Merlinda Bobis
The Kindness of Birds
Spinifex, 2021
An oriole sings to a dying father. A bleeding-heart dove saves the day. A crow wakes a woman’s resolve. Owls help a boy endure isolation. Cockatoos attend the laying of the dead. Always there are birds in these linked stories that pay homage to kindness and the kinship among women and the planet.
From Australia to the Philippines, across cultures and species, kindness inspires resilience amidst loss and grief. Being together ignites resistance against violence. We pull through in the company of others.
Kindness cannot self-isolate. It moves both ways and all ways, like breath.
Shortlisted - ACT Notable Award for Fiction (Big Press), 2021
“These stories are beyond beautiful and deeply moving, raw, tender, brimming with love and pain, death and life. Like “lit diamonds,” to borrow a phrase from Bobis’s own exquisite language. I love how birds are everywhere in attendance, signalling ancestral wisdom, pointing to the strength of the human spirit and its deep ties with all of life. I love how each story feels like a tonic for our time, illuminated from within by so much grace and kindness, it gives hope and inspires awe.”
About the Author
Merlinda Bobis is a contemporary Philippine-Australian writer and performer. She has published across multiple genres. Born in Albay, Bikol region in the Philippines, Merlinda has written and published in English, Filipino and Bikol, integrating Philippine and Australian cultures and experiences with a wider global vision. A multi-awarded author, she has four novels, six poetry books, a collection of short stories, and nine dramatic works performed internationally. She has performed some of her plays with dance and chanting. Borders and difference, women and girls, geopolitics and environment, war and memory, migration, the poetics and politics of care are among the subjects of her literary, performance, and scholarly works.
She completed her BA at Aquinas University of Legazpi and her Master of Arts in Literature at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. She taught English and Literature for 10 years in the Philippines then did a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, where she went on to lecture in creative writing for 21 years. She is currently Honorary Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University.
