Writing & News
delivered on Friday 23 August 2024 at Gleebooks Sydney
I acknowledge we are meeting tonight on the land of the Gadigal People, I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, as well as to emerging leaders. I also thank the Traditional Custodians for caring for Country for thousands of generations. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignty was never ceded, this continent always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
My thanks too to Terri-ann for the honour of asking me here tonight.
Our Familiars is one of the most exquisite books I have ever read. And heaven knows I have over my lifetime read literally thousands of books. Anne takes us on her personal journey interacting with other species with words and images so beautiful they catch in your throat.
As a half-century vegan/animal rights activist who believes our planet can no longer sustain animal agribusiness and the plight of millions of people around the world whose land is being eroded for animal agribusiness; when a plant-based diet would feed the entire world and help repair the planet – there are passages within the book that didn’t resonate with me but I know Anne grappled for most of her life, particularly the latter part, with these issues.
Through this book Anne speaks with wisdom and to each of us who see without really seeing, who to some extent take our environment for granted until we are forced through whatever circumstances to identify each component of our surroundings and then really SEE a leaf, the trunk of a tree, into the eyes of your most loved companion be it human or non-human.
Non-human animals still do not have ‘sentience’ afforded to them by politicians in Australia, despite the glaringly obvious.
They are denied this because if we DO acknowledge this: their capacity for empathy, pleasure, love, memory, grief, mischief and other more dreadful emotions caused by humans – defeat, unspeakable pain, zoonosis, abject misery – we would have to rethink our treatment of them in animal agribusiness, laboratories and indeed all areas where animals are exploited for profit.
From Darwin, Aristotle, (the awful) Rene Descartes, Jeffrey Masson, Peter Singer, Shakespeare, Tom Regan, C.L Lewis, Marc Bekoff, Jeremy Bentham, Rudyard Kipling. From the 13th to the 18th century, animals in Europe being tried in courtrooms: Be it literature, history, anthropology, ethology, zoology, science or philosophy, Anne was a voracious reader who generously shares lived and read-about miracles between humans and other animals.
I am grateful for so much in Anne’s book – not the least her giving righteous credence to being able to share telepathically with our Familiars. Something I have often experienced, but similarly with the concept of sentience, many still won’t or can’t acknowledge this powerful connection. Anne reminded me of the death of the Elephant Whisperer Lawrence Anthony. Lawrence had worked to ensure the safety of a herd of elephants and through his words and body language and yes, telepathy, he encouraged this threatened herd to stay on his vast property as just beyond the boundaries hunters were waiting to slaughter them. It worked and they lived well and roamed freely on his land and he might not see them for very long periods of time.
When Lawrence died suddenly of a heart attack, the entire herd reappeared and silently walked all the way to his home where his wife was grieving, they stayed for a couple of days before returning to where they had come from.
The sheer audaciousness of the human animal needing to believe in our superiority to other species, Anne repeatedly and effectively calls into question.
Her humour throughout is delightful and as she compares the sound of Lina the donkey emitting her foghorn build ups with that of a woman climaxing had me wondering what I have been missing out on all this time and certainly looking with awe at Susan.
Whether through Susan, Elsie, Vincent, Charlie, Sammie or Lina this lovely book is peppered with love, awe, bemusement and a hunger for deeper communication with the Familiars.
By way of example of Shakespeare’s “there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio” – Anne recounts Petra Stapp, an English researcher who spoke about a woman walking the moors of England. The woman was tiring and sat while her boyfriend walked on. Soon after a single sheep appeared at the top of the hill, she or he walked deliberately to the woman, leant forward and kissed her on the lips.
Astonished the woman sat still, she and the sheep observed each other, face to face for a few moments. Then the sheep turned and retraced their steps. The woman’s boyfriend observed all this from a distance. Back at the car the woman turned her mobile on to read a message that came through the same time she had her interaction with the sheep, the message read that a close friend of hers had just died.
Anne’s writing is so evocative I was deeply mentally there for each of their beautiful properties culminating in Little Farm and the nightmare of The Black Summer and Little Farm and its inhabitant’s survival.
Anne’s writing about losing her beloved Lina just did me in as did the wonder of reading that she and Susan called in a herbalist to help Dexter and the findings from one of his hair samples that the core root of his ailments stemmed from grief.
My vision was completely blurred. To learn more about this eclectic menagerie you will have to buy the book.
So deeply immersed as I was in this book whenever the phone rang I jumped shocked back into my world. When following Anne’s medical procedures, I swore out loud. I was unable to put this glorious book down. I could not speak after finishing it. I didn’t want to engage with anything outside of letting Anne’s book sit inside of me.
As Susan so beautifully wrote in the Afterword: The cast of animals and two humans. Two extraordinary women who inspire, uplift, teach and affirm the bond we have with each other and Our Familiars. I hope you buy this book, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Lynda Stoner
CEO Animal Liberation NSW