Voz del pasado
ALF TAYLOR
Published in October 2006 in Spanish
Original title: "Long time now"
In Voz del Pasado (Long Time Now), Alf Taylor´s literary style transmits the cadences and musicality typical of the Aboriginal oral tradition. Using an intimate narrative discourse devoid of complicated metaphors and plot lines, Taylor offers his readers a sensitive and visual text, creating characters that come alive and are richly profiled. The narrative voice is marbled through with Aboriginal English which one might be tempted to consider naïve but which becomes subversive, introducing us into the spiritual landscape of the loser, revealing the horror and tragedy inflicted upon the generations of children removed from their families and ancestral homelands to distant missions.
Taylor’s work is a collection of short stories all driven by similar narrative dynamics and perspectives forming an interrelated narrative which may be read as a novel. This interrelation between the stories forcefully drives home the physical and cultural marginalisation still prevalent today among the Aboriginal community. Whichever way one chooses to read the collection, the text enables the reader to value a community which has been discriminated against and marginalised for over two hundred years.
SUSAN BALLYN, 'Executive Director of Australian Studies' in the English Department of the University of Barcelona
ALF TAYLOR was born in Perth in the late 1940s and is one of Australia’s most respected aboriginal writers. As a young man he worked around Perth and Geraldton as a seasonal farm worker. He then joined the Armed forces and was based at various locations around Australia. Taylor then left the Armed Forces and went home. After a marriage, eight children (only three of whom survived), and a divorce, Alf Taylor found his voice as a writer and poet.
He has published two volumes of poetry, Singer Songwriter (1992) and Winds (1994) and a collection of short stories, Long Time Now: Stories of the Dreamtime, the here and now (2001). He is currently writing a memoir, which is near completion, titled God, the Devil and Me, about his early experience and forced removal from his family, as part of the ‘Stolen Generation’ policy, to the New Norcia Mission at the age of 7 along with his brother.
Interview with Alf Taylor in India
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.