Arts & CultureAustralasiaBooksBooks (Featured)EducationFeaturesLiteratureReviewsSocietyWorldYoung Generation
‘Can you come to my party?’: What it’s like to have your novel studied at schools
For this Spectrum series, we asked six authors to write about a time they changed their mind.
For Maxine Beneba Clarke, the excitement of being included on school reading lists was quickly matched by the realities of digital connection.
- Maxine Beneba Clarke
- The Sydney Morning Herald
I was high-schooled in the ’90s in suburban Sydney.
My HSC English program was Shakespeare, Orwell and Austen.
Which, as a Black kid of Afro-Caribbean heritage, hardly stoked my writerly inclinations.
So, some 20 years later, when my publishers told me they’d had a call for copies of my book Foreign Soil to be sent for consideration for the VCE syllabus in my now home state of Victoria, I laughed. Foreign Soil is…