{"product_id":"9780730491545","title":"Tears of Strangers: The extraordinary powerful family story that reckons with the legacy of Australia's history from award-winning journalist and author of Talking To My Country","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhere do I belong? Who am I? The blood of my fathers links me to a much older place and time. I've walked in the footprints of my ancestors: I've sat by the riverbank at night and imagined them around me. I am all that they have made me.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eJournalist Stan Grant was born in 1963, a son of the Wiradjuri people. By the early sixties these once proud warriors were scattered onto mission camps and the fringes of rural towns. Growing up a Wiradjuri, a tribe ravaged by alcoholism, poverty, abuse and neglect, the young Stan was more familiar with broken glass and mangy dogs than with dot paintings and corroborees.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet, while acknowledging the cliched bleakness that was part of his childhood, Grant celebrates the resilience of his family. He champions his sawmiller father - a man whose life is written on his body. A man who lumped logs three times his size at any mill where he could find work and whose missing fingers were a sign of escape not carelessness. He proudly describes his mother - a wiry and tough woman who fell in love with a wild black man, had three children under three years old and who made sure her children's plates were full by keeping hers empty.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Tears of Strangers\u003c\/em\u003e takes us to a world of dusty roads, run-down sawmill shacks and rats so big they'd scrape the enamel off dinner plates. It is a world revealed as sad, courageous, joyous and humorous. Stan Grant has confronted the ugliness of his childhood, where violence became a habit, and embraced the good, where blood and love are intertwined, to paint a true picture of what it meant to be born into the Wiradjuri people and to grow up caught between two cultures - a boy who would try to scrub his skin white.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Stan Grant","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46919635828885,"sku":"9780730491545","price":13.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0484\/3175\/9509\/files\/9780730491545_96759b13-d6a1-4f2f-8785-01515e920089.jpg?v=1776890052","url":"https:\/\/harpercollins.com.au\/products\/9780730491545","provider":"HarperCollins AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}