Stone Sky Gold Mountain in Aussie Readers

Apr 10, 2020 Michael Livingston rated it it was amazing

This is a wonderful novel that focuses on the experience of the Chinese community in the gold rush of in Far North Queensland in the late 19th century. The writing is beautiful, the plot surprisingly pacy and the characters beautifully drawn - Riwoe is a really great writer and she's done such a lovely job of exploring big questions of identity, belonging, gender, racism and migration inside a smart, entertaining, sad book. Funny to read this right after It's Raining in Mango, which is set (at l ...more

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Jul 18, 2020 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-fiction, australian-author, australian-women-writers, act-library, 2020-read, historical-fiction, 2020-aus-release, 2021-mf-possible

I've been waiting to read a book from this point of view since my 1977, school excursion to the Chinese Cemetery in country Victorian Beechworth, a fine historic gold-mining town. Gold rushes always attracted large numbers of people and especially many came from Guangdong (Canton province) in China. The cemetery in Beechworth was so large, it made me wonder what those peoples experiences were and where we might read about it.
Finally, here we have a story that centres on Chinese narrating their e ...more

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Jan 01, 2022 Averil rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021

This award-winning novel is set in 1877 during the Queensland gold rush. Telling the early Australian story from a Chinese-migrant perspective is somewhat unusual (in my reading experience); the Asian-Australian literary voice is still in its infancy.
The author weaves together the stories of a young female servant working for a woman who is popular in town with the men (wink wink nudge nudge say no more say no more), a young Chinese woman, and her brother. As one review put it, the everyday str ...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Dee-Ann rated it it was amazing

Shelves: movie-material, friendship, australian-authors, historical-fiction, five-star, indigenous-issues, bookclub

Really good. Surprised. I read the back blurb on the book and had some trepidation about reading this book as it sound harrowing, but it was part of a bookclub selection, so went with it. It was a bit harsh, but it was interesting and involved a part of Australian history which I had not thought about, especially from a Chinese perspective. I have been left with a memory of what was or could be eaten … the frogs in our backyard should be nervous :) .

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