17/20 Identity and Belonging (Skin) Short-story Example.

[brenden]

Hey guys. After I had an inspection of scripts earlier this year, I went home and re-wrote the pieces from memory (which was made pretty easy because I'd talked to people about my exam so much they were all embedded into my brain anyway).
A user asked how they could transition between third-person narration and first-person narration, and I figured it's always better to show than to tell, so I thought of this piece. It should be noted that this is a pretty short piece (784 words including the title), however, I wouldn't recommend writing such a short piece in the exam - this was written in thirty minutes (I made many mistakes in the exam) and is actually unfinished, unfortunately. I wrote it down almost exactly as it was written in the exam, and as much as I want to, I haven't made any improvements etc, so this is an accurate representation of what my assessors read last year (though I suspect they were lenient assessors). Click the spoiler for the piece! It should be noted: there's some relatively offensive language used within the story.

Spoiler

Each person has different identities for different relationships and situations.

'Stolen: Australia’s Genocide'

   From 1909 to the late 1960s, Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in institutions or with white families. The ultimate aim of the Government bodies and the Church at this time was to... “breed them out”. They arrived to remove any remnant of Aboriginal identity and culture, forcing Aboriginal children away from relationships with their parents, siblings and friends and into relationships with the “superior white race”. Alive in Australia today are still many Indigenous people who never knew their Mums, Dads, Brothers and Sisters. These are their stories.

We are the Stolen
We have no identity
We are the last ones

   I screamed as they tore down the curtain that acted as my parents’ bedroom door, shining their great big lights in our just closed eyes.
   “Sleeping together. Bloody pigs.” I heard them say. I was sleeping with my parents; I had nightmares about the White Man taking me.
   Now they took everything I got.
   I was ten years old.
   Ten.
   Years.
   Old.
   At home, I was the bubbly one. “You put a smile on our face, orright, Vegemite” the elders would say as I scampered around the tiny village of Cooper Pedy. I was the joker; the prankster. I had good education, too. I was the smartest, they said. I had to be pretty smart when they bloody took me away. I said I was bubbly at home. But not now. Not then. Not with them, in that situation. I was a black face with White Men. Deference is what I required.
   “You a nigger, huh?” It wasn’t a question.
   “Yes Sir. Sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to be.”
   “Ha ha ha, Sir she says. You hear that, Baz? This one called me Sir. Bitch shoulda been white!”
   I kept my eyes cast down, trying to hide the sparkling chocolate colour that was my Aboriginality. Now was no time to be bubbly. I didn’t open my mouth. In fact, I never really spoke much from then on. Always at White houses, White churches, White schools. It just wasn’t the right time, the right place.
   On May 26th, 1916, the “Aboriginal Protection Board” was established as part of the “Aboriginal Protection Act, 1915”. Essentially, they were given absolute power to remove Aboriginal children from their family, without a court order. They didn’t answer to the Police, nor to the Government. They answered only to their own morality, which told them the Aboriginal children would be better off. Unfortunately, this sentiment was not true; more stolen children were abused, sexually and mentally than any other in Australia. 50% of all Indigenous people to ever die in custody were members of the Stolen Generation.

We are the Stolen
There is no hope anymore
We are broken now

   “Touch me there, and I’ll scream”.
   “You wouldn’t dare”.
   “Watch me”.
   Quite normally she was a quiet girl, often thought to be ‘empty’ by her village. To the contrary, she was very smart, but wasn’t partial to the meaningless discussion of the rains in summer. If her village could see her now, in this situation, they wouldn’t believe their eyes. She felt forced, in a way she couldn’t afford to be who she was. In order to survive the situation she’d been dealt, she would need to be different. She would need to learn from those relationships which would keep her safe.
   This was not one of them.
   “Touch me with that thing and I swear to whatever God you believe in, your wife will never touch it again”.
   The man stood there, facing her against the bed, absent mindedly touching himself as he considered what she was saying. He was not so absent in her mind. She never thought an organ designed to make love could look so hideously threatening She held back the vomit as it stared her in the face.
   “Zip it up, leave now, and you’ll never have to deal with this again”.
   She paused for a lifetime. Never had she imagined hereself in this situation. Never as this person.
   “Slut”, he said as he walked away.
   When in Rome, she thought.
   Exact numbers are not known about the Stolen Generation; all records were destroyed. Three in ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were believed to be abducted from 1909 to 197. Over one hundred thousand
   Without a doubt, all were forced to compromise their personal and cultural identity, as the blank canvas of who they were was not painted by love and family, but by the atrocities of the relationships and situations they were forced to endure.
   These stories, they must never be repeated. They must never be forgotten. We are the Stolen Ones.

[werdna]

Legend!!

[brenden]

Legend!!

Too kind!