'Why Weren T We Told,' By Henry Reynolds

Every individual subscribes to a different representation of a political issue. In the memoir, Why Weren’t We Told (1999), Henry Reynolds attempts to convince readers that his version of events is the truth regarding what is now known as the ‘History Wars’. Reynolds uses anecdotal evidence and a strong personal voice to present his view that the colonisation of Australia was a violent invasion which has been largely ignored by historians and politicians before 1960. Complementing Reynolds work is Allan Ginsberg’s poem America (1956), which presents the perspective of the Beat Generation on the volatile political atmosphere of the USA during the Cold War. A strong personal focus and appeal for social change conveys the passion and conviction
Similarly to how Reynolds exposes the marginalisation of indigenous Australians, Ginsberg describes the alienation of many Americans due to Cold War politics. He immediately expresses his dissatisfaction with the state of the US, using sequences of apostrophes to address ‘America’ directly and turning the poem into a kind of argument with the personified country. Like Reynolds, he has an intensely personal focus, using the first-person and drawing on his own experiences to show ‘America’ his disillusionment. He reveals in the first stanza how the country used to inspire him – ‘you made me want to be a saint’- juxtaposing this with the disenchantment he feels now – ‘I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet’. The use of free verse with minimal punctuation and broken grammar gives the poem a deranged quality, suggesting that America is driving him mad. This is reinforced by line 7 where he almost sulks, ‘I don’t feel good don’t bother me’. Ginsberg reveals the source of his consternation as the militaristic and fanatically anti-Communist political atmosphere of the 1950s, and uses satire to mock those he sees as conforming to blind nationalism. He writes in the third stanza, ‘America it’s them bad Russians…the Russia want to eat us alive’. The childish grammar and hyperbole ridicules the widespread
He exposes past historians for ignoring violence, such as one who claimed ‘Australia was the only country which had been acquired by peaceful occupation’. Reynolds argues that this ignorance prevents Australians from coming to terms with their past, and his criticism is conveyed by his metaphoric classification of the omission as the ‘Great Australian Silence’. He holds that colonisation involved constant violent conflict between settlers and indigenous tribes. To support his view, Reynolds highlights the openness with which violence was admitted and discussed in the colonial era. In Chapter 9 he includes the account of a settler who wrote, ‘our best shots are after them…there will be weeping and wailing shortly’. The writer’s callous attitude to brutality reflects the ubiquitous presence of violence Reynolds wishes to portray. Consequently, he concludes in Chapter 14 that the conflict was part of an invasion process intended to ‘terrorise the indigenous peoples into acquiescence’. Reynolds links this past mistreatment of indigenous Australians to the present day social injustice they face, recalling one lawyer’s statement that ‘he could not bring himself to believe that killing a black man was as serious a matter as killing a white one’. The confession illustrates the way