Revolutionary Baby

Revolutionary Baby: views and reviews

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Having a kind of fun experimenting with different ways to let people know this book is out now and available to buy as a paperback or download as an e-book. Experimented with making reels or vdos using the images above which were AI generated. Seems lie MP4s using AI images on Canva won’t download to Instagram. No idea why.

Turns out also that Amazon reviews written by readers in the UK don’t show up on the Amazon pages for other Amazon sites. To get a review to show up on Amazon.com it needs to be loaded by someone in the US using a .com account, The whole Amazon ecosystem is so US focussed. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, there isn’t anywhere else in the world really. I don’t think my video can be posted here either, but I’ll give it a try.

Feeling super frustrated about the use of social media as it is now. Used to be people following you saw whatever you posted. Now algorithms determine everything and each individual gets things the algorithm thinks they want. Presumably this is to encourage paid advertising on the social sites, which has now become a deluge. There doesn’t seem to be any community or collective environment left any more except in Groups, and there you get kicked out if you try to “advertise” without a commercial account. The immutable logic of the system forces everyone into a straitjacket with $$$$$$$ signs on all sides.

Reviews can be posted on websites, but then only those following the website already can see them. But if you’d like to post a review anyway, positive or otherwise, use the Contact form on this site and I’ll put it up on the Book page.

A REVIEW OF REVOLUTIONARY BABY: from Chris Stevenson, artist and avid reader.

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REVIEW: REVOLUTIONARY BABY: Strange Tales from the Twentieth Century

Born in the same year as the author I found some of these stories echoed my own confusion when the personal coincided with the political. These “strange tales” are sometimes gripping, at times nostalgic and always thought-provoking.

Women’s liberation is just one of the “revolutions” addressed in Revolutionary Baby. The author is careful not to side with women only. When Max in the first story attempts to seduce an unwilling young Judith, she is rescued by Gabro who is, perhaps unsurprisingly, European.

As the first female in my family to attend university, I recognised Judith’s mother’s description of university study as “sham-work, not real work” in the first story, “Beyond Engagement”.

Having participated in the anti-Vietnam protest marches, I particularly enjoyed the second story “Revolutionary Baby”. The single-mindedness of a heavily pregnant woman’s insistence on taking part in a violent demonstration is counterpointed by the confusion of her solicitor husband contending with different voices: his father “you can’t let women talk to you like that” or his mother “you shouldn’t have married her, she’s a slut” (p. 42). Hamilton is empathetic with the perspective of both genders ensuring that her book will appeal to both male and female readers.

Locations for the stories are varied and vitally important to the narrative. Hamilton describes the jacarandas “bursting into purple on the Birchgrove waterfront” (p. 68). And evoking Bangkok in another story, “Rain falls in October, the gutters fill, the laneways overflow”. (p 145).

The stories that are most poignant are those set in various Sydney suburbs – or is this bias on my part because I grew up in Sydney? The following passage encapsulates an attitude shared by many women of my generation: “She wanted a revolution all right but it wasn’t one with slogans and arguments and men fighting each other over who was top dog in the park. She wanted a revolution where people looked out for each other … where people took care of the weak … gave each other what they needed”. (p. 37).

I strongly recommend this book to the Baby Boomer generation and the one following it. I’d like to think that the next generation would appreciate learning more about the revolutions both in Australia and abroad that simultaneously stimulated and confused the generations of their parents.