It's Raining in Mango

Thea Astley’s It’s Raining in Mango (1987) is a story of Australian history told through five generations of the Laffey family. Astley introduces several issues to the reader that were and still are part of Australian society. Through the use of narrative techniques including characterisation, narrative point of view and naming, Astley is able to position the reader to challenge such societal ideologies, and instead support the thoughts and ideas expressed by the strong and dominant characters in the text. Two issues developed in the text are race and gender.



Throughout the text, the white colonists are very racist towards the Aboriginals. Even cattle, horses and white women are placed hierarchically higher in society than the black people. In response to this, Astley constructs all narrations to be written through the eyes of the Laffey family, who are respectful towards Aboriginals, hence not racist, and despise societal ideologies. By making the narration of the text show a biased point of view, readers are provoked to think and feel the same way, foregrounding racism shown in the ideologies of early Australian society, and showing that Aboriginals are real people and should receive the same treatment to that given to white people. “They looked human, they had all your features.” (pg 27) There was, however, one section in the text whose narrative point of view was not given by a character in the Laffey family. This instead was given by a voice of an Aboriginal woman, when the Aboriginal children were being taken away from their families. By giving voice to the Aboriginal society, the reader is able to get a glimpse of their point of view on the matter, which once again shows that society was racist, and Aboriginals were treated harshly.



Another narrative technique used to bring forward the issue of race is naming. By using harsh names to describe racist white people, it made Aboriginals seem a far ‘softer’ race. An example of this...