Childhood

Things may have been good for a while, but it didn't last: they argued fiercely and he left. Weeks later, she tracked him down and said she was pregnant. So he moved back in with her and they prepared themselves for parenthood.

Eleven months later I was born. By the time my father discovered the deception, it was too late.

In this arresting memoir, Shannon Burns recalls a childhood spent bouncing between dysfunctional homes in impoverished suburbs, between families unwilling or unable to care for him. Aged nine, he beats his head against the pillow to get himself to sleep. Aged ten, he knows his mother will never be able to look after him: he is alone, and can trust no-one.

Five years later, he is working in a recycling centre hard labour, poorly paidyet reading offers hope. He begins reciting lines from Greek lyric poets, Keats, Whitman, speeches by Martin Luther King, while sifting through the filthy cans and bottles. An affair with the mother of a schoolfriend eventually offers a way out, a path to a life utterly unlike the one he was born into.

Shannon Burns is a writer, critic and academic from Adelaide. His work has appeared in the Monthly, Meanjin, Australian Book Review and the Sydney Review of Books.

'Childhood reads like Gorky and Tolstoynot nudging but shoving the reader headfirst towards hard-won epiphanies with a brutal yet transcendent urgency.' Alice Pung

'Childhood is about more than reliving traumait shows us how literature can offer a pathway to survival, if not redemption. Shannon Burns demonstrates how to soldier on when all hope and dignity are lost.' Tyson Yunkaporta

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