Review: Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina. Catching Teller Crow.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:

Catching Teller Crow, published in August 2018, is Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina’s first co-authored YA novel. As a sibling team, they have collaborated in the past on short novels and picture books, and this publication adds to their long-standing literary track record – delving deep into one of colonialism’s darkest legacies: the stolen generations in Australia and the history of forced child removal. “I’m not telling you what happened to ask for help”, says Isobel Catching, one of the narrative’s young adult protagonists, but “to be heard” (100), thus offering the novel’s programmatic punch-line. Twenty-one years after the “Bringing them Home Report”, which concluded the “National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families” (1997), Catching Teller Crow tackles the unfinished business of colonialism and offers a powerful story of strength, resilience and survival.