‘The Coast Road’ is a personal essay about losing a parent during the COVID19 lockdown. It considers the impacts of the public health response to C-19 in Australia by looking at two individuals.
Pagination
52-54ISSN
1832-3421Language
engResearch statement
Background
Public response and tone of debate in the aftermath of crisis has played out with intensity in the news media and elsewhere over the past few years, with a pandemic, climate emergencies, housing affordability crisis, and groundswell of sexual assault allegations. With this essay, the researcher seeks to address and communicate the personal experience of crisis, asking how individual's stories might intervene in public discourse. Using the form of creative nonfiction, the researcher here seeks to introduce nuance to the polarising nature of contemporary debates. How do we misattribute blame and responsibility for global problems such as COVID19, housing and climate crisis? Does this result in atomization of people? How do we frame aftermath in a global era defined by rolling and ongoing catastrophe?
Contribution
With this essay, the researcher is building on a collection of personal essays that deploy the technique Lopate (1995) describes as ‘the movement from the individual to universal'. In this instance, by writing about the death of a parent, and travelling across closed borders during the COVID19 pandemic, the researcher asks the reader to consider crisis as something that can be experienced and described by an individual in a way that has universal resonance.
Significance.
This work was published in The Monthly, a nationally distributed magazine covering politics, society and the arts. The Monthly regular features Australia's most esteemed writers including Helen Garner, David Marr and Don Watson. The Monthly is published in multiple formats: print magazine, apps, Apple News, ebook and online. This piece was promoted on the publication's social media and released from behind the paywall for online readers.Publication classification
JO3 Original Creative Works – Textual WorkScale
NTRO MinorIssue
179Publisher
Shwartz MediaPlace of publication
Melbourne, Vic.Source
The Monthly
