commentators, Stan Grant. History is turning. In only a few short decades, we have come a long way from Francis Fukuyama's declaration of the 'end of history' and the triumph of liberal democracy in 1989. Now, with the inexorable rise of China, the ascendancy of authoritarianism and the retreat of democracy, the world stands at a moment of crisis. This is a time of momentous upheaval and enormous geopolitical shifts, compounded by the global pandemic, economic collapse and growing inequality, Islamist and far right terror, and a resurgent white supremacy. The world is in lockdown and the showdown with China is accelerating - and while the West has been at the forefront of history for 200 years, it must now adapt to a world it no longer dominates. At this moment, we stand on a precipice - what will become of us? Stan Grant is one of our foremost observers and chroniclers of the world in crisis. Weaving his personal experiences of reporting from the front lines of the world's flashpoints, together with his deep understanding of politics, history and philosophy, he explores what is driving the world to crisis and how it might be averted. He fears the worst, but begins to chart the way forward. There is bitterness, anger and history here, but there is also the capacity for negotiation, forgiveness and hope. A powerful and incisive analysis of the state of our world, and our place within it.

With the Falling of the Dusk

On Identity

An Aboriginal memoir telling the story of the Wiradjuri people, the Grant family and Stan's journey to come to terms with his Aboriginality and identity. His career as journalist has taken him to cities worldwide.

A Memoir

The Tears of Strangers

I am out of words at home. I have grown bored with my language, bored with my voice, bored with my writing. My words labour under the weight of Australia’s history. The land itself, as much as I love it, bears down hard.

Now in another place, I am finding lighter words. At times, I may not need to speak at all. I smile; I nod. I seek permission to speak. Please, do you mind? Will you allow me?

In an important book for our times, Stan Grant – one of Australia’s most prominent writers on identity, nationhood and belonging – reflects on how we struggle to speak to one another today, and the importance of listening, silence and philosophy, from Plato to Simone Weil to Radiohead.

Truth beyond time

When Words Fail Us

As an Aboriginal Australian, Stan Grant has had to contend with his country’s racist legacy all his life. Born into adversity, he found an escape route through education and the writing of James Baldwin, going on to become one of Australia’s leading journalists. As a correspondent for CNN, he travelled the world, covering conflicts everywhere, from Baghdad to North Korea. Struck by how the human spirit can endure in the face of repression, he found the experiences of individuals he met spoke to him of the undying call of family and homeland. In the stories of other dispossessed peoples, he saw that of his own. In Tell it the World, Grant responds to the ongoing racism that he sees around him. He writes with passion and striking candor of the anger, shame, and hardship of being an indigenous man. In frank, mesmerizing prose, Grant argues that the effects of colonialism and oppression are everyday realities that still shape our world.

an indigenous memoir

Tell It to the World

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cultural, sporting, intellectual and social – that we see today. Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. ‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous ... To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Blood, History and Becoming

Quarterly Essay 64 The Australian Dream

A family memoir charting the political and social changes of Aborigines over the past 40 years. Stan Grant was born in 1963 into the Wiradjuri people -- a tribe of warriors who occupied the vast territory of central and southwestern New South Wales. For 100 years the Wiradjuri waged a war against European invasion and settlement. This war has largely been ignored by historians and politicians but will be burnt into the hearts and minds of the Wiradjuri forever. By the time Grant was born, the war against invasion had largely been lost and remnants of the Wiradjuri were scattered among mission camps and the fringes of rural towns. The Wiradjuri people found themselves waging a new war -- this time against alcoholism, poverty, abuse and neglect. It was against this backdrop that the Grant family waged its very own struggle: a life-and-death battle for survival. In the 1980s Stan Grant would begin a career in journalism that would take him to a position of national prominence. As a reporter he has travelled all over the world, interviewing the likes of Arafat, Clinton, Blair, Adams and Saddam. He has seen despots and tin-pot revolutionaries; madmen and saints; the glory of the Olympics and the despair of hundreds of years of conflict in Ireland and the Middle East. Yet always he is a storyteller, just as his father's father's father was before him. And now he turns to the biggest story of his career: that of his people, the Wiradjuri.

The acclaimed national bestseller - moving, passionate, deeply felt and powerful. In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australia and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. 'We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier', he wrote, 'We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation's prosperity.' Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country. Talking to My Country is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country -- what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better? Winner of the 2016 Walkley Book Award and the 2016 National Trust Heritage Award, and shortlisted for the 2016 NIB Waverley Library Award and the 2016 Queensland Literary Award. 'Grant will be an important voice in shaping this nation' The Saturday paper 'It is a story so essential and salutary to this place that it should be given out free at the ballot box' Sydney Morning Herald 'Grant is a natural storyteller --- at his best when recounting his experiences and observations of Indigenous Australian life with devastating simplicity and acuity. This highly readable book ... has the potential to spark empathy and generate important discussion, and deserves to be read widely.' Bookseller + Publisher '...an urgent and flowing narrative in a book that should be on the required reading list in every school' The Australian

Talking To My Country

Why does identity demand a choice between black and white? Tribalism, nationalism and sectarianism are dividing the world into us and them. Are we hard wired for hate? Stan Grant argues that it is time to leave identity behind and to embrace cosmopolitanism. On Identity is a meditation on hope and community. 'Love is always the answer, it is said. Not if you are trying from somewhere in the Aboriginal domain to answer the cruel question, "Are you black or white?" Mapping family ties or finding a sense of self should be about love, but in the end, it is too often about politics. You must read this book if you have wondered why we make the choices we do.' MARCIA LANGTON

John Rudder

Wiradjuri Language Songs for Children of All Ages

Keneally’s caricature of a self-loathing Jimmie Blacksmith is a lost opportunity to explore the complex ways that Aboriginal people . . . were pushing against a white world that would not accept them for who they were; that would not see them as equal; that, in truth, would not see them as human. Acclaimed journalist Stan Grant weaves literary criticism, philosophy and memoir to shed light on The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Drawing parallels with Indigenous writers Tara June Winch and Bruce Pascoe, Grant brilliantly re-examines Keneally’s novel, raising questions about identity, modernity and storytelling. In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work. Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

Writers on Writers

On Thomas Keneally

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cultural, sporting, intellectual and social – that we see today. Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. ‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous … To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Stan Grant

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