• Home
  • About
    • About Treefall Writing
    • About Melinda Tognini
    • Comments Policy
  • My Books
    • Many Hearts, One Voice
    • Tales From Our Home
    • Other Publications
  • Young Writers: Competitions
  • Work with Me
    • Workshops
    • Mentoring & critiquing
    • Oral history
    • Working in schools
  • Blog
    • Reading
    • Writing
    • Family history
    • Young writers
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About
    • About Treefall Writing
    • About Melinda Tognini
    • Comments Policy
  • My Books
    • Many Hearts, One Voice
    • Tales From Our Home
    • Other Publications
  • Young Writers: Competitions
  • Work with Me
    • Workshops
    • Mentoring & critiquing
    • Oral history
    • Working in schools
  • Blog
    • Reading
    • Writing
    • Family history
    • Young writers
  • Contact
scroll down for more
Reviews & Recommendations

6 Degrees of Separation: From Three Women to The Protected

Melinda Tognini October 5, 2019 2 Comments
Image: a pile of books from the top, plus book cover of Three Women
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Separation, where Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest suggests a starting book, and we each link it to six other titles in whatever random way our minds make a connection. It’s easy and fun, and no two chains are the same.

This month, we’re starting with Three Women by Lisa Taddeo.

Image: a pile of books from the top, plus book cover of Three Women

I’m only a couple of chapters into this non-fiction book about, as the title suggests, three women. The author, Lisa Taddeo, spent thousands of hours over eight years with these women in order to tell their stories. I picked it up after my cousin recommended it. She thought the style and structure might offer a way for me to tell the story of a friend who is a refugee and spent a number of years in Australian immigration detention centres.

Another victim of Australia’s immigration detention system is Behrouz Boochani, whose memoir, No Friend but the Mountains, was written while on Manus Island, which forms part of Australia’s off shore detention system. Most incredibly, this award winning book was written via a series of whatsapp messages and sent to Australia, where Omid Tofighian translated it.

If you want to understand the situation in Australia, with regards to asylum seekers and refugees, an easy-to-read book is Refugees: Why Seeking Asylum is Legal and Australian’s Policies are Not by Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong. I would love to see the authors update this, actually, as it was published in 2014, and a lot has happened since then.

Another book containing stories about refugees, but on the other side of the world, is City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence, who gave a most engaging talk at the Perth Writers’ Festival a couple of years ago. Rawlence spent time in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp in the world, and shares the stories of nine people living there. I read most of it when I first bought it, but realise I still have a few chapters left to read, so I really want to finish it now.

Book covers: No Friend but the Mountains, Refugees, The Girls

I could dedicate this whole Six Degrees to recommendations on the same subject, because there is a growing body of work about refugees and seeking asylum, but I don’t think that’s the point of a Six Degrees post (maybe that’s an entirely different article waiting to be written?). Instead, I’ll turn to another book on my to-read pile, which also promises to be an extraordinary read, The Palace of Angels, by Mohammed Massoud Morsi. I bought this book containing three novellas about life, love and loss in Palestine and Israel, after attending its Perth launch last weekend.

That same weekend, I attended a talk by Chloe Higgins, who recently released her memoir The Girls, about the loss of her two sisters in a car accident, when she was just 17. I met Chloe when she was writer-in-residence at the KSP Writers’ Centre in 2016, and attended her ‘How to Vomit a Novella’ workshop. I’ve been following her road to publication since then

A fictional character who lost her sister in a car crash is Hannah, the protagonist of The Protected by Claire Zorn. The Protected is a YA novel, but both my daughter and I loved it equally. I’ll be interested to see what parallels there are between the way Hannah’s grief plays out and the aftermath of Chloe’s loss.

Book covers: The Palace of Angels, The Girls, The Protected

From the lives of women to stories about people who’ve been displaced from their homes (and the way they’ve been treated by the rest of the world, particularly Australia) to young women dealing with loss. I guess the connecting thread is that all these books are about people’s lives. Whether it be through fiction or non-fiction, we are offered an insight into those lives in a way that invites understanding, compassion and empathy. And, really, isn’t that the power of stories and books?

