The Sinkings
by Amanda Curtain
UWA Press
Amanda Curtain’s The Sinkings is an incredible feat. In one instance it’s a historical West Australian novel, giving voice to a little known yet audacious character called Little Jock. But at the same time it’s a touching tale which deals with intersex identities.
Quite the double whammy, but it’s the way Curtain has brought the two stories together that is testament to the skill of this Perth writer.
‘The story has two strands running through it: there’s a historical story enfolded into the contemporary story,’ Curtain said.
‘The historical story is based on fact, drawn from an incident in the archives and very much fictionalised because there’s such a limit to what you can ever discover in the life of an anonymous person.’
That anonymous person is Little Jock. He was a petty criminal with a colourful career who was murdered at a site called The Sinkings.
Yet when his remains were exhumed years later, it was discovered that he was actually a she, Little Jock being born of indeterminate gender, or intersex.
Curtain creates a compelling life for Little Jock. He’s larger than life yet enigmatic, shady but for all the right reasons.
His life is paralleled in the contemporary tale by Imogen, a girl who is also intersex.
Imogen, however, only appears physically in the story for a brief moment. The remainder of the time she is constructed through her mother’s anguish and agonised thoughts as she attempts to come to terms with the delicacy of her daughter’s situation.
Little Jock’s tale helps the mother, Willa Samson, understand the complexity of an intersex life, Willa seeking out the tale through the archives, using it to comprehend and heal her own shortcomings.
‘There is a narrative going through Willa’s mind all the time: an imaginary conversation she’s having with Imogen. There’s always this tension with (Willa) between trying to understand and trying to defend herself.
‘She’s wanting to understand but she’s also trying to justify what she’s done, which is always a very uneasy thing.
‘So looking at Little Jock’s story I suppose she’s trying to understand, and at one point Imogen says to her “I wish I had been born in another time when you couldn’t have done what you did to meâ€.
‘She’s looking at what would have happened if her child had been born in a different time. There’s a lot of guilt.’
In broaching the subject matter, Curtain made a brave decision and decided to write from instinct and hard research and specifically choosing not to interview intersex people so as not to co-opt their voices.
‘I didn’t know very much about intersex when I came across this so I started doing a lot of research. The research led me to the situation today: what would happen in the 20th Century, and the way that intersex instances are treated medically.
‘I was very aware that I needed to hear intersex voices and I wanted to respect and be respectful of those voices and hear as much as I could and there was a lot available to me,’ Curtain explained.
Her bravery has paid of: The Sinkings is a compelling read which successfully weaves together the past and present while treating intersex with the utmost delicacy and respect.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
