Too Much Lip contains explicit language, family violence, drug use and sex scenes, so teachers will need to consider carefully their school community context before choosing to introduce this text. It is a text that deliberately sets out to be confronting and challenging and teachers must have licence to explore this thoroughly.
This novel is a masterpiece in exploring the cycles of abuse and trauma in Aboriginal communities and how such intergenerational trauma stems from colonial practices. The suitability of this novel in a school context therefore also depends on the teacher/school’s capacity to spend a good amount of class time exploring these broader historical and social issues in order to appropriately contextualise the novel. Suitable classroom materials that can be used in a socio-historical reading of the text are provided in this resource..
