Butterflies and Demons Book: Exploring Racial Discrimination and the Need to Confront our Racism

ABOUT THE BOOK

Eva Chapman’s Butterflies and Demons is a historic fiction novel about the racial discrimination and trauma of the Adelaide Aboriginal (Kaurna) people during the 1830s. Their land was invaded by British settlers who failed to understand Kaurna values and culture, almost wiping out Adelaide’s true custodians for good. Juxtaposed with events from Eva Chapman’s traumatic childhood from Czechoslovakia to Adelaide in the 1950s, racial discrimination is highlighted, explored, and confronted with gentle but emphatic impact. 

QUOTES

“It is appalling to realise what little has been achieved despite real and symbolic attempts to right wrongs. And yet there is a groundswell of opinion that is rising on the awareness, not of the harried and helpless guilt of original and protracted sins, but of what we, the white populations of Australia, have lost in erasing aboriginal culture, the local knowledges that could have created a truly Australian cuisine, not to mention land-management programmes, the local languages that could have, if taught and allowed to flourish in both communities, contributed to a sense of local identity and purpose throughout the nation, and the spirituality from the earth to the stars of which we could all today be proud partisans,” says Dr. Peter Bruce.

“After a vision in Peru, I knew I had to tell the story of the Adelaide Aborigines. I loved doing the research and found that these people were so gentle, so clever, so mindful of the piece of earth they lived on. They suffered terribly at the hands of the British Empire, as did I, an unwelcome refugee in 1950s Adelaide,” says Author Eva Chapman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eva Chapman has had a successful career as writer, academic researcher, secondary school teacher, psychotherapist, and Enlighten Master. Her many successful books include Sasha & Olga, Russian Roulette, From Russia to Love and Sexy at 70.

For more information:

https://www.doctorzed.com/books/butterflies-demons/