Kathleen Mary Fallon is a novelist, poet, playwright, script writer and critic. She was a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Melbourne for eight years.
Why does Fa’Aoso tell his story now? The reason is a shame and stain on this country, and not one that many whitefellas in their midforties would have for writing their memoir: early death.
There are shades of Swift in Cannon’s solutions to the Birth-Strikes movement: ‘have your child and shoot a banker … gun down a fossil fuel executive … kill a politician for each child you have’.
Living as we do in the grip of the mind-numbing spin of the 24-hour news cycle, one horror event after another desensitising us, what happens to our memory, our sensitivity, our political engagement?