Sinking In Between – Amanda Curtain’s The Sinkings
In her book, The Sinkings, book editor and author Amanda Curtain explores the 19th Century life of convict Little Jock, a life made all the more remarkable in that Little Jock lived as a man, but in death was found to have been a woman.
It’s this book that Curtain will be discussing in length at the end of this month at Katherine Susannah Prichard’s Meet The Author evenings.
The book interweaves the story of Willa Samson, a mother who’s daughter shares a similar experience to that of Little Jock: she too was born of indeterminate gender, or intersex.
What follows are two sets of lives, 100 years apart, interweaving themselves together.
‘The story has two strands running through it: there’s a historical story enfolded into the contemporary story,’ Curtain said.
‘The historical story is based on fact, drawn from an incident in the archives and very much fictionalised because there’s such a limit to what you can ever discover in the life of an anonymous person.
‘When you have someone well known or who is prominent in the community, they leave a trail behind them. But a small person does not do that.’
The two stories, told side-by-side, not only thrust the reader through history but provide an insight into how attitudes have shifted. The result led Curtain into unfamiliar territory, yet a landscape she navigated with compassion and insight.
‘What I wanted to do was look at the life of this person but also find the correlation in our time. My surmise was that Little Jock was intersex.
‘I didn’t know very much about intersex when I came across this so I started doing a lot of research. The research led me to the situation today: what would happen in the 20th Century, and the way that intersex instances are treated medically.’
Curtain made a conscious decision not to interview intersex people directly but rather read broadly in an attempt to comprehend the depth and breadth of the condition.
‘I was very aware that I needed to hear intersex voices and I wanted to respect and be respectful of those voices and hear as much as I could and there was a lot available to me,’ Curtain explained.
‘It felt to me like it was a respectful non-invasive way of listening to those voices without co-opting them.’
In Willa’s life, it’s Imogen who is intersex, a daughter who is absent for most of the story but discussed constantly.
‘There is a narrative going through Willa’s mind all the time: an imaginary conversation she’s having with Imogen. There’s always this tension with (Willa) between trying to understand and trying to defend herself.
‘She’s wanting to understand but she’s also trying to justify what she’s done, which is always a very uneasy thing.
‘So looking at Little Jock’s story I suppose she’s trying to understand, and at one point Imogen says to her “I wish I had been born in another time when you couldn’t have done what you did to meâ€.
‘She’s looking at what would have happened if her child had been born in a different time. There’s a lot of guilt.’
Amanda Curtin will be discussing The Sinkings at Katherine Susannah Prichard Writer’s Centre on Sunday June 27, 2.00 – 3.30pm. For further information go to http://kspf.iinet.net.au.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
