Body/Landscape Journals (Paperback)

Body/Landscape Journals works in the territory below the surface. Margaret documents her experience of working and writing with Indigenous and European women in their landscapes; experiences which provide her with the language to chart her own experience of place and making places.

It could be described as addressing the postcolonial condition as experienced by the descendents of colonists, but it does this in a way that exposes the inadequacy and immobility of such generalisations. Margaret's premise is that we begin with our bodies and connect to place through them. There, in the particular and material, is the power to transform our relationship with the environment we inhabit and the people who inhabited it long before us. It's a grounded and productive approach that starts from where I am and what I know - and the book proceeds this way, on an exploratory and moving journey into places and ways of being with them.

In Margaret's writing 'the dance of intertexuality' mirrors the particular movements she documents 'back and forth between self and other' (90). It's a diverse and many-figured dance; beautiful and inviting, offering us new ways of knowing the ghosts of a 'haunted country' (Read: 1994)

For me there was the familiarity of the Australian landscape described with picture perfect clarity, yet with sensitive appreciation. I felt my own steps through the grasslands, on the beach and gazes into the distance.

Then there's the journey into the lives of the Aboriginal women. I could hear their voices speaking and the author's deliberations began, for me, the process of unlocking the meanings contained in the words and the stories.

Margaret took me to varied places and situations I might never in actuality go myself. Yet, her journey became my journey and opened up my own process through her expert interweaving of ideas and levels of exploration, both personal and theoretical. The rich blend of the author's experiences and women's stories within a broader framework of reconciliation, theoretical and political considerations provides an innovative threshold for the reader. Margaret offers the reader the opportunity to enter the space between self and other and find their own experience, or story of connection. Body Landscape Journals is the kind of book you can enjoy again and again. Once read, you can open it at random and read a few pages, discover again the delightful word pictures, another idea, another story or renew acquaintance with the Aboriginal women, the ideas of other authors or the author herself. It is both a moving story and an accessible consideration of theory.