Reviews by Alice Ellerby and Jess Hazel
It’s Not Fair: Why It’s Time for a Grown-up Conversation About How Adults Treat Children
By Eloise Rickman, Scribe
Rickman describes children, collectively, as “the most discriminated-against group in our society”. In It’s Not Fair, she asks us to consider ‘adultism’: “the structural discrimination and oppression children face from adults, and society’s bias towards adults”.
The book is enlightening. It is a call for children’s liberation. Among the topics it covers are politics, parenting and education, and it reveals the harm caused to children through adultism inherent in each. It focuses on the UK, Australia and the US, where the prevailing attitude towards children has been to consider them as ‘belonging’ to their parents. Rickman likens this to the way women were once seen the book is enlightening. It is a call for children’s liberation as the property of their fathers and husbands, and she suggests that future generations will look on our treatment of children as we do the subjugation of women before suffrage.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989 and covers, broadly, provision, protection and participation. It is a powerful validation of the respect, rights and freedoms children should experience as standard. Despite being the “most widely ratified human rights instrument in the world”, the rights are not legally enforceable unless adopted into domestic law. The CRC is not legal binding in the UK, and Rickman cites many examples where governments have fallen short of its intentions. Child poverty, discussed extensively in the chapter Deliberate Harm, is posited as a political choice. It’s a difficult and provoking read.
The book made me realise that the CRC is not nearly as present in our collective thinking as it should be. It is little talked about and yet surely all of us, parents especially, should be aware of the rights we should demand for, and afford, our own children, and all children.
The book will resonate with many JUNO readers. Rickman urges us to listen deeply to children, take them seriously and ensure they are active participants in their own lives. So often adults claim to know what is in children’s best interests, and we prevent them from making meaningful decisions about their lives, both on a personal and societal level. She suggests we underestimate children, believing they are incapable of active citizenship and the working through of complex ideas, even though it is often children and young people forcing political change through their actions. She is a champion of giving children the vote.
It’s Not Fair has the power to fundamentally shift our thinking about children. It’s not a parenting book, but it is one of the most important books I have read as a parent. AE
The Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go
By Clover Stroud, Doubleday
I loved Clover Stroud’s previous books. She writes honestly about life and themes of motherhood, death, grief and love. Her new memoir, The Giant on the Skyline, explores a question that immediately piqued my interest: what is a home without the roots that tie you to a place?
Stroud and her family are faced with the prospect of moving from their beloved home near the ancient Ridgeway in Oxfordshire to Washington DC where her partner works. This sparks a deep, emotional exploration of the author’s strong connection to the land she loves, her community, and the memories rooted there.
As someone who also feels deeply connected to specific landscapes, I found Stroud’s journey deeply resonant. It can feel challenging and restrictive for a strong sense of home and connection to depend so much on geography. What happens if you can’t be in that place? Stroud’s experience holds significant weight as she keenly loves her home and understands what it means to know and be known by the land. She writes, “This isn’t just a place where I live. It’s become the place where I am, where I belong. Where it makes sense being me. And where it makes sense to be a mother to my children.”
At times, I felt sad for Stroud, having to face this decision and all that she might have to give up, and I hoped she would be able to stay. She reflects, “Leaving this place which is our home feels like a strange kind of destruction to me.” It seemed unfair that she should have to even consider it. But it’s clear that being a mother of five in a long-distance marriage is hard and unsustainable. As she says in the opening, “I rarely knew where my husband Pete was. Once, I calculated we’d spent no more than thirteen consecutive days in the same place for the previous five years.” I found myself rooting for love, and for them to find a way to all be together as a family.
Stroud’s writing invites readers into her world. It’s familiar and I felt I could relax in her company. It is like spending time with an old friend who is unapologetically real, occasionally saying something shocking that puts you at ease. She paints a vivid picture of family life, and the meaning and magic in everyday moments. The Uffington White Horse is a constant presence, and there are escapes to the Ridgeway at dawn, pilgrimages to ancient springs, and big reflections on our human history.
This book is a rich, colourful tapestry of what home can mean, beautifully woven with threads of family, love and magic. It’s left me with a vibrant sense of the landscapes she describes, glowing green in my imagination, and a deeper appreciation for the places I love. It’s not just a story of a family’s relocation, but a profound meditation on identity, belonging, and the true essence of home. How it can be found in the people we love, the relationships we have, the traditions we craft. The book offers comfort to anyone struggling with similar questions, and affirms that home is not just a place, but a state of being that we can carry within us. JH
Becoming a Matriarch
By Helen Knott, Duckworth
In this powerful memoir, Helen Knott reflects on the period in which she lost her mother and grandmother within six months of each other. Throughout her life, she has been surrounded by strong women. As she grapples with her grief, recurring struggles with past trauma and injustice – both her own and that of her ancestors – resurface, and she looks to find her own strength in the void left by her matriarchs.
Knott lives in British Columbia and is of Dane Zaa, Nihiyaw, Métis and European descent from Prophet River First Nations. She reflects much on ancestry, and the roles women have taken on throughout her family’s history. She says, “We are walking memory, in all the ways that make us beautiful and all the ways that make us beasts.” And though she pays tribute to the “line of fierce and loving women” from which she comes, she recognises patterns of behaviour that inflict familiar wounds.
Knott describes how she shoulders a lot for the men in her family, as did the women before her. It’s quite affronting when her dad says to her that no one ever asked her to. Reading this, I found myself defensive on her behalf, but this is a real moment of change for Knott. She asks herself, “What else have I made my responsibility that no one asked me to take on?” In answering this question, Knott says she “found permission to take care of [herself]”.
Not only does she find her own strength through this epiphany, but she also recognises the important ramifications this has for her family. In stepping back, she allows others to “make mistakes, learn and grow on their own”. She frames many of the damaging behaviours she sees within her family within the context of colonialism and its associated traumas for Indigenous people. She says, “I am choosing to break cycles of codependency that are impacts of colonisation by creating space.”
Throughout the book, there are many moving recollections of moments with her mother and grandmother. The passage in which she recalls her last moments with her mother is poignant and beautifully written. Knott holds strength and frailty firmly in each hand and still she triumphs. Becoming a Matriarch is an exploration of motherhood, daughterhood and female power. AE
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Published in issue 91. Accurate at the time this issue went to print.
