Dark Secrets:
After Dreaming (AD) 1887–1961

by Jeanine Leane, PressPress

Image shows a book cover with black and white text. Text font is large and characterised by shadows and uneven placement.

This is a hard-hitting uncompromising look at white inscription of black history and experience in Australia.

Leane’s work is direct, clear-eyed and pulls no punches. Her expression is direct and will certainly bring tears to the eyes of both black and white Australians — though possibly for different reasons. Leane’s is an original voice, informed by her research and by her heart.

  • Dark Secrets was WINNER OF THE 2010 SCANLON AWARD.

  • Leane also won the 2010 David Unapion Award.

Dark Secrets II
After Dreaming (AD) 1961

Despite scientific rationalism in the year
After Dreaming, AD, 1961 dark secrets
still make their way into the world.
Here is one!
White is pure but,
Black is beautiful and
while Hell has no fury like a woman
Heaven has no equal pleasure but a woman.

All those who seek to enter the kingdom
know that Heaven can wait when
black women cross their path.

Millennia of clothing, centuries of science,
brains and hearts under the microscope,
decades of colonial corsets pulled tight
will never restrain or contain this
Dark Secret.