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Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers by Cassandra PybusBlack Founders is well-written historical text, full of details that make most fiction look like lolly water. There is a very powerful thesis in this text, an attempt to reappraise the inherent white/black dichotomy of Australian history.Published 23 April, 2006
Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers (Cassandra Pybus, UNSW Press, $39.95 pb, ISBN 0868408492, April) *** Black Founders is well-written historical text, full of details that make most fiction look like lolly water. There is a very powerful thesis in this text, an attempt to reappraise the inherent white/black dichotomy of Australian history. To do this, Cassandra Pybus, historian and author, tells the stories of black convicts arriving with the First Fleet (and subsequent fleets). The intention is not to set up a fellowship between Mrican and Aboriginal but to debunk our construction of 'Aussies' as white, English-speaking and (for the most part) male. But Black Founders suffers from a lack of the personal. This is not a research problem, but rather the fault of contemporary record-keeping and widespread illiteracy. Only two of the 12 men in Black Founders are fleshed out: Caesar and Billie Blue, but the others are not quite realised for me. What is realised is the remarkable journey these men took, from slaves escaping America, to the promise of freedom in London, sharply curtailed by extreme poverty and weather, to transportation to Australia for stealing food and clothing, and the horror that was the Australian colony in its infant years. A cracker read for that alone.
Annelise Balsamo is a freelance reviewer This review from Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker More from Non-Fiction Book Reviews
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