Over to You

Where might Six Degrees of Separation take you? If you choose to join in, you mght also like to head over to booksaremyfavouriteandbest and see where it lead Kate and other participants.

OR, let me know the name of a book you’ve read that’s encouraged understanding, compassion and/or empathy in you as the reader.

Image: A collage of all books mentioned in this blog post

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  • Share This:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email
Previous Creative Writing Prompts #6
Next 6 Degrees of Separation: From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to My Father’s Shadow
Melinda Tognini

story-gatherer & mentor

Related Posts
Six Degrees of Separation: from True Story of the Kelly Gang to My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises May 7, 2022
6 Degrees of Separation: From Our Wives Under the Sea to My Invented Country April 2, 2022
ID: Black-and-white headshot of author Monique Mulligan. She is wearing glasses and smiling at something off-camera. In yellow are the words, "In Conversation with Monique Mulligan".
Wildflower: In Conversation with Monique Mulligan March 29, 2022

2 Comments

  1. Aggie Lim says:
    October 6, 2019 at 5:52 am

    Hi Melinda,

    There are so many inspiring books out there to read, and sometimes I feel, so little time to read them all.
    I’ve come to realise that I thoroughly enjoying reading about people and their lives, the adversities they face, their emotional challenges, what it takes from them mentally to overcome such challenges, and also the light heartead aspects of their life too.

    People and their lives fascinate me . I just like people !

    Aggie x

    Reply
    1. Melinda Tognini says:
      October 6, 2019 at 7:53 am

      I definitely think there is not enough time to read all the good books out there! I guess we can just take one book at a time, and find space for it. I do wonder how much more I would read if I spent less time on social media, though. What do you think you will read next?

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Aggie Lim Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sign-Up to my Monthly Newsletter

Sign up here to receive regular writing resources, research tips and creative prompts, as well as reading recommendations and MAD links. 

Privacy

Read my full privacy policy here , but essentially I promise to keep your information confidential and not pass on your details to any 3rd parties. Ever.

Blog Categories

  • Reading
    • Reading recommendations
    • 6 Degrees of Separation
    • Stories that matter
    • My story
    • Five Faves
    • Reading
  • Writing
    • Writing
    • Writing prompts
    • Writing quotes
    • Writing resources
    • Creating space for your story
    • Family History
    • Young Writers

What I’m Reading

goodreads

Australian Society of Authors

asa_logo_col

Interesting Blogs

  • speakupforthose
  • wwwssnaveenravi
  • Stephen McAlpine
  • Reid on Writing
  • My summer as a chaplain
  • Natasha Orme
  • Treefall Writing
  • Gove Peninsula Festival: Nhulunbuy East Arnhem Land
  • Memoir Notes
  • Write Note Reviews
  • isobelblackthorn.com
  • Theresa Kaminski
  • Booklength Project Group
  • Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer
  • Mirymom's Blog
  • Latest Comments

    I confess I wasn't sure if I would be able to read Lincoln in the Bardo, but I've had several writer friends who think A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is wonderful.
    In Six Degrees of Separation: from True Story of the Kelly Gang to My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises
    So many links in our chains are tenuous, aren't they (family connections or links between books)?!? But you're right - who cares!
    In Six Degrees of Separation: from True Story of the Kelly Gang to My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises
    That's so interesting, Lisa! There were certainly parts that made me sob, but I couldn't put it down - reading is so subjective, isn't it? How far did you get before you had to stop reading?
    In Six Degrees of Separation: from True Story of the Kelly Gang to My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises

    Recent Posts

    • Six Degrees of Separation: from True Story of the Kelly Gang to My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises
    • Family History: Keeping a Research Log
    • One-Word Creative Prompts #1
    • 6 Degrees of Separation: From Our Wives Under the Sea to My Invented Country
    • Wildflower: In Conversation with Monique Mulligan
    • Book Notes: Wildflower by Monique Mulligan

    Follow or Contact Melinda Tognini

    • Facebook
    • Email
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    Melinda Tognini (c) 2018 | Site by ICTECH