Joshua Black

Joshua Black is a doctoral candidate with the National Centre for Biography, ANU. His Honours thesis (2018), entitled ‘For What Purpose?: The political memoirs and diaries of the Rudd–Gillard Labor Cabinet’, investigated the relatively unexplored field of political memoirs and their position in Australian political historiography. His doctorate is entitled ‘The Political Memoir Phenomenon: Federal political life writing, 1994–2020’. He has also worked in the field of Higher Education equity and support.

Joshua Black reviews 'Plagued: Australia’s two years of hell – the inside story' by Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers

November 2022, no. 448 • 09 September 2022

Scott Morrison needn’t waste time writing a political memoir: the work of self-vindication has already been attempted on his behalf by Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers, both columnists at The Australian, in their now highly controversial book Plagued: Australia’s two years of hell – the inside story. Theirs is a largely heroic story about Morrison’s leadership, which ‘served the nation we ... (read more)

Joshua Black reviews 'Cathy Goes to Canberra: Doing politics differently' by Cathy McGowan

January–February 2021, no. 428 • 16 December 2020

‘Orange balloons. Orange streamers. Orange shirts.’ Cathy McGowan’s memoir is saturated and literally wrapped in the colour. Cathy Goes to Canberra begins with an account of the election of her independent successor as Member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines, in May 2019 – ‘with orange everywhere’. For McGowan, this hue was a symbolic way of differentiating herself and her model of politics ... (read more)

'After the waves: A tribute to a pioneering Labor feminist' by Joshua Black

November 2020, no. 426 • 22 October 2020

Susan Ryan was a formidable storyteller. Her stories communicated her values and her world view, her commitment to the pursuit of a more egalitarian society. Hers was a powerful form of communication, capable of questioning and challenging the inadequacies of the masculinist, class-exclusive ‘fair go’ of postwar Australian society. Two weeks before her death on September 27, I spoke to Ryan v ... (read more)

Josh Black reviews 'Ten Doors Down: The story of an extraordinary adoption reunion' by Robert Tickner

April 2020, no. 420 • 20 March 2020

Twenty years ago, Robert Tickner tried his hand at the nuanced art of political memoir. Taking a Stand (2001) was, he said, ‘an insider’s account of momentous initiatives’ in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs portfolio in the 1990s. A portrait of the politician as a young man, son, father, and husband was not in the offing. Cabinet diarist Neal Blewett, a man not renowned for ... (read more)