Sally Morgan was born on 18 January 1951 in Perth, Western Australia. She is a renowned artist, but is known in the literary world for her autobiography/novel My Place (1987). She has also written books for children.
My Place was first published in 1987 and sales took off both in Australia and overseas. It has been reprinted several times, and is now considered a modern classic. The narrative follows a simple trajectory: a young girl knows she is not white, and questions her mother and grandmother about why her skin is dark. She is told the family is of Indian descent. When she is 15 she discovers that in fact she is Aboriginal, and begins to search for the truth about her Aboriginal origins. Along the way she collects stories from her relatives that might provide clues to her family's past. Throughout the narrative the possibility of incest is implied, but never openly resolved. The story then is a mixture of genres: autobiography, novel, oral history, and detective story.
My Place also received a lot of attention in the academic world. In addition to the volume listed in “Extra Reading”, there are numerous articles published in a variety of journals that examine both the text and the debates surrounding it. Many texts by Aboriginal authors (for example Mudrooroo and Archie Weller) raise questions of what is Aboriginality and who is Aboriginal, and My Place is no exception. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal academics participated in the debates, though it was the comments by Aboriginal academics that received the most publicity. For example, Jackie Huggins disagreed with how My Place represented Aboriginality as something that can be knowable by non-Aboriginal people, or by people like Morgan who were not raised as Aboriginal. Mudrooroo also weighed into the debate, particularly in his book Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature (1990) where he said of My Place: “Just because something is written by a person who identifies as an Aborigine doesn't make it an Aboriginal work”, and that the text makes it acceptable to be Aboriginal so long as you are “young, gifted and not very black”.
However, My Place reached an extraordinarily large audience, and communicated aspects of Australian history that would have been an eye-opener for many readers. The text deals closely and personally with issues such as the splitting up of Aboriginal families, forced domestic service and the sexual abuse of Aboriginal women. The family history then is interwoven with the laws and government policies of the time, and the effects of those policies. Because of this subject matter, the publication of My Place is seen as a crucial point in reconciliation and recognising the truth about Australia's history, as Morgan uncovers the truth about her family's history.