The N Word: One Man's Stand

An uncompromising insight into Indigenous politics. Academic and political advocate, Stephen Hagan, went all the way to the United Nations with his battle to remove the word ‘Nigger’ from a sign at a Queensland sports ground. The N Word exposes the passion and courage of the man behind the public face and reveals how a childhood growing up in a fringe camp on the outskirts of Cunnamulla in south-west Queensland fired his detrmination to fight for human rights.

At a rugby game in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, in June 1999, Hagan was appalled to hear announcers referring to the grandstand—named after one E.S. "Nigger" Brown—as casually as if it were the name Smith or Jones. The incident marked the start of his legal battle to remove the offensive nickname from the grandstand sign, a fight that went all the way to the United Nations. Hagan's memoir describes how growing up in a fringe camp on the outskirts of a town called Cunnamulla set him on a path of political activism for his Aboriginal peers, not always without controversy even in the Aboriginal community. The volume includes a list of abbreviations and a small (six-item) bibliography but no subject index. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Stephen Hagan is a respected academic and political commentator and is a regular contributor to several national newspapers.