 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Germaine Greer |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury |
Publication date | 2013 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
White Beech: The Rainforest Years is a book describing efforts of regeneration of rainforest written by Germaine Greer. It was first published in 2013 by Bloomsbury and has been reprinted several times.
Germaine Greer was a successful writer by 2001 when she decided to invest all her earnings to purchase 60 hectares of overused land for a price of 268,000 pounds in the midst of a rainforest in Queensland, Australia. [1] It was a part of Gondwana forest that was logged during 19th century and converted to a banana farm during the 20th century. She left the place to itself so that the rainforest would regenerate, and by 2013 her experiment was successful, where a part of the overused land regenerated as rainforest. [2]
The book is described by The Independent as "a quasi-religious epic out of a part of her remarkable life when she decided to restore a small, wrecked rainforest in Australia, her homeland. The tone is apocalyptic, themes existential and critical". [1] The author received standing ovation on several occasions during her book introductory tour in Australia. [3] The writer herself declared in the prologue of the book that the story of this book is an extraordinary stroke of luck. [2] The New York Times dubs it "an untidy and mostly lackluster book, sad to say, one that buries her rhetorical gifts under several inches of mulch" but at the same time lauds it as one of the best love stories in book format. [4] The Australian describes it as an "encyclopedic book – taking in botany, history and humility – it is ultimately a reflection on the only significant question: how we live on earth". [5]
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Kathleen Kylie Tennant AO was an Australian novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer, and historian.
The Female Eunuch is a 1970 book by Germaine Greer that became an international bestseller and an important text in the feminist movement. Greer's thesis is that the "traditional" suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses women sexually, and that this devitalises them, rendering them eunuchs. The book was published in London in October 1970. It received a mixed reception, but by March 1971, it had nearly sold out its second printing. It has been translated into eleven languages.
Mark Doyle, better known by his stage name Louis Nowra, is an Australian writer, playwright, screenwriter and librettist.
Christine Wallace is an Australian political journalist, biographer and academic. She is currently an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow at the National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a 1992 animated musical fantasy film, directed by Bill Kroyer and scripted by Jim Cox. Adapted from the "FernGully" stories by Diana Young, the film is an Australian and American venture produced by Kroyer Films, Inc., Youngheart Productions, FAI Films and 20th Century Fox. The film stars the voices of Samantha Mathis, Tim Curry, Christian Slater, Jonathan Ward, Robin Williams, and Grace Zabriskie. FernGully is set in an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies including Crysta, who accidentally shrinks a young logger named Zak to the size of a fairy. Together, they rally the fairies and the animals of the rainforest to protect their home from the loggers and Hexxus, a malevolent pollution entity. Wayne Young, the film's producer, said the film was "blatantly environmental" though made an effort to avoid "preaching".
The Gubbi Gubbi people also known as Kabi Kabi are an Aboriginal Australian people native to south-eastern Queensland. They are now classified as one of several Murri language groups in Queensland.
Bonnie Greer, OBE FRSL is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster, who has lived in the UK since 1986. She has appeared as a panellist on television programmes such as Newsnight Review and Question Time and has served on the boards of several leading arts organisations, including the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the London Film School. She is Vice President of the Shaw Society. She is former Chancellor of Kingston University in Kingston upon Thames, London. In July 2022 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Jill Johnston was a British-born American feminist author and cultural critic who wrote Lesbian Nation in 1973 and was a longtime writer for The Village Voice. She was also a leader of the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s. Johnston also wrote under the pen name F. J. Crowe.
The Beautiful Boy is a book by radical feminist academic Germaine Greer, published in 2003 as The Boy in the Commonwealth by Thames & Hudson and in the rest of the world by Rizzoli. Its avowed intention was "to advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure". The book is a study of the youthful male face and form, from antiquity to the present day, from paintings and drawings to statuary and photographs.
Madeleine St John was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age and The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century.
Eva Maria Cox is an Austrian-born Australian writer, feminist, sociologist, social commentator and activist. She has been an active advocate for creating a "more civil" society. She was a long-term member of the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), and is still pursuing feminist change by putting revaluing social contributions and wellbeing onto political agendas, as well as recognising the common ground between Australia's First Nations and feminist values of the importance of the social.
Gmelina leichhardtii, the white beech, is a tree of eastern Australia. Scattered individuals or small groups of trees naturally occur from the Illawarra district of New South Wales to near Proserpine in tropical Queensland. The white beech or grey teak is a fast-growing tree, growing on volcanic and alluvial soils in areas of moderate to high rainfall. It also grows on poorer sedimentary soils in fire free areas. White beech may occasionally be seen in Australian rainforests, though their status is considered "uncommon". Unlike the Australian red cedar, the white beech has not recovered particularly well after logging in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Rachael Padman is an Australian physics lecturer at the University of Cambridge in England. From Melbourne, Padman was a graduate in electrical engineering from Monash University, Australia, and specialised in radio astronomy. After her doctoral research, she has made contributions to research in stellar evolution. She is now mainly involved in administrative works in teaching. Padman is a member of the International Astronomical Union.
Australia has a long-standing association with the protection and creation of women's rights. Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote and the first to give women the right to be elected to a national parliament. The Australian state of South Australia, then a British colony, was the first parliament in the world to grant women full suffrage rights. Australia has since had multiple notable women serving in public office as well as other fields. Women in Australia with the notable exception of Indigenous women, were granted the right to vote and to be elected at federal elections in 1902.
The Kombumerri clan are one of nine distinct named clan estate groups of the Yugambeh people and the name refers to the Indigenous people of the Nerang area on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Australia
Daddy, We Hardly Knew You is a 1989 book by feminist academic Germaine Greer. The book is a biography about her father who was an Australian intelligence officer during World War II. According to Penguin Random House, the book took three years to write and her objective was to discover information about her father that she claimed was distant from her life.