Her daughter, Ellen, however, has just outgrown the sweet nature of her childhood and turned into a complaining adolescent, constantly blaming and challenging her mother. For her the land and its quietness give her a welcome space, away from the clamor of other people. She is working hard to restore it for herself, her daughter, her siblings, and her beloved horses. Jo has bought a small, neglected farm near Mullumbimby. They simply do not take European institutions and world views as the norm. Her views and Lukashenko’s do not romanticize Indigenous life or view it as uniformly tragic. At her core, she views the world from an Indigenous perspective which shapes her values and her dreams. Yet her perspective is shaped by what she learned from the Indigenous aunt who raised her. Her major character in Mullumbimby, Jo Breen, faces the same problems as many single mothers coping with her teenage daughter, working to make ends meet, and deciding if she dares fall in love with a man again. In doing so she challenges the assumed normality of whiteness. As a child, she could pass for white, but as an adult she has committed herself to the culture and values of Indigenous Australians. Melissa Lucashenko is the daughter of Indigenous and European parents. University of Queensland Press (2013), Kindle Edition, 288 pages.Ī beautiful, brilliant novel that provides insight into the life of a contemporary Indigenous woman, raising her daughter on the lands of her Bandjalung ancestors in northern New South Wales. BUY THE BOOK.Mullumbimby, by Melissa Lucashenko. This is a novel perfectly cast for modern times as well as celebrating the physical beauty of the country and its deep historical and spiritual meaning. Lucashenko’s compassion towards the feisty Jo shines on every page and Jo is a woman it’s impossible not to like.

“Apart from the story, there are many things to enjoy about this novel the larrikin humour and the wonderful experience of being immersed in the Australian/ Bundjalung language. “Mullumbimby is a modern tale of the clash between cultures, of the importance of belonging, and surprisingly, of the pitfalls of making assumptions about other people. Mullumbimby is all that and more.”ĭaniel Browning, Books & Arts Daily, Radio National, February 2013 Ms Wright went further and told her that the unwritten manuscript should be nothing less than a hymn to the ancestors. “It was Miles Franklin Award-winning writer Alexis Wright who told Lucashenko it was high time that she wrote another novel. Melissa’s latest novel Mullumbimby was awarded the prestigious De Loitte Queensland Literary Award for Fiction 2013 against a strong national field.

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