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The Road from Coorain

Jill Ker ConwayÆs autobiographical account of growing up in Coorain, Australia until she leaves for America to attend Harvard is presented in The Road from Coorain. The road is arduous for Conway. Her father commits suicide and her brother dies in a car accident. Her mother is forced to take over running Coorain but a series of hardships occurs. ConwayÆs coming-of-age in Coorain deeply shapes her worldview but also leads to a newly constructed vision of her native land and her self. As Conway wrote in one essay, ôAutobiographical memory involves the subject of the remembered taking him/herself as object. It is reflexiveùan act of self-witnessing, of self-reconstitution across timeö (White 1998, 52).

Conway was born on Coorain, a sheep station located on the plains of New South Wales. Her proud, hardworking parents loved each other and Coorain. Conway becomes a first rate farmhand, aiding her father while secretly obtaining education by listening to her brotherÆs tutors. Her parentsÆ struggles with the land take their toll when a severe drought hits. Her father commits suicide and Conway becomes the focus of her motherÆs world. During the time she lives in Australia until the time she leaves for school in America, Conway undergoes a series of events that result in a ôself-reconstitutionö as she matures. This reconstitution provides her with a new sense of self as well as a new sense of her native land and origins.

The dry, harsh climate of Coorain in many ways describes the dry emotional climate of the Ker family. The landscape is so barren and droughts so severe that the eucalyptus trees that grow seem like gods to the young Conway (1990), ôWorn and gnarled by wind and lack of moisture, they rise up on the horizon so dramatically they appear like an assemblage of local deities,ö (4). Worn and gnarled might also describe the outback settlers like ConwayÆs parents, who lead lives of stoicism and self-...

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The Road from Coorain. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:08, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1711396.html