In the end, we'll all become stories - Margaret Atwood
MOTHERLANDS
Piecing It together
For all our daughters, for Anne Frank, for Greta Thunberg
and the warrior-women who come after me.
And to all my wonderful friends and fellow-campaigners in
beautiful North-East Victoria, Australia
MARGARET WILLIAMS and ANNE FRANK, born within a few months of each other on opposite sides of the North Sea, are both caught in the festering wound left by World War One. Margaret survives. Anne does not. However, Anne’s words one day light a fire in Margaret’s daughter -- in faraway Australia.
ETHEL, Margaret’s mother, raises, feeds and educates five children on her own – enduring Austerity and the Liverpool Blitz. When her abusive husband turns up, Margaret joins forces with her mother to fight him off. This seals the pair into a co-dependent relationship. Ethel, damaged by marital abuse and two wars, swings between shutdown and vitriol. A tiger-mother, she tramples over Margaret’s dreams despite strong resistance.
Margaret feels beholden to her mother even when Ethel pushes her into premature marriage with JEFFREY. When his job takes him to Canada where they have two daughters, Ethel sabotages the marriage and then encourages another marriage back in England – with a handsome young soldier, GEORGE. Wanting to remain near her mother, Margaret extricates George from a posting to Singapore, only for him to join the army in Canada.
MAGGIE, Margaret’s eldest daughter is yanked away from friends and Canadian army life to her Nanna Ethel in England. Feeling unheard and alienated Maggie seeks connection in literature. When the family is stationed in Germany, she reads The Diary of Anne Frank which sheds light on her difficult relationship with her mother and the military. She senses missing pieces in their family history and in the narratives of army life.
These influences create turmoil in Maggie’s high school and university years and she is ping-ponged into a new life with CHRIS, first in Melbourne – where she encounters critical thinkers – then in a conservative Australian country town. There, as she is about to have her first child, she reads Dr Helen Caldicott’s Nuclear Madness –
remembers Anne Frank – and is propelled into a lifetime of anti-war and environmental activism. For Maggie, these coalesce into reconnection to a long-held family secret, her birthfather, Jeffrey and her roots.
MOTHERLANDS - Piecing It Together, is fictionalised memoir.
It sits alongside war stories like The Diary of Anne Frank or Palestinian author Liana Badr’s,
A Compass for the Sunflower (The Women’s Press).
Other similar books are Swedish author Marianne Frederiksson’s Hanna’s Daughters, about the struggles of three generations of women, or Thomas & the Oaks, about family secrets in the context of war.
For its Australian context it fits with The Lost flowers of Alice Hart by Molly Ringland which tells of an Australian girl’s struggle to break through inherited trauma and find the strength to make a new life, or
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville because of its portrayal of the plight of women within the Australian cultural context.
MOTHERLANDS - Contested Ground
A prequel - Historical Fiction
Coming soon.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
Mitch McConnell
We never think to connect our personal issue to what’s happened to our parents or grandparents. We’re now learning that traumas experienced by previous generations can be biologically inherited
Mark Wolynn, It Doesn't Start With You
MOTHERLANDS – Contested Ground is based on the life of my grandmother, Ethel.
She came from a line of Lancashire merchants, seamen, Mersey pilots, shipbuilders, rebels, Jacobite supporters, artists and landed gentry. Hers is a story is of personal loss and fierce resistance, of tragedy and struggle as she raises five children -- by herself. The story is set in the context of the rise of the women’s movement in Liverpool, spanning the Victorian Era, to the munitionettes and World War I through the Depression. to World War II. It is set in Liverpool, England home of the Cunard Line, Harland and Wolff shipbuilders and the port from which so many British emigrants left, including my family members.
In researching this story, I discovered how a pattern of unseen injury and suffering is passed from mother to daughter. Yet they persist. They struggle to keep their children alive, build lives and seek their tribe.
FAIR GAME
An anthology of stories through the eyes of women and girls.
Coming soon. Excerpt on my blog.
She remembered who she was, and the game changed.
Lalah Deliah
TAKE-AWAY PIZZA IN ARNHEM LAND
A novella. Coming soon.
Three friends from vastly different cultures confront their demons in Australia's remote Arnhem Land.
You don't want me to talk about
Native titles process being for the white man
You don't want me to talk at all
Most of the time you have your 'exotic' pets
You want me to nod, smile, and listen to you
And it doesn't really matter if I don't hear you
You don't want me to talk about
How I have got a voice
And you don't listen
Charmian Paperbark Green & John Kinsella, False Claims of Colonial Thieves. Magabala Books
REVIEWS & SHORT STORIES
First prize for short stories publisheshed by World Writers' Collective Anthology of short stories
'Fair Game', 2019. 'Very touching. Anyone who has ever come close to such an encounter will relate[…] A really good read'.
'Blood and the Waterbaby', 2021
'Surviving Canadian Winter and the New Chevrolet', 2020
· 'Canadian Jam and the Magic of Martha Jiminez', 2017
'It is our pleasure to publish your article [on our website] and to admire such a beautiful story.' –
Martha Jiminez, Cuban artist working in sculpture, ceramics and paint. (Jan. 2017]
Speaker at the Beechworth ‘Writers, Readers and Poets Weekend' (WRAP) 2017
'I was thrilled to welcome the contribution of Magz Morgan to our ever-growing list of writers.
Magz' short stories formed the backbone of our new event, Open Can of Words. [...]
Magz was also a popular guest at WRAP17 poetry events including her public reading at Beechworth Post Office, in which she reflected on the art of writing to an enthralled local audience, and readings at Pennyweight winery'.
Daren John Pope, Vice-President, Beechworth Arts Council