Search Results

Autobiography/Memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class Rob Henderson 2024 In his recently published memoir, Troubled, Rob Henderson reflects on his time growing up in the American foster care system and enlisting in the US Air Force before going on to study at Yale. He completed his tertiary education with a PhD from Cambridge. While he was at university, Henderson thought deeply about class distinctions and came up with the concept of luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson writes in this article about his idea that “luxury beliefs” are “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes”. He writes: “In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more accessible than before. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs.” External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Matthew Henson Matthew Henson 2001 This is the story of African American explorer Matthew Henson (1866-1955), who was orphaned as a young boy, then in kinship care for a while, and working as a cabin boy by the time he was 12. For more than 20 years, Henson accompanied Commander Robert Peary on expeditions to the Arctic. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Slipped Through the Net. The story of Melrose Desmond Donley Elly Inta 2009 In Slipped Through the Net, Ella Inta tells the story of the amazing Des Donley who lived until he was 97 years of age. Des was a member of the Stolen Generation, taken from his mother when he was six months old. He went into an orphanage, in and out of foster care, and then back into an orphanage when he was 10. At 14, Des was sent to work on a dairy farm and for 4 years he worked up to 18 hours a day without pay and in appalling conditions. At the age of 94, Des was still agitating the Qld government to return his wages. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read? Open Culture 2014 This is a list of the books in Marilyn Monroe's library, compiled by the online fan club, Everlasting Star. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A digital archive of care experienced people in fiction, on screen and in real life IMO 2021 Care experienced journalist Sophia Hall spoke to Rosie Canning and Dee Michell, Founders of Care Experience and Culture about their care experienced led project and why they do what they do. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir John Callahan John Callahan 1990 At the age of 21, John Callahan became a quadriplepic. Struggling with an alcohol addiction he had acquired as a teenage, he entered a 12 step program, swore off alcohol and became a cartoonist. Callahans cartoons pushed boundaries and poked fun at social norms, which meant he was both a beloved and a polarizing figure. Callahan's memoir incudes many of his cartoons. External Website

Authors E Louis Esson (Australian theatre) ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Ten Doors Down: The story of an extraordinary adoption reunion Robert Tickner 2020 Robert Tickner had always known he was adopted, but had rarely felt much curiosity about his origins. Born in 1951, he had a happy childhood - raised by his loving adoptive parents, Bert and Gwen Tickner, in the small seaside town of Forster, New South Wales. He grew up to be a cheerful and confident young man with a fierce sense of social justice, and the desire and stamina to make political change. Serving in the Hawke and Keating governments, he held the portfolio of minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. During his time on the front bench, Robert's son was born, and it was his deep sense of connection to this child that moved him at last to turn his attention to the question of his own birth. Although he had some sense of the potentially life-changing course that lay ahead of him, he could not have anticipated learning of the exceptional nature of the woman who had brought him into the world, the deep scars that his forced adoption had left on her, and the astonishing series of coincidences that had already linked their lives. And this was only the first half of a story. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Recipes for Survival: Stories of hope and healing by survivors of the state 'care' system in Australia Deidre Michell et al. 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. Contributors to the volume are: Christina Riley, Priscilla Taylor, David O'Brien, Karen Wilson, Deidre Michell, David Jackson, Frank Golding, Amanda Gargula, Pam, Ryszard Szablicki, Margo O'Byrne, Al Smith, Josephine Kunde, Therese Williams, Tamsin Dancer. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Thief's Journal M Jean Genet 2019 Jean Genet, French playwright, novelist and poet, was abandoned by his mother when he was a baby. He grew up in foster care with a working class family and began stealing at the age of ten. At 15 he was sent to the notorious reform school, Metrray. Genet was in and out of prison nine times. It was in prison that he began writing and he turned the experiences in his life amongst pimps, whores, thugs and other fellow social outcasts into a poetic literature, with an honesty and explicitness unprecedented at the time. Widely considered an outstanding and unique figure in French literature, Genet wrote five novels between 1942 and 1947. The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such degradations into an inverted moral code, where criminality and delinquency become heroic. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave by Mary Prince Mary Prince 1831 Mary Prince (c. 1 October 1788 – after 1833) was a British abolitionist and autobiographer, born in Bermuda to an slave family of African descent. Subsequent to her escape, when she was living in London, England, she and Thomas Pringle wrote her slave narrative The History of Mary Prince (1831), which was the first account of the life of a black slave woman to be published in the United Kingdom. This first-hand description of the brutalities of enslavement, released at a time when slavery was still legal in Bermuda and British Caribbean colonies, had a galvanising effect on the British anti-slavery movement. It was reprinted twice in its first year. Prince was illiterate and had her account transcribed while living and working in England at the home of Pringle, secretary of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (aka Anti-Slavery Society, 1823–1838). She had gone to London with her master and his family in 1828 from Antigua. