Laying the Foundations of a Writer's Life: Dymphna Cusack (1902-81)
2013; Springer International Publishing; Volume: 39; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0311-4198
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
Resumo[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I believe that writer should be in vanguard of society, analysing her community, its influence on people, and describing through her characters its benign or malign results. I am socialist, believing that no country or individual should own less than another. As humanist I believe that all persons are equally important in life. (1) Dymphna Cusack Dymphna Cusack's books were best-sellers in Australia and more than thirty other countries in mid to late twentieth century. Radio and television adaptations of her novels and plays reached audiences across three continents. (2) Her works continue to provide valuable record of people within their cultures engaging with sociopolitical issues of particular time and place. Her two novels that dealt with impact of World War Two on lives of ordinary Australians at Home Front--Come in Spinner (1951) and Southern Steel (1953)--were immediate best-sellers and have never been out of print. Southern Steel brought her legendary status in Newcastle and Hunter Valley where (in early 1937) she had already earned reputation as an advocate for working class. At opening of new Cessnock High School she publicly denounced then Minister for Education for his government's health policies (or lack thereof) vis-a-vis malnutrition in children of mining families of Hunter at height of Great Depression (North, RN). (3) Come in Spinner was later made into popular ABC-TV mini-series. Produced in 1989, DVD has kept its place in ABC's backlist as valuable resource in social history classes. From 1949 for two decades Dymphna was true internationalist, travelling world with her partner, Norman Freehill, (4) both of them writing books and influential journalism, promoting world peace and cross-cultural understanding. (5) Dymphna was second-generation Australian-born of southern Irish settler stock. Her four grandparents had fled Ireland and Great Famine of 1845-1852, bringing with them baggage of generations of British oppression. They were dispossessed, deracinated, scarred by trauma, witnesses to horrors of Starving Times which modern historians record as genocide (Kinealy). From counties Roscommon, Galway, Limerick and Clare, they had developed survival skills, and long voyage out in crowded clippers engendered cooperative spirit in immigrants; British and colonial press spun legend from this of the pioneer--a model against which immigrants could measure themselves; they didn't stay put in safe coastal towns, they went bush (Fitzpatrick). Family Dymphna's parents, Bridget Beatrice (Bea) Crowley (1875-1947) and James Cusack (1858-1935), were married at St Patrick's Church, Temora, on 26 February 1895. Bea was clever young woman who had benefited from her convent schooling with an order of nuns originally trained by French Ursulines in Paris: deeply devout Irish Presentation Sisters at Mt St Erin, in Wagga Wagga. For several years before her marriage she had been employed on Barmedman Station, midway between Temora and West Wyalong, as governess to children of Kenny brothers. The Kennys and their half-brother, James Cusack, had run sheep and harvested wheat on Barmedman for nearly two decades. The late 1880s had brought severe drought, and economic depression, so James abandoned farming for lure of riches on goldfields, prospecting with his younger Cusack siblings. When, as diggers put it, Wyalong broke out, James pegged True Blue claim ahead of rush in 1892. By September 1894 Freeman's Journal reported that James Cusack had struck a rich but small reef. (6) The handsome James--Irish blue eyes, walrus moustache and famous for his sporting prowess--was fourteen years older than diminutive and slightly built Bea, mature thirty-six to her twenty-two years when they exchanged vows after acceptable period of mourning for James's mother, Ann Kenny Cusack, who had died unexpectedly in August 1894, aged perhaps little over sixty years. …
Referência(s)