I read this for our December Book Club read. My Tidda, My Sister is a collection of biographical short stories told by young Indigenous woman Marlee Silva, of the instagram page Tiddas4Tiddas. The aim of the book was to showcase stories of successful Indigenous Australian women as an inspiration to other Indigenous women. The word Tiddas means sisters in some Indigenous Australian languages.

This was a beautifully presented and illustrated book that would likely be an uplifting read for young Blak women. One of the recurring issues dealt with was the difficulty of being a light-skinned Indigenous person in a society that struggles to accept and understand this. The book promotes tolerance and acceptance of white-passing blakfullas and their cultural identity.

For me personally, I found this book skimmed over the stories and I was unable to gain much sense of the women written about. I also found it impossible to be fully immersed in any of the stories as the narrator-voice was very intrusive and kept returning to her own story or responses. It reads more like a blog, and I guess for me reading a book too many mentions of hashtags and I’m out.

I was unaware of the controversy surrounding the book until after reading it. Some of the concerns were raised by the Indigenous community, and I believe were about cultural accountability, whether knowledge was shared that should not have been, the use of people’s words and stories from the blog, and also a perpetuation of colonial mindset by highlighting the successes of women using a fairly white view of success. Culturally I am unable to comment on any of this and I have no knowledge about whether Marlee consulted with Aboriginal elders about her work and whether permission was sought to share womens’ stories. I can see that it forms a fairly narrow slice of Indigenous Australian experience featuring predominantly urban women who tended to be university graduates. There did not seem to be any representation of women from remote communities or women who contributed to their mob by raising their grandchildren for example, or were successful in any broader sense.

What does make me sad however, is the effective cancelling of a young Blak woman whose aim was to inspire other young women. The Tiddas4Tiddas instagram platform has been shut down since the backlash. I understand why we cancel wealthy middle-aged sexual predators, although usually it seems to make little dent on them, but to cancel a young, positive woman of colour seems an entirely different thing. I can only hope this truly is related to issues of cultural accountability that have been created through youth and naïveté and maybe can be remedied, and that it is not another example of the Tall Poppy Syndrome which is sadly so ubiquitous in Australia. Overall a wonderful idea and an important book representing voices we do not hear enough from, but sadly weighed down by issues in its creation and execution. ( )