A Burns Philp general store was my childhood gateway to the world. My parents were based in Kavieng, the main town on the island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. The general store commandeered the main street, providing expatriates with some basic comforts from overseas. It was also the only place on the island that stocked books. Amongst the jumble of shelves displaying canned food, processed cheese and tins of powdered milk, was a solitary, somewhat lopsided, arrangement of idiosyncratic titles. Restocking of this shelf was haphazard. But whenever it was replenished, I pleaded with Mum to spend a portion of her housekeeping money on a new book for me.

I blindly emulated the characters I read about: Caddie Woodlawn, Pollyanna and Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz) to name a few. Looking back, I recognise Christopher Myers’ description—the ‘apartheid of children’s literature‘—influencing me in my corner of Kavieng. In short, it created a delusion that I was white. Unable to realistically recognise myself in any of the stories, I opted to mimic the white protagonists and identify as the majority; this parody had more value despite its inaccuracy.