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Foster Care and Me Judith Denton 2019 In this memoir, Judith Denton talks about her experiences in the foster care system including exclusions from school and conflict with the legal system, to later going to university and working in the corporate world. Judith Denton is Founder and CEO of The Transformed You, a support and mentorship program for children and young people in care, and Care Leavers. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Bridge Across My Sorrows Christina Noble 2013 After the early death of her mother, Christina's family was split apart, as her alcoholic father unable to care for his children. Christina was sexually abused and later escaped from an orphanage to live in poverty on the streets of Dublin. Whilst in an abusive marriage, in a dream she found the will to fight. Christina's hope lay in a determination to work among the bui doi, the street children of Vietnam, and this was the starting point for the most extraordinary part of her story. Within two years of arriving in Ho Chi Minh City she had opened a medical and social centre and achieved worldwide fame. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People A History of Silence Lloyd Jones 2013 In his A History of Silence (2013), NZ writer Lloyd Jones explores his family history and discovers that both his parents were displaced from their birth families as children. Jones' father, Lew, was put into an orphanage when his mother died. From then he was in and out of foster care. Jones' mother, Joyce, was given up for adoption when she was 4. Lloyd Jones is one of NZs best known contemporary writers. He says he was lucky as the youngest child because he didn't have to leave school at 15 and his older brother insisted he go to university. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Borderline Sandie Jessamine 2021 In 1974, 15 year old Sandie was locked up in the notorious Parramatta Girls Home in NSW, renamed as the Kamballa institution. She escaped from Kamballa and 40 years later revisits her time there and explores the cruelty of juvenile incarceration. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Lonely Little Girl Goes to University Pam Petrilli 2015 Pam Petrilli was in foster care as a child. In this chapter she talks of going to university as a mature age student, encouraged by her daughter. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Elephant to Hollywood Michael Caine 2011 Michael Caine gives us his insider's view of Hollywood and the story of his second act. When he was in his late fifties, Michael Caine believed his glamorous, rags-to-riches Hollywood career had come to an end. The scripts being sent his way were worse and worse. When one script really disappointed, he called the producer to complain about the part. The producer said, "No, no, we don't want you for the lover, we want you for the father." Salvation came in the unlikely form of his old friend Jack Nicholson, who convinced him to give acting one more shot. What followed was not only an incredible personal transformation but also one of the most radical comebacks in film history. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Our Betty Liz Smith 2007 OUR BETTY is Liz's life story - from her cosseted yet lonely childhood with her beloved grandparents (her mother died giving birth to Liz's stillborn sibling), through the war with the WRENS, marriage and children, divorce and poverty, long years working in dead-end jobs such as in a plastic bag factory, until her heavenly escape of evening acting classes provided the chance for a career. While working at Hamley's one Christmas ('I was one of those tiresome people who stop you and beg you to try samples of this and that'), she received a phone call from a young director who wanted to make an improvised film. His name was Mike Leigh and the film Bleak Moments. From that point, when Liz was 50, her career took off and she has worked with some of the most famous names in the entertainment business. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir This Boy. A Memoir of a Childhood Alan Johnson 2013 Alan Johnson's 2013 memoir, This Boy, was the 2014 Winner of the Orwell Prize and 2014 Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. As many have pointed out, Alan's mother Lily and his sister Linda are the heroes of the story. Lily works multiple jobs to keep her family together, even though her health requires her to be in and out of hospital. Linda ensures that, at the age of 16, the state entrusts 13 year old Alan's care to her after Lily dies. Alan Johnson - after a variety of jobs - became the MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle from 1997 to 2017. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Tracker Alexis Wright 2017 Stolen Generations legendary figure, Tracker Tilmouth, is the subject of this collective biography by award-winning writer, Alexis Wright. Alexis Wright used an Aboriginal way of storytelling, allowing others she interviewed to have their own say in the biography. Tracker Tilmouth (1954-2015) grew up on the Croker Island Mission from the age of 4 until he went to high school in Darwin, Northern Territory. In Darwin he was moved around between residential facilities and foster care. After he got his Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree in 1991, he worked for the Central Land Council supporting Aboriginal Australians who run cattle stations. External Website