Prison usually means unchecked control and power: juvenile prison in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Photo: dpa
Down Under continues to have a racism problem. A white skin color is considered a ticket to middle-class life with a reasonably secure job and a career ladder. Television and popular culture are predominantly white. Film and literature have repeatedly tried to convey the customs, mythology and social problems of the Aborigines. Cinema fans may remember Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout” (1971) or Werner Herzog’s parable “Where the Green Ants Dream” (1984). The 1987 novel “The Songlines” by the British part-time nomad Bruce Chatwin may have done the most to promote the world of Australia’s indigenous population, even though he probably did not speak directly to Aborigines.
The English immigrant Arthur W. Upfield (1890–1964) invaded the Australian outback (pastureland) with his 29 Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte novels. In the noughties, Adrian Hyland caused a bit of a stir. The Irish-born traveler to China had lived in Aboriginal communities, trained for adults and published the crime novels “Diamond Dove” and “Gunshot Road”, both published in German by Suhrkamp. The protagonist is the daughter of a white man and an Aboriginal woman. For her, love and burning hate are not opposites.
Adam Morris, an “author, musician/songwriter, award-winning filmmaker, special education teacher and university lecturer,” as the publisher announces, has now made a new literary attempt. What he put down on paper is impressive, excellently translated by Conny Lösch. His trick: As a white man, he doesn’t even try to let black people report from their perspective. He only hints at what he wants to say. Nothing seems stranger to him than the piercing index finger. His crime novel “Bird” is more of a prison novel, although prison itself is a crime. Because prison means uncontrolled control and power. Prison is excess and sadism. A so-called prison career usually means the hamster wheel, you can’t get out, everything spirals. As in real life: without a job there is no apartment, without an apartment there is no job. Vicious circle.
“Bird” is a classic social beat drama, it observes, describes, shows grievances, but does not judge (i.e. the devil’s work for the correct community). No reader wants to be patronized. One looks for the violation of the law in the act. There’s a bit of fiddling around, some fists are loose. Serious things are written differently. Women rarely appear (not even in the pub) and when they do, they are addicts or socially dependent or both. You could say it is classic men’s literature. The men mostly come off better than they really are. A great book for women with helper syndrome. Otherwise you are either in prison or out. Hip hop, don’t stop. Black or white. That’s also what the chapters are called: “In”, “Out” and “Shake It All Around”.
The protagonist is twenty-something Noongar Aboriginal Carson. Inside, outside, inside again. Common sense tells you that this man is right. He doesn’t look for a fight, but defends himself when he can no longer prevent conflict. He’s actually almost exemplary, but he has the wrong skin color for white Australia. Dirt is constantly attached to him, strangling him like a noose. The more he defends himself, passively rebels, the more the noose tightens. The white people are blind to his world, only seeing themselves. And it must be someone’s fault that they are doing so well. It’s our man. What good does it do him if the art teacher thinks he is intelligent? What good is a psychologist who doesn’t have herself under control? What does the probation officer ask him about how lucrative dealing is?
He remains the plaything of a system; you either drive or are driven. Clear distribution of roles. The story is told brokenly and from a variety of perspectives, as we know from Helmut Krausser. Everyone dreams of other lives, not just those in prison, of the Big Bang, of quick money without making much effort. That’s why things like this usually never work. And inside? Storage and administration, in the worst case, torture. The expression “revolving door of crime” that I read in the German media in this context is interesting. That means: it always comes back.
»Bird« is a polyphony. There’s a lot of talk. About and about wrong decisions. What is a real one? Is it wrong? The tiring, absurd future plans of the inmates in prison are fatally similar to those of the people who are not inside. Difference: In the west of the continent, the proportion of indigenous prisoners is over 50 percent, although indigenous people only make up 2.8 percent of the Australian population. Racism is spelled exactly like that. The life expectancy of Aboriginal people is around 20 years less than that of white people. Black and white is anachronistic anyway. The world is not black and white. She is complex.
Adam Morris: Bird. A. d. austr. Engl. v. Conny Lösch. Edition Nautilus, 304 S., br., 20 €.