wicked women

Bite no tongues. Have you all a ticket yet?

As the marvellous Avid Reader recounts:

Come and be a part of ABC Radio National’s Kate Evans Presents for the launch of Francesca Rendle-Short’s Bite Your Tongue. Guest Readers include: Melissa Fagan, Eleanor Jackson and Tim McGuire.

Bite Your Tongue is a story of great heart. It is the story of a teenage girl’s growing up in Queensland during the 1970s, the daughter of a morals crusader: Angel Rendle-Short / Mother Joy Solider. The tale is thoroughly embedded in Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s conservative Queensland; a time of great social change for the whole of Australia.
The narrator’s family is characterised by the fervour of religious fundamentalism and extremism, which manifested itself in Angel’s highly public, right wing activism. Bite Your Tongue is also the story of the daughter as an adult and a writer, facing her mother’s mortality while at the same time ‘discovering’ her in archival materials.
These threads are woven together in a mix of novel and memoir, each informing and illuminating the other with their different voices, making Bite Your Tongue a highly original work. Using this unusual and fascinating form, Francesca presents a personal social history, documenting a strong, conservative protest movement with a very real list of books to ban and to burn.

I have a feeling I am going to like this lady. And considering the mighty Spinifex Press is putting this out, I’m thinking I might like her a lot. I might even sneak me a couple of mothercouragepoems in preparation for Chosen Family.