NONA & ME BY CLARE ATKINS

Rating: 4 stars

Goodreads Book Description:

Rosie and Nona are sisters. Yapas.

They are also best friends. It doesn’t matter that Rosie is white and Nona is Aboriginal: their family connections tie them together for life.

Born just five days apart in a remote corner of the Northern Territory, the girls are inseperable, until Nona moves away at the age of nine. By the time she returns, they’re in Year 10 and things have changed. Rosie has lost interest in the community, preferring to hang out in the nearby mining town, where she goes to school with the glamorous Selena, and Selena’s gorgeous older brother Nick.

When a political announcement highlights divisions between the Aboriginal community and the mining town, Rosie is put in a difficult position: will she be forced to choose between her first love and her oldest friend?

My Review:

Nona and Me by Clare Atkins tells of two girls in the Northern Territory of Australia, Rosie – a white girl and Nona – an aboriginal girl. The story is set where in an Aboriginal community – Yirrkala and Nullumbuy, a mining town. Between them a lot of tension is caused due to the Federal Government’s Intervention policy.

Rosie journeys through the struggles of her aboriginal community, her first love and the return of her friend, Nona.

This book was given to me by my school librarian and I have whole heartedly enjoyed reading it. I’m not usually a big fan of Australian literature however, Nona and Me has changed my views

Clare Atkins expresses her inspiration used for Nona and Me:

“I wrote Nona & Me while living in the remote Aboriginal community of Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land, which is also where the novel is set. The inspiration came from three main sources: watching my children play with the kids in our adopted Yolngu family; thinking about the Close the Gap campaign and wondering when the ‘gap’ begins; and seeing two girls – one white, one black – happily swimming together at the pool. If you’ve read the book you might recognise this last experience in one of the chapters.”

In this she mentions how the story is set and how the story was adapted by the Close the Gap campaign – closing the health and life expectancy gap between Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the socialising of her kids and the adopted Yolngu family and watching a white girl and indigenous girls swimming together at the public pool. Through Clare Atkins writing this book it shows that she accepts indigenous people, race and all.

I truly respect Clare Atkins for putting a lot of work and inspiration into this beautiful piece of literature.

I recommend this to people wanting to get a better understanding of Indigenous cultures and society.

Think Lovely Thoughts xo