Biographies are often beautiful tales of love, loss and coping through adversity, none more so than stories about finding yourself, your place, and community in a strange land. Australia has a very rich and long history of emigrants coming to make a new life for themselves or to escape the ravages of war.
If you don't normally read biographies, why not start by exploring other people's lived experiences of coming to Australia and starting a new life in a world that seems foreign? These fascinating stories tell the tales of multiculturalism and maintaining the connection to home. We encourage reading biographies to celebrate Harmony Week and the diverse cultures in the City of Whittlesea, Victoria and Australia.
Harmony Week takes place during March 15–21, and offers a great opportunity to experience different cultures yourself — maybe even at a library event near you? Try cooking Italian biscuits, enjoy classical Indian dance, grow Asian vegetables at home, tell your story of diversity, or listen to others.
Here are some suggestions from our catalogue to get you started:
Lygon Street: si parla italiano [DVD], 2013
After the disaster of WW2, a wave of Italian immigrants found their way to Melbourne — a strange place, suspicious of outsiders and completely devoid of a good cup of espresso. Congregating in a then run-down stretch of Carlton known as Lygon St, these irrepressible restaurateurs, entrepreneurs and sometimes mafiosi would come to define not only a street, but an entire city. Now in Lygon St, documentarians Shannon Swan and Angelo Pricolo tell the history of this famous cultural epicentre.
Lion : a long way home by Saroo Brierley, 2017
Lion describes how the author was accidentally separated as a child from his family and home in India, how he survived as an orphan in Kolkata, his adoption by an Australian family, and his search for his biological family as an adult. Lion is available in print, eBook and eAudio formats. Made into a motion picture in 2017, you can also borrow the DVD.
Arab, Australian, other: stories on race and identity edited by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sara Saleh, 2019
Although there are 22 separate Arab nationalities representing an enormous variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences, the portrayal of Arabs in Australia tends to range from homogenising (at best) to racist pop-culture caricatures. Edited by award-winning author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, and activist and poet Sara Saleh, and featuring contributors Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Ruby Hamad and Paula Abood, among many others, this collection explores the experience of living as a member of the Arab diaspora in Australia and includes stories of family, ethnicity, history, grief, isolation, belonging and identity.
Chinese settlement in Whittlesea : Our Chinese community, our stories by Arthur B.W. Yong, 2008
Created with support from the City of Whittlesea Community Development Grant, the State Government of Victoria, the Victorian Multicultural Commission and Yarra Plenty Regional Library. This book contains sixteen stories about Chinese migrants who lived, worked and operated businesses in the City of Whittlesea. They came to Australia from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Timor.
Where the Sea Takes Us : A Vietnamese Australian Story by Kim Huynh, 2010
In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families set out on perilous journeys in rickety boats to escape communist rule and seek out a better life. Kim Huynh's family was one of them. In this memoir, Kim traces his parents' precarious lives, from their poor villages in central and southern Vietnam, through relative affluence in Saigon, to their harrowing experiences after the American withdrawal and the fall of Saigon in 1975, which led them to a new life in Australia. As Kim explores his parents' stories, he unveils the tragedy and inner strength of ordinary Vietnamese people struggling to survive in a country beset by colonisation and ravaged by war.
Miss ex-Yugoslavia by Sofija Stefanovic, 2018
Sofija Stefanovic was born into a country destined to collapse. With Yugoslavia on the brink of war, her family was torn between the social existence they'd always known and the pull of stability on offer in the distant land of Australia. Sofija's family spent her childhood moving back and forth between Australia and Yugoslavia, unable to settle in one home. The war that had been brewing started to rage, and the pain and madness stretched all the way to Melbourne, where Sofija found herself part of a strange community of ex-Yugoslavians.
Little one : a story of family, love and sacrifice - and an extraordinary secret by Peter Papathanasiou, 2019
Peter Papathanasiou is the son of migrants and grandson of refugees. His parents emigrated from Greece to Australia in 1956 but were unable to have children, a huge sorrow — and shame — for them among Australia's Greek community and their own family. Finally, in 1973, Peter's uncle and aunt in Greece offered to have a baby and give it to his parents to raise as their own in Australia. Peter was that baby, born in 1974. Peter grew up an only child in Australia, finally discovering his true parentage in 1999 when his mother revealed the secret of his birth and the sacrifice that lay behind. By then, Peter's birth mother had died, but he found he had two older brothers still living in northern Greece. This is where the story begins. What follows is a moving and compelling memoir of family and place, as Peter traces his parents' journey to Australia, their struggle as migrants, and the very different world that they came from — a world where the bond of family was so strong, a husband and wife were prepared to make an extraordinary gift.
Whole wild world : a memoir by Tom Dusevic, 2016
Tom tries to make sense of his parents' history and identity, known but unknowable, as post-war refugees from Croatia. He longs to be liberated from the family's quirks and the past, and finds his escape in quiet moments of awe and simplicity. This is a tale of growing up in Australia, from rowdy street protests and footy crowds, to the serenity of the Roselands Raindrop Fountain and storm-water canals, to the disco floor. Dusevic describes himself and his family in the whole wild world.
Explore other popular Australian biographies from Anh Doh, Frank Lowy, Alice Pung, Munjed Al Muderis and Carla Zampatti in our catalogue.