Some recent reads recommended by our Libraries team with links to our catalogue so you can place your hold immediately.
by Amani Haydar
'I am from a family of strong women.' Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. After her mother's death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents' relationship. They had been unhappy for so long, should she have known that it would end like this? A lawyer by profession, she also saw the holes in the justice system for addressing and combating emotional abuse and coercive control. Amani also had to reckon with the weight of familial and cultural context. Her parents were brought together in an arranged marriage, her mother thirteen years her father's junior. Her grandmother was brutally killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon, adding complex layers of intergenerational trauma. Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices
From Laura: This is a recount of Amani’s ordeal when her father murdered her mother in Sydney in 2015. In the book, she confronts the process of re-evaluating her parents’ relationship, and discusses the insidiousness of domestic abuse and coercive control, all whilst becoming a mother herself. She writes about heavy topics such as grief, intergenerational trauma, and domestic abuse, with a succinct and poignant voice. It is a heartbreaking story, but one that is told with strength and thoughtfulness, and that deserves to be read.
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by Christy Lefteri
Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe, and selling them on the black market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha, who works for Petra and her daughter Angela. Nisha is raising Angela, mothering her own child back in Sri Lanka by the screen of a phone. When Nisha disappears, Yiannis is convinced he is responsible, paralysed by heartbreak and fear. Petra is forced to care for her child again, and when little Angela insists that they find Nisha, she begins to see that Nisha hasn't simply run away, and that no one else will bother to look for her. With infinite tenderness and skill, Christy Lefteri has crafted a powerful story about the unseen who walk among us, cleaning our homes and caring for our children - what it is to migrate in search of freedom, only to find yourself trapped. Songbirds is a triumphant exploration of loss, the strength of the human spirit and the unbreakable bonds of courage, and of love.
From Karyn: 3.5 Stars Slowburn – took a few chapters to get involved in the story but loved the simplicity of the writing. Main narrative focuses on the disappearance of a foreign maid (SriLankan) and the effect this has on all of the people her life touches. A “Story of Love, Loss and Redemption…”
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