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Simply Ing Book Review

I have just finished reading the memoir Simply Ing published by Magabala Books.

I love, love, love this book. It was so enjoyable to read, riffing like poetry, or a song with its repeating patterns and beauty of language, that I know I will be dipping into it again and again. It has so much to impart.

Ing (Helen Nellie, or as she was born, Ellie Nellie) is a Noongar elder whose mother was Noongar woman from the South West of Western Australia. Her father, George Nellie, was a Wongi man from the Kalgoorlie region. The story retraces her life as she explores the terrain between the three main cultures that have impacted her life, Noongar (her mother’s), Wadjala (non-aboriginal or white) and Wongi (her father’s).

The book was launched at the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA by novelist and (double) Miles Franklin winner, Kim Scott to a packed audience a few weeks ago at the beginning of August 2018. Kim Scott also wrote the Foreword.

The level of interest must have taken the bookseller at the launch by surprise, because the book soon sold out, and my friends who subsequently tried to obtain a copy from the distributer ABC Books were told it had sold out from there too.  Hopefully the bookshop has obtained some more copies by now, but a copy should be available from Magabala Books online (in Perth, or in Broome, if you are lucky enough to be up that way).

The story was told to Margaret O’Brien, a Wadjala woman who sat with Ing over more than twenty interviews, and over, I think, a couple of years at least to record and transcribe her story. They have become close friends in the process. In the Special Thanks section of the book, Ing describes Margaret in these terms: “to my sister I adopted, Margaret O’Brien, a special part of me. Thank you for helping me tell my story.”

A disclaimer here: I met Margaret through the Book Length Project Group and we have kept in touch over the years.  I count her as a dear friend. I can understand why Ing picked her out from a workshop that Margaret attended, asking if she could help her to tell her story. And I can understand why Margaret said yes. Perhaps they recognised something special in one another. They are intuitive, intelligent and caring women. It is right there in their faces. Wise women.

It is a mark of Margaret’s deep respect for Ing and her story that, other than the thanks at the beginning of the book, there is no sense of Margaret’s perspective or presence intruding into the text, just as it is a mark of Ing’s respect for Margaret that she so courageously trusted her to hear and write down the story of her life. On reading the book, you can’t help but get the feeling that the meeting between these two was meant to happen, and that this book was meant to happen.

What I did get as I was reading was a sense of Ing’s love, of her courage and humour, but that this also covered a deep hurt and disruption that has been, and continues to be, generated by the dominant culture as it pushes back against Aboriginal Australia. By now we must all know of the Stolen Generations; the cruelly insensitive government policies that separated small children from their families as part of an assimilation policy that operated in Australia from the 1940s through to the 1960s. But it is one thing to know this intellectually, and another to get a sense of this from the emotional perspective of a child who lived through it. How would we feel?

Some of us have heard of the horrific massacres that took place of Aboriginal people in the past, with no apparent consequences to the murderers, but it is another thing to get to know, through this book, a family member of those killed.  And it is another thing to realise that the consequences of this still affect her life.

Ing was an optimistic child with a fighting spirit and just enough early contact with her parents to maintain a sense of who she was. Perhaps it is this that has helped her to survive as she has spent her entire life seeking out the missing pieces of the puzzle of her identity and putting them together, not only to discover the unique and beautiful person that she is, but to rediscover the beauty of her parent cultures.

The book feels deeply truthful and to tell a story that is deeply truthful is no mean feat. There are no easy answers to where we, as a nation, go from here, but if we listen, hear, acknowledge and reflect on this story, perhaps that will be a good place to start.

The personal is political. As Kim Scott writes in the Foreword, “Ing is complex, in the way of some of the best people. And this book is written by, and about, one of the best people.” She is one of the best people, but as we read we realise that the story is not just about Ing. It is about all the people who have influenced her life and it is about place because, for Ing, identity is not about the person in isolation. It is about community. And just as Ing has spent a lifetime putting together the pieces of her life to understand who she is, this story of Ing’s life is a piece of the puzzle that, as a nation, we need to absorb in order to understand, if we are to move towards reconciliation. 

I had the privilege of briefly meeting Ing at the book launch and of feeling her warmth and generosity as she spent time to point out the pictures in the middle of the book and have a bit of a yarn, despite a long line of people waiting to get their books signed. This took me by surprise. She was already about forty minutes into the book signing and must have been exhausted by then. After reading her story, it doesn’t surprise me at all. This is a woman that has spent her life giving to others.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have.