Melissa Lucashenko

Yes and no.

It's something that I probably learnt most from Uncle Bruce Pascoe in his wonderful book Earth, which as a deliberate strategy, you know, introduces the reader to one of the Victorian languages, you know, a little bit in chapter one and then a little bit more in chapter two until by the end of the book you understand so much of what's being said and not being said in English.

It's just remarkable.

And then also the bone people.

The use of Māori language in the bone people is similar again.

It's just a perfectly obvious tool of communication for the characters in that book.

I will say though, in this book I stepped away a little bit from the use of Yugambeh Bunjalung language because

These characters are not consciously Aboriginal in the way that Jo in Mullumbimby is because they're definitely Aboriginal and they know they're Aboriginal but they're not seeking to enhance their Aboriginality through language, put it that way.

A character like Kerry, does she have any sort of literary or bookish antecedents?

Um, there's a book called Bastard Out of Carolina, which I only remembered this week when I was thinking about that kind of a question.

And I couldn't tell you the name of the character or even what she does, but I know she's an underclass white character in Carolina and coming out of a life of brutality and being a strong woman.

A really tough upbringing.

So I think that book was probably a formative influence.

And books like The Colour Purple and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, all of the great black female characters that we have in the Western canon.

And yeah, women that I know and am related to, I guess.