Book Club: Benevolence

To acknowledge and celebrate the 2021 NAIDOC Week theme Heal Country!, Lenka Vanderboom is running a special Book Club event exploring Benevolence by Julie Janson. Benevolence is set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people, in Parramatta and Sydney, 1816–35. The intensely visual prose interweaves historical events with detailed characterisation to shatter stereotypes and gives voice to an Aboriginal experience of early settlement. Author Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation. Lenka Vanderboom grew up in the Kimberley on her Yawuru homelands, and is a Director of Indigenous publishing house Magabala Books Indigenous publishing house.