by Boomert - Stories of Belonging by Kali Wendorf 12 Jan 2010

We humans are constantly looking for ‘home’, exploring and reinventing our connections and that state of being called ‘belonging’. In this anthology, edited by Kali Wendorf, 15 writers from diverse backgrounds share their deeply personal interpretations of this concept. Reading through their different narratives, we encounter many worlds, many homes and many senses of belonging-- belonging through blood, land, nature, history, stories, religion and other belief systems. A breast cancer survivor embraces adventure on the wild Colorado River; a Chickasaw woman writes about how her people belong to history; a Swedish woman writes about sustainable living in Ladak; a minister finds his sense of belonging through the suffering of others; an Aboriginal boy is taken from his family, a woman leaves her African village to live in America; a poet learns to accept his solitude. This is a mixed bag in which some pieces are stronger than others. A couple of standouts for me were from Bob Randall, traditional custodian of Uluru, writing about his experience as a member of the Stolen Generations. Another was David Whyte’s poem, ‘The House of Belonging’. It was so refreshing that poetry was included but I would have like to have seen more.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (October 2009, Vol 89, No. 3) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.