The Archipelago of Us: A search for our identity in Australia's most remote territories

(Paperback)

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A travel narrative, a memoir and a thought-provoking look at Australia's complicated history with Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the asylum seekers detained there. Five years after first living in the Indian Ocean Territories, Renee Pettitt-Schipp finds herself returning, haunted by memories of the asylum seekers she taught there in Australia's detention system. Why do the islands still have a hold on her Why are her memories such troubled ones And why can she not let go Closer to Indonesia than Australia, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are out of sight and out of mind to most Australians, but they are the sites of some of our frontier wars, the places where our identity is laid bare in all its flawed complexity - and the places where there is time and space enough to ask- can we be better than this

Reviews

"Sensitive and subtle, superbly evocative, vivid and arresting in its attention to detail in descriptions of place and the human and more-than-human worlds of the islands." -- David Carlin
"Profound, beautifully written, and conveying an immediacy, a sense of being there physically and emotionally. Difficult subject matter handled with empathy." -- Amanda Curtin
"Absolutely masterful and incredibly powerful. It demanded a lot of its reader, but also offered a world that was delicate, precise and achingly human." -- Catherine Noske

Author Bio

Renee Pettitt-Schipp is an award-winning writer who lived in the Indian Ocean Territories from 2011 until 2014. Her work with asylum seekers inspired her first collection of poetry, The Sky Runs Right Through Us, published by UWA Publishing in 2018, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Dorothy Hewett manuscript prize, and won the 2018 WA Premier's Literary Award for an Emerging Writer. Renee currently lives and writer in Western Australia's Great Southern.