Mazin Grace

Dylan Coleman

• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9780702269912
• Edition: 2

Growing up on the Mission isn' t easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn' t know what to say. Papa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn' t help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn' t understand. In Mazin Grace, Dylan Coleman fictionalises her mother' s childhood at the Koonibba Lutheran Mission in South Australia in the 1940s and ' 50s. Woven through the narrative are the powerful, rhythmic sounds of Aboriginal English and Kokatha language, Mazin Grace is the inspirational story of a feisty girl who refuses to be told who she is, determined to uncover the truth for herself.

Table of contents

• Author biography
• Title page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction by Claire G Coleman
• Chapter 1: Minya wunyi wonganyi
• Chapter 2: If welfare get us, we finished
• Chapter 3: Where I belong?
• Chapter 4: Secret-pretty-things
• Chapter 5: Lookin’ for answers
• Chapter 6: Ngoonji bula: God, Jesus and Father Christmas
• Chapter 7: Goin’ away
• Chapter 8: Mumoo jumpin’ ’round
• Chapter 9: Walbiya gu minga: white man’s sickness
• Chapter 10: Healin’ jinna minga
• Chapter 11: Some things stay the same, some things change
• Chapter 12: Riddle solved
• Chapter 13: Lookin’ through new guru mooga
• Chapter 14: The sins of the father
• Chapter 15: Dolly gets a haircut
• Chapter 16: Goin’ back to country, in heaven
• Chapter 17: Goojarb: serves yourself right
• Chapter 18: Growing changes
• Chapter 19: Wash me away
• Glossary
• Author’s note
• Acknowledgements
• Imprint page