Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch Quotes + Language Forms and Features

“She shuffled us out like two jokers in her cards reminding us to go to Auntie’s house before dark, and telling us again she loved us.” Chapter 1: Swallow the Air [simile]

Cloud Busting  P22: Billy and May: “ We get drunk on the salt air and laughter. We empty our lungs and weigh ourselves cross-legged to the seabed.” [hyperbole / assonance / imagery] …

Anyway, Goulburn, ‘67. “All my brothers and sisters had been put into missions by then except Fred.. And me.” [simple sentence / euphemism / elipse / assonance ]

P 23: “The saucepans, she says, the best bloody saucepans.” [repetition / symbolism (western middle-class cultural and social symbol) / alliteration and vernacular]

Quotes: Bleeding palm. [assonance / repetition / present-continuous “ing” verbs) “ We were happy when Aunty was happy, laughing and yarning and dancing around the yard.” [assonance / repetition / present-continuous “ing” verbs)

“ We were like the morning ladies, doing tai chi: out with the black clouds, in with the white.” [ simile / cultural allusion / contrast ]

“I began to hide my skin from the other beach, from this stretch of cycleway.” “I am invisible, I am earth, I am sand.” “Oy, ya little coon bitch, what tha fuck do ya think ya doin?” “I scrambled up and ran toward the water…” “ This gunna show ya where ya don’t belong dumb black bitch.”

Territory  P 84: “He was the monster I tried to hide.”  P 86: “ That look, that exact face, that was his anger face…that anger face became his always face.”

Quotes: The Block  At central, memories… “You got family in the city too girl, gunna show ya where ya don’t belong dumb black bitch, you don’t look like an Abo.”  “I felt Aboriginal, I felt like I belonged, but when mum left, I stopped being Aboriginal. I stopped feeling like I belonged. Anywhere.”  “We’re all family here, all blacks, here, from different places, but we’re all one mob, this place here…”

 “When you start to not feel the punch that lands on her face, when you begin to see someone’s broken heart instead of someone’s bruised veins, when you know that cuz needs a beating to sort him out, you begin to see love than hate, that real sort of love, the sort that’s desperate and always fighting. Fighting to be heard and stay.”

 STATE concept  STATE a clear sentence which states a clear and specific concept about “belonging / not belonging” context  Give context  Give quote  Give quote to “prove” the concept of belonging LFFs  Name the LFFs  EXPLAIN the effect of the LFFs in each quote  LINK belonging in general (thesis statement)  LINK to the specific “belonging or not belonging” concept  what does it say about belonging for May and what does it say about belonging in general (thesis statement).

Quotes: Just Dust P :  “Issy says that the lake works like a heart, pumping its lifeblood form under the skin…Everything is part of the heart, everything is water…She says they (Whites) want to dig up the hearts, free out the veins, dam up the values so they can live.”

Quotes: Country  “Six Years” P 179  since May’s mother has died. this is the time scale of the book.  Percy: “We weren’t allowed to be what you’re looking for, and we weren’t told what was right, we weren’t taught by anyone…we weren’t allowed to be Aboriginal.”-Pp  Stolen Generations have disrupted the storytelling cycle through families.  May’s Mum must have gotten the legend from books - ie Mungi and the Stingray.

Quotes: The Jacaranda Tree  “ A bouquet of blue jays”. P 189.  Sense of place  “It’s an odd thing, a backyard, a little strip of nature, a little reminder of the rest of it, elsewhere.” P 189  Relate this to the pumping heart of lake Cowal and Wiradjuri Country- P183  “they found her there, lying under that pest of a tree…jacaranda petals and blood.” P 190

Quotes: Home  “ As all the salt hits me. I know what the word really means, home.” P 194  “My mother knows that I am home, at the water I am always home.”P194  “Aunty and my brother, we are from the same people, we are of the Wiradjuri nation, hardwater.” P 194  “I couldn’t run from the pain and I couldn’t run from my family either.”  “When Billy and me lost our mother, we lost ourselves. We stopped swimming in the ocean…lost trust because we didn’t want to touch something that was going to fall away. Like bubbles, too delicate, too fragile, too brief.” P195

 The tablecloth: “ I count a dozen or so, some stuck to each other, some rotting. Soft felt, crumpled mouldy lace, linen and sticky stiff plastic..”  ”Let’s go buy a new tablecloth, Aunty!..”That’ll show ‘em lovies, Aunty ain’t goin anywhere. Not with a new tablecloth to wear in!”  relates to place and sense of time and continuity, as well as family togetherness at mealtimes.

Tying ideas together  Who (what) gives May her greatest sense of belonging?  Which women (and where in the narrative) help May realise who she is and where home is?  Look at her mother, her Aunt, and Joyce. Are any of these women wholly positive in their support of May?  Contrast May’s father and Billy. Although she has close connections with them – are these connections positive or negative?

Place: Why does May have to leave home to realise who she is?  Look at the negative associations of Paradise Parade and the local racist gang.  Look at the kind of belonging at The Block and the lack of resolution May finds at Lake Cowal. However, she still identifies as Aboriginal, why????  Finally, how does May view Paradise Parade at the end of the book, why has her attitude changed?  P Tablecloth metaphor represents the layers of her journey and memories and the places she’s been.