Lucashenko, Melissa. Steam Pigs

Description

Steam Pigs
by Melissa Lucashenko.

University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2001.
(Series: UQP Black Australian writers).
Reprint, paperback.

Cover photo of Iris Blow reproduced courtesy of Iris Blow and Feral Arts Inc.
Cover design by Peter Evans.
The first novel by the acclaimed writer won the 1998 Dobbie Prize.

‘Sue is a “steam pig – a square peg in a round hole. A mongrel” (146). Sue, a white blackfella, is glad that the police do not look at her suspiciously because she can fade into the crowd. Raised white like her mother, Sue is unclear of who she is until her dope-dealing, brutalizing boyfriend forces her to make a choice. When she finally realizes that a person does have choices, the awareness gives her the strength to enter the university, to change her perspective, and to stop being brutalized.

…This is a feminist coming-of-age novel that does not mince words. The only “good” males, nephews of Sue Wilson, are under the age of ten. Using the argot of her seventeen-year-old protagonist, Lucashenko punches her reader just as Sue is punched physically, verbally, and sexually’. (Marilyn Strelau, Antipodes, December 1998).

Condition: Cover curl and tanned pages. Otherwise very good.