On the 18th of December 2024, Australian millennials were hit with sad news - one of the most iconic writers of a generation had passed away.
Growing up in Australia you’d be hard pressed to avoid John Marsden’s Tomorrow When the War Began Series. While I was first introduced to the first book through school curriculum, I avidly devoured the entire series and the sequel books, The Ellie Chronicles.
As a teenager, the series captured and combined the thrill and excitement of being in a world without adults as well as the fear and anxiety that comes with war. Filled equally with action as it was with moments of quiet, I grew up simultaneously fearing the world of the stories and wanting to live in it. The series is considered one of the all time greats of YA Australian fiction, with the first book being voted as Australia's Favourite Book in 2013.
In hindsight, and with a more adult eye, the series has drawn some criticism for its treatment of migrants. The invaders, while never having their country specified, are described in such a way that the continent they came from was obvious. Growing up, I thought geographically it made the most sense invasion-wise, an opinion absolutely dripping with my white privilege.
As an adult, things seem darker than ever before for people of colour, asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants, and it is harder to see the Tomorrow series without that lens (or clarity). While I don’t see ill will in his stories, even Marsden himself has said that he “wouldn’t write the book now - not because of a societal view but because of my own horror at the way refugees who have come to Australia have been treated… demonising people like that is unforgivable and it’s disgusting and it’s an ongoing obscenity in our lives.”
He has even been posited the question of whether or not he helped to raise a generation of Australians who feared foreign invasion. While it is an interesting question, I don’t think it did. It raised a generation of readers, and people who read are more apt to understand that a traditional land invasion is unlikely to happen again in Australia (since its first invasion in 1788). If a new foreign power were to occupy Australia, it would be a takeover through money and the economy and not by soldiers rounding up small country towns while their kids are out camping.
Despite his intentions, author Mohammed Ahmad has said that “the language of the book and the implications in the book genuinely impacted and damaged the lives of the young people that I grew up around.” The friendship group in the Tomorrow series is diverse, however their diversity is restricted by stereotypes. Whether Marsden was intending to reflect the opinions of country teens, or whether these stereotypes are defined by his own internal biases, is hard to say.
So where does that leave us as readers and mourners of John Marsden? Do his books still have a place in modern Australia? Maybe this week isn’t the time to discuss it, but the thoughts have been swirling in my head nonetheless.
