Comfort Food

An example of a suitable prayer might be found in the fifth stanza: we are not here until we sit here we sit in silence and we are open there are different kinds of time I hope you'll understand Van Neerven's well aware of her predominantly white audience, as those of us who fit that category are well aware of her status as up-and-coming-Aboriginal-writer (her debut work - a short story collection called Heat and Light - won the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize, the Queensland Literary Award for State Significance, and the Readings Prize) so those last two lines carry enormous weight. The way an evening tumble-turns out of trouble, warm voices, tunnel of black beans, every tamale tastes the same (27) just as it envelops connection she is of the bear people so she's first to the berries take off your socks, show your fur and I'll show you my feathers. There are differences between black and white that go far beyond colour - specifically historical differences and those that are felt in the blood and in the gut - and Comfort Food recognises this with an aim to share stories from the one side of the table that rarely gets a chance to speak (the other so busy talking with their mouths full of food as if the food will otherwise disappear).