‘In 1975, when I was fifteen and in grade 10, my mother told a reporter from the Courier-Mail that the books I was reading in high school would teach me, in her words, ‘to be a permissive rebel’. Her comments appeared in the paper the next day: ‘Mrs. Angel Rendle-Short, of Brookfield, said yesterday that a book given to her daughter, Francesca, as an English textbook at school would teach her to be a permissive rebel/ It also said that I was willing to sit out of English classes in order to protect myself from the danger of being corrupted. The particular book she was complaining about that day was English Today Book 3- do you remember it?’
‘Beastly and beautiful: My mother reads Lolita’, Hecate, St Lucia, Brisbane: Hecate Press, 36, 1&2, 2010
Image: Angel’s medical plate, Durham Street, St Lucia, photograph by Francesca Rendle-Short, c. 1978
francesca rendle-short 