Hello All,
Matchy, I still have all my parents books & I have read them all. I'm someone who re reads books as I find my view point about the book can change over the years. What I notice now compared to what I noticed as a teen can be vastly different.
I've just finished re-reading a book The Sands of Windee by Arthur Upfield, who was an Englishman who migrated to Australia a few years before the WWI & spent those years & the years between the wars mostly living & working in the outback. He is primarily known for his detective novels, where the lead character Bony is a man whose father was white & his mother an aborigine & the books are all based in the outback that Upfield knew.
I always find it such a strange experience reading this book as there are so many different levels of racism apparent in it, despite Upfield being lauded for his progressive thinking about aboriginal culture. Upfield deliberately shows the racism his lead character has to deal with & that the aboriginal people have to deal with. He even writes a section where he extols aboriginal culture & how long it has existed for. Yet there is so much unconscious racism in his writing, even his lead character expresses it. I first read it back in my early teens & as I've aged when I read it I see more & more the subtle expressions of British superiority to all other peoples in it. As a detective novel it is very average, as a snapshot of the attitudes & beliefs of the time it is fascinating.
Paws
