A Bastard Like Me Research Paper

An autobiography can be one of useful resources to collect historical information. Especially, autobiography can contains the author’s personal view of happenings and the impacts of historical happenings on individual’s life. For example, The Diary of Anne Frank, is not an autobiography, yet like an autobiography, it has information that is about Anne Frank’s experiences and her view of the World War II. After the book published, people in the world could know what exactly happened to Jews under the control of the Nazis. This essay will argue that A Bastard Like Me is an useful autobiography as provides unique information concerning real historical happenings, which are the author’s contributions for improvement in the Aboriginal affairs and

There are several points that made the autobiography unique. First, Perkins (1975, p. 9) remembers that he was born at Northern Territory and was not sure, but it was 1936 or 1937. According to Danaher (1991, p. 62), he was born in 1936. As Danaher (1991, p. 62) referred, he had aboriginal grandmothers and white grandfathers on both his mother’s and father’s side. Although Perkins was not a full-blood Aboriginal people, according to Perkins (1975, p. 10) he was involved in an Aboriginal tribe, Arunta, and he knew that the Caterpillar is his totem. Therefore, he was an Aborigine. Second, as an Aboriginal bloke, he experienced a situation, which was being separated with his family and is recently known as the Stolen Generations. Perkins (1975, p. 15) explained that at that time, part-Aboriginal children were removed from their family by government and he was taken to Adelaide. Third, he was a successful soccer player. According to Perkins (1975, p.), he played one of the best team, Budapest, he won an award once and he got an invitation from Liverpool, a soccer team of England. Fourth, he was also an activist interested in the Aboriginal affairs. For example, he had the Freedom Ride which was an event that he and university students argued a change in the relationship between Aborigines and white (Perkins 1975, p. 74). He experienced variety of happenings through his life and he had seen those happenings from the Aboriginal perspective. Thus, for historians, his autobiography written about being Aborigine and Aboriginal view of Australia can be interesting and