An interview with Boori Pryor and Meme McDonald

1999 was an exciting and busy year for storytellers and authors Boori Monty Pryor and Meme McDonald. Two of their books were shortlisted for the annual Children's Book Council of Australia Awards, with My girragundji winning the Books for Younger Readers category. Boori and Meme collaborate with Boori's family on their writing projects, enabling a wide audience to experience Aboriginal culture and to share in the important messages inherent in these stories. Their most recent book is The Binna Binna man. Ian McLean, editor of Scan, recently spoke to Boori and Meme about their body of work.

Scan: Boori, we have heard you described as a storyteller, and you refer to yourself as the "designated" storyteller of your family. What are the most important things about being a storyteller?

Boori Pryor: My aunty saw me at a young age, five or six. She said that she knew that I was going to be the storyteller, the one to be given the stories, and I think my journey through life has taken all the right steps. I don't know how Aunty knew at such a young age, but that's how it happens. She was selected the same way.

I love listening to stories. I love telling stories. There are different ways to tell them and different times. I suppose that storytelling is a personal thing. When you have varying age groups, preschool through to Year 12, prisons and high schools and whatever, there are different ways that you tell the stories, but you have the same effect. When I speak I don't lecture. I tell stories. rather than saying, "You white people should listen!" Everybody likes a good story, whether it's sad, happy, cruel, or whatever.

Scan: How did you move from the oral tradition to a written story? What do each of you bring to the writing partnership.

BP: I think Meme uses the power of the white man's magic, the words, to tell the magic of the black man's stories. That's what she does. Does that sound right, Meme?

Meme McDonald: It sounds pretty good to me.

BP: She's a witch! (Laughter from Boori and Meme.) I think that writing skills are important. We use a conversational form in the three books we've done together. A lot of kids love the sounds of Aboriginal words. Those kinds of things, those connections, are important parts of the story.

MM: One of the reasons why we work so well together is that we bring different skills to the books we've written. Boori has a really strong oral tradition, and great experience in working with children, and telling stories to children and adults. Myself, I think I bring the skills of a writer, and for me, I love images and working out ways of expressing things. If we're working on a story that is about a frog and a snake, like My girragundji, how can we express images that are very evocative of the mood, the place and the deeper spiritual significance of the story.

When Boori first told the story to Grace, my daughter, she was only five or six at the time. It was in the halftime of a footy match. She was really pestering him to tell a story, because she wasn't that keen on footy. She was keen on traditional stories. Boori said that he didn't have time for a traditional story but he would sneak this one in about his own life. And, of course, he told her that the frog was eaten by a snake and all of us were really sad. Just as well we had to go back to the footy! But it really got me in: how you could tell a story that is full of sorrow like that, and make it something that would be uplifting to read. Most of us have to deal with death, whether it be the death of a pet, or something more serious like the death of a member of the family. I think it is a great thing to be able to work through it in a story and come to a point where you know you've received a great gift from the life of that creature, rather than their death. That was a challenge.

BP: I can remember crawling under the house and crying, and I was actually going to bite the snake and everything, I was so upset!

MM: Both My girragundji and The Binna Binna man are based on Boori's own experiences, but include made up material as well. Sometimes it becomes fudgy between what is real and what is made up, and sometimes the made up bit comes into a real life story that Boori is talking about, and the real life goes into fiction. It's interesting to write that way.

Scan: In the video, Boori & Meme: the process of collaborative writing, Boori says that if some bully calls you a name you have already won. I wish I'd known that as a child at school.

BP: That's what the kids say. I tell them another story of when I went to school and that's all incorporated in how I got to write. The kids really love the idea of a little green mushy thing being your friend and mentor, sleeping on your pillow, protecting you from the mosquitoes and the ghosts.

MM: And that you can get strength from within you, rather than from groovy clothes.

BP: As a child, and as a young adult, I was surrounded by alcohol. Getting the strength, not from anything chemical, but yourself through the frog: I think that that was a great thing. I didn't know that I'd learnt it back then. I thought I was just a hero to myself. I was, but I didn't know why. So I think that what a lot of kids relate to in My girragundji is being strong within themselves.

Scan: Please describe how you work together to create a book.

MM: It is very much a feeling that My girrragundji and The Binna Binna man have both of our stories, in different ways. For me, it is probably the subtext of the story, the search in My girragundji for something to believe in is a kind of personal story for me, set in the context of Boori's adolescence and childhood.

Scan: You describe Boori's family as "the first editors" of your books. Why do you call them this?

MM: Once we've done a draft of any of the books then it goes back to Boori's Elders to edit for the first time, in particular, Boori's mother and his Aunty Val. I think a lot of writers would be daunted by that. What we've found is that, as much as anything is taken out of the books, it is what those Elders have to suggest to put into the books that has often been the saving grace.

BP: They read through it, and they tell a story, and it will be like this beautiful gem or opal will start shining. Meme said, "Oh, yes, that drops into that spot there", and she polishes it up and it really shines through.

MM: By the time the books are created, you have the feeling that a lot of people have worked as a team. It's not only Boori and myself and his family, but also designers and editors and publicists. It is many people's contributions that make the books successful.

It is important for us to get the cultural things right first, and then a more normal edit takes place. Sometimes those two things are happening at the same time, but the priority goes to the Elders. I think both Penguin and Allen & Unwin have shown great respect for that. They respect that cultural things are made right first, and then it is edited in the "other culture", if you like.

I think also there is a great sense that the books belong to more than just Boori and I, and that everyone is getting it right, even our nieces and nephews. With the photographs, the kids (in Boori's family) are the guides, and so it is very much that these books do belong to a whole family of people. They have to be right for that family first, and something that they would be proud of and really happy about.

Scan: Boori, coming from North Queensland and travelling all over Australia as you do, how do other Aboriginal people feel about you sharing traditional stories?

BP: I performed my work in Melbourne, paying my respects to the Wurundjeri people, and when I go to Adelaide, my brother in law is from there, so that was cool to go to Adelaide and work there. In Sydney, through Dad's friends with the Church, there's two or three dance groups there, that I make a connection through. You need to pay your respects to the traditional people of each place and then you are not taking anything away from anybody, you're just adding.

Scan: What books or other projects are you working on?

MM: We. have the structure together for a third book, which follows on from The Binna Binna man to form a trilogy. Really, you could grow up with these books. It will be for the next level for older readers. It's the boy now really testing his strength out going to the city.

BP: . similar to lots of Aboriginal people trying to find a place within their own culture, but having to find a place in another culture to survive without dying. I think for myself there's possibly a picture book and a poetry book.

Scan: Thanks so much for your time, Boori and Meme, and for sharing your experiences. We are really looking forward to your participation in the My girragundji book rap.

Books by Meme McDonald

Put your whole self in. Penguin, 1992
The way of the birds. Allen & Unwin, 1996

Books by Boori Monty Pryor & Meme McDonald

Maybe tomorrow. Penguin, 1998
My girragundji. Allen & Unwin, 1998 (A little ark book)
The Binna Binna man. Allen & Unwin, 1999 (A little ark book)

Audio and audiovisual productions

My girragundji; The Binna Binna man. [sound recording] Louis Braille Audio, 1999 [140 min.]

Boori & Meme: the process of collaborative writing. [videorecording] Video Education Australasia, 1999 [23 min.]