Review: Eve Langley and The Pea Pickers by Helen Vines (Monash University Publishing)
When your subject is a mid-century, gender-ambiguous author who lived under other names and wasn’t always honest about basic points of identification, writing a biography is a huge challenge. But Helen Vines’ Eve Langley and The Pea Pickers builds a substantial picture of this elusive author. Eve (left) and June Langley, 1920s. Courtesy of Monash University Publishing
I first came to Langley’s work through her 1940 poem Native-Born as part of my research on dead kangaroos in Australian literature.
Langley had been absent from my educational curriculum, dominated by her male contemporaries Kenneth Slessor, Nevil Shute and the school-boy squabbles of the Ern Malley affair and the more influential Patrick White and Randolph Stow. This wasn’t unusual in the 80s and 90s. Now, it is hard to justify any more than a sprinkling of them in an English course.
It’s Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras festival time. LGBTQI people are enjoying what some call “gay or lesbian Christmas”. It’s not quite the same in the era of COVID, but a contained version of the famous street parade will be beamed into living rooms on Saturday.
The public face of Mardi Gras, which began in 1978 with a protest parade, is remarkable in a nation that has been deeply prejudiced toward gay and lesbian people. Part of the power of Mardi Gras for older generations was that it removed queer sexualities from the “secret” confines of semi-legal bar and club locations and private parties to the public street. Being on the front page of the newspaper no longer meant you might be going to jail.