White Hibiscus: A portrait in words
By (Author) Loribelle Spirovski
Upswell Publishing
Upswell Publishing
4th March 2025
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Memoirs
Paperback
206
Width 151mm, Height 210mm, Spine 17mm
231g
White Hibiscus is a meditation on how trauma casts stones into the strange waters of our lives, creating ripples that stretch on long after the stones have sunk. White Hibiscus is a poetic memoir that circles around an archived memory unlocked by a woman during the captivity of a cruise ship journey. While her husband prepares for his piano recitals, she encounters portholes into her childhood, reliving memories of the Philippines with vivid clarity, and, at times, pain. For all its luxury, she can't help being affected by what she observes on the ship, the passengers' wealth, the crew's subservience. Always prone to motion sickness, onboard her nausea is constant. White Hibiscus is a meditation on how trauma casts stones into the strange waters of our lives, creating ripples that stretch on long after the stones have sunk.
Loribelle Spirovski's painting practise works in the interstices between the human figure and space, movement and stillness. Her work spans traditional portraiture, surrealism and pop art with dark and light themes in a single experimental practice. Spirovski paints a fragmented world, reflecting the anxieties defining the present age while never relinquishing a sense of hope for the future. This is Loribelle's first book- lyrical but also carrying some of her painterly approaches to creating meaning.