149:, who suffered a sudden and severe loss of sight due to macular degeneration which limited his ability to continue archival research and forced him to "find another, more personal voice and another way of writing". The book documents his own and his family's relationship to the past. This was a significant departure from Walker's academic work in which he is a pre-eminent authority on Australia's engagement with Asia. However, through this book, Walker found that the personal has a role in the writing of history; "small events also have their place in determining who we are and what we value as individuals and as a community".
165:, a copper mining town 156 km (97 miles) north of Adelaide, where his family were well-known shopkeepers. Of particular significance is the story of Luke Day, a relative through marriage and a Chinese merchant in Burra. Here the personal narrative intersects with the author's academic interests and Walker uses Day's life to re-examine the position held by the Chinese in Australian society during a period when Australian racial nationalism and the resultant
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described the book as “a charismatic and enigmatic work... curious, wry, poignant and sweet”. It combined elements of, "a memoir, a family history, a cultural history of modern
Australia, a study of memory, legend and storytelling, an investigation of national character, a local and regional study, a
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was an "intriguing and engaging book... made even more readable by Walker's personality, which comes across as modest, funny and wry as he tells (his) stories. He's stoic but realistic about his precarious physical state and mildly self-reproaching for having, as a professional historian, undervalued
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Despite these tragedies the book's premise is one of joy and optimism. This is achieved through the author's wit and good-natured humour in the face of misfortune. A single example in the first chapter sets the tone of the book. When his ophthalmologist told him that he was now "legally blind", his
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found Walker to be "a delightful, witty guide who balances thorough research with banter. While his memoir moves through some of the darkest moments of contemporary and personal history, including World War II atrocities and mental breakdowns, he maintains a fluid, easy style that combines empathy
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In later sections of the book Walker intimately describes the lives of his parents and his own journey into academia. Australia's engagement with Asia is again given prominence through the description of the devastating effects that the Second World War had on the author's family. When he was a
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of
Australian prisoners of war. The brutality and apparent pointlessness of Laurie's death resonated in the Walker family over the next two generations. The book also explores the lives of two other uncles whose lives were affected by the war. One served in
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child, Walker was unaware of the fate of uncle Laurie and mention of his name lead to uncomfortable silences. This led Walker to use his historian's skills to investigate Laurie's life. He discovered that his uncle had volunteered for service with the
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the idea of family history for so long...the book exerts the same powerful grip on the reader as the family chronicles and sagas of good 19th-century fiction and has the same kind of deep, complicated, personal appeal." Professor Tom
Griffiths of the
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traces the story of Walker's family over five generations; from the settlement of his great-great grandparents in South
Australia in the 1850s until the death of his mother in the 1990s. Many of the early chapters are set in
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were strident. Walker captures the essence of life in a small
Australian town at the beginning of the twentieth century with all its strengths, limitations and petty jealousies.
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in North Africa, New Guinea and Borneo. A further poignant episode is Walker's gentle description of his mother's decline into dementia and subsequent death.
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described the book as “an evocative portrait of 20th century
Australia …the attitudes, idiosyncrasies and prejudices of the era.”
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discovered interconnections between Walker's family history and his long term academic interests. The stories told in
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emphasised elements of
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immediate response was to ask if it was possible for him to be "illegally blind" instead.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/visible-darkness/story-e6frg8nf-1226021667661
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received an extensive and positive critical response. Kerryn
Goldsworthy in the
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Andrew Moore, “David Walker, Not Dark Yet: A Personal
History.(Book review)",
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but through a series of fateful mishaps was captured and executed in the
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reflection on history and the historian’s craft, an auto-ethnography".
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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2011/3182038.htm
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Kerryn
Goldsworthy, “Family Gets its Place in History",
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Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History
351:Tom Griffiths, “Not Dark Yet: A personal history",
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145:is a 2011 book by Australian cultural historian
422:http://www.giramondopublishing.com/not-dark-yet
243:with cheekiness". Andrew Moore writing in
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364:2014-08-19
261:References
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69:Publisher
41:Language
153:Summary
49:Subject
44:English
31:Author
179:Ambon
163:Burra
105:Pages
59:Genre
127:OCLC
114:ISBN
84:2011
108:312
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
