It was 1972 when my father interviewed Germaine Greer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney. I was eight at the time, and although I had heard of his guest, I certainly didn’t have enough interest in what she had to say to actually sit and listen to his programme. But then, I never…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘After all, it was only politics, and I was too young to understand.’
‘The eye wants to see its fill, the I wants to see how it feels.’
Saskia Vogel on the foundational stories of pornography.
‘The only thing that was clear was that the square would be full, and Opantish had to be ready.’
An excerpt from Yasmin El-Rifae’s account of the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath, Radius.
‘By the time I was in my teens, I had taken up an existence framed by a double negative: not male, not white.’
An excerpt from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s essay collection, Black and Female.
‘It is easy, when we are young, to have ideals and to live according to them.’
An excerpt from Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born.
‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’
