Becoming Kirrali Lewis

by Jane Harrison

Description







Kirrali is seventeen and embarking on a Law Degree at a prestigious University. She is Aboriginal but was adopted into a white family and has a great experience in her family. She has no desire to seek out her birth mother.

At university she begins to meet other Aboriginal people who have had vastly different experiences to her and starts to become more interested in finding her birth mother. Impulsively she confronts a woman who is her birth mother – but it is not what she is expecting – her mother is white - and the relationship is strained and difficult. The middle section of the book segues to her mother’s perspective. She eventually gets to meet her birth father (we go back to Kirrali’s POV) before he succumbs to heart failure. Along the way Kirrali negotiates living away from home, making new friends, working part time for a racist boss and embarking on a relationship with an Aboriginal young man.

Topics:






* Identity as an Aboriginal person

* Identity as a adopted child

* Going to university

* Police brutality and deaths in custody

* Aboriginal services

* Significant Aboriginal events

* Racism

Details

Audience

Year 9 & 10 Secondary Students

Duration

50 - 60 minutes including question time

Requirements

Data Projector with ability to plug in a USB

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