A Secretive Century

Monte Punshon’s Australia

Tessa Morris-Suzuki
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A Secretive Century

Published

18 June 2024

ISBN

9780522879957

Ebook File Size

10.7MB

Imprint

Melbourne University Press

A Secretive Century

Monte Punshon’s Australia

Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Australia's modern transformation as revealed through the life of an extraordinary woman
Monte grew up in a secretive century. She lived in a society where appearances mattered, and keeping them up often involved creating silence around ancestral origins, painful memories and personal desires.
Monte Punshon refused to be labelled. She was, at various times, Ethel May Punshon, Miss Montague, Monte, Mickey and Erica Morley Punshon, moving effortlessly from the Methodist respectability of bourgeois Ballarat to the bohemian world of children's travelling theatre, from patriotic amateur acting to pioneering radio work, from a dear old lady with perfect nineteenth-century diction to the bad girl who frequented edgy Melbourne bars, playing a lively part in the secret drag parties of 1930s queer Melbourne. There were social as well as personal reasons for her concealment. In a life that spanned more than a century - 1882 to 1989 - Monte Punshon witnessed crucial events in Australia's history, and her story shines a light on the…
Monte grew up in a secretive century. She lived in a society where appearances mattered, and keeping them up often involved creating silence around ancestral origins, painful memories and personal desires.
Monte Punshon refused to be labelled. She was, at various times, Ethel May Punshon, Miss Montague, Monte, Mickey and Erica Morley Punshon, moving effortlessly from the Methodist respectability of bourgeois Ballarat to the bohemian world of children's travelling theatre, from patriotic amateur acting to pioneering radio work, from a dear old lady with perfect nineteenth-century diction to the bad girl who frequented edgy Melbourne bars, playing a lively part in the secret drag parties of 1930s queer Melbourne. There were social as well as personal reasons for her concealment. In a life that spanned more than a century - 1882 to 1989 - Monte Punshon witnessed crucial events in Australia's history, and her story shines a light on the hidden corners and complexities of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century society. In this imaginative biography, Tessa Morris-Suzuki brings to life a woman who was unafraid to be, and who accepted, willingly, the price of her liberation.

A Secretive Century by Tessa Morris-Suzuki is an illuminating biography that unveils the remarkable life of Monte Punshon, an Australian woman who lived from 1882 to 1989… Her life is a remarkable example of uniqueness and resilience, and learning about it will be enjoyable for not only history and biography fans but also anyone interested in queer stories.”
Books+Publishing

Punshon emerges as a trailblazer in promoting cross-cultural understanding. From the Goldrush to the edgy St Kilda clubs of the 1980s, Morris-Suzuki offers an exploration of an ever-changing cultural landscape and a woman seeking to live her life without fear.”
Books+Publishing

One of A Secretive Century’s great strengths lies in Morris-Suzuki’s forensic probing of how an Australian woman of English heritage discovered much of her life’s meaning in East Asia rather than by identifying with the British Isles and Europe.”
Inside Story

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, the renowned Asian historian, skilfully links her biography to local and global events, as well as taking on the usual biographer’s task of narrating her subject’s life.”
Australian Book Review

An engaging, theoretically informed portrait of a large life.”
The Age

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor Emerita of History at the Australian National University, where she held the positions of Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. In 2013 she was awarded the Fukuoka Prize (Academic) for contributions to Asian studies. Morris-Suzuki is the author of 25 non-fiction books, including The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History; Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War; Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises

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