Joyful Strains – Making Australia Home

Summary

Joyful Strains collects twenty-seven memoirs from writers describing their expatriation to Australia. These are stories about what they found, who they became and what they now think of Australia – stories that provide entertainment, perspective and cause to celebrate our increasingly diverse nation. This is an insightful, compelling and sometimes confronting collection for all Australians.

Contributors include: Alice Pung, Danny Katz, Mark Dapin and Diane Armstrong, with an introduction from Arnold Zable.

Group Comments

Reader 1 – Interesting to hear stories from migrants when they just arrived, especially the language aspect.

Reader 2 – The difficulties of finding help facilities etc. for migrants.

Reader 3 – Stories too short, hard to really “get into” it. Preferred less short stories and maybe the book should concentrate more on each family.

Reader 4 – People writing about their “hurts” a lot as migrants – too much rather read a happy story.

Reader 5 – Too much “personal business”, re: their stories unnecessary. Interesting to read about another perspective of a migrant’s life.

Reader 6 – Rather read a book with a plot.

Reader 7 – Like reading the story, re; the Jewish family who became Australian citizens and wrote to all governments and thanked them, nice story.