Tiddas by Anita Heiss

Tiddas by Anita Heiss

You cannot help but pick up the book ‘Tiddas’ authored by Anita Heiss. The spray of big blue jacarandas on a white cover of a bigger –than-usual-size novel, makes it impossible to miss.  Besides the attractive cover, the title intrigues the reader and you would like to know what it means. Tiddas is an Australian aboriginal word which means sisters.  The story is about five best friends who have grown up together and are now approaching midlife. They know each other inside out and have stood together through thick and thin. There comes a point in their lives where each one harbours a deep secret inside her.  When one day the pandora’s box opens, they become privy to hidden stories that they haven’t told one another –“ indeed the truth is the hardest to share.”

Izzy , soon to be the first black woman in New South Wales to host her own TV show , is shocked to find out that she is pregnant and has to choose between her media career and her baby.  On the other hand,  Xanthe has been desperately trying to conceive since years.  In spite of a good marriage,  she feels incomplete, because motherhood is the ultimate achievement for  Koori women of the Wiragjuri  community in Australia.  Veronica, the diehard wife and mother, has been served divorce papers. Her three precious sons have all grown up and gone into the world.  She is lonely and floundering to find meaning in life beyond being a homemaker.  Ellen, the spinster and community worker enjoys being single and free.  She is visited by love and is in turmoil, needing advice how best to handle her emotions.  And lastly, Nadine the successful white woman writer, is out of grips with herself, grappling with alcoholism and mood swings (onset of menopause) she can hardly contain within. 

Izzy and Nadine are not just friends but are related.  Izzy’s brother Richards is married to Nadine. The marriage is cozy and intimate, wherein Richard is the home maker, a reversal of roles for a man of the Wiradjuri community.  He is frowned upon by the Murri women (Aborgines in Queensland) in Brisbane where they live close to the countryside and back home by his Koori mother and elderly aunts.  Moreover, with Nadine’s  uncharacteristic rude behaviour, there is uneasiness between friends and family groups.  But the strength of the book is the unconditional bond between Richard and Nadine overriding distinctions of colour, class and race.      

Besides jacarandas lining the river and the town of Brisbane and appearing every now and then in the course of the book, Queensland’s cultural precincts too find a mention in the novel through the activities of the five women.  From the town and city, readers are taken to the aboriginal countryside for community festivals and family funerals. The rituals and practices of the Wiradjuri people to which Ellen, Xanthe and Izzy belong have been dwelt upon in detail by the author. The aboriginal community centre and the myriad activities keep the reader abreast of the indigenous flavour of the communities of Australia.

And just like the Jacarandas appear in different colours, so do the many aboriginal tribes and people through the novel, bound by common threads of humanness.  It could also be a metaphor for the five women cutting across colour wars, the black and white deadly tiddas; distinct in mood and mannerism but tied together by strong unbreakable cords of love and friendship.  The one line epigraph, a quote by Virginia Woolf, “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends” shines a torch on the theme of the novel beautifully.  The book’s dedication adds to it - “to my tiddas for lifting me from life’s moments of darkness into the light again.”

Another very interesting feature of the novel is the book club that rocking tiddas are a part of and they call themselves ‘Vixens’, an acronym for their names.  Book tours, launches and literary agents complete the score in the social celebrity lifestyle of the character of Nadine.  The book activity becomes a strategic stylistic prop used by the author to have multiple meetings of the friends where the action in the novel then plays out. Through this situational group activity, the author very smartly highlights the classical and contemporary literature of Australia. The novels under discussion through the book at various points are:  Legacy by Larrissa Behrendt, The old School by PM Newton, The Boundary by Nicole Watson, My Husband’s Lovers by Susan Johnson, The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper .........

The author folds in a lot of religious ritualistic information through the character of Ellen. Otherwise a free woman, she is a funeral celebrant i.e. she conducts the funeral services of the close-knit Koori ethnic group and supports them during the hours of crisis by giving a honourable rite of passage to the dead members of the community.  This brings in a lot of traditional ritualistic information to the reader.  An unusual vocation for a woman, its inclusion lends a realistic edge to the novel on life and kinship.

Dr Anita Heiss is a writer, activist and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central NSW.  To know more about her you can watch her at the 2013 presentation at TEDxBrisbane.