Birds of Passage

Lou Drofenik born Zammit recently launched her first novel, Birds of Passage, to Maltese readers at Dar l-Emigrant. She emigrated to Australia in 1961 under the “Single Women Scheme” and has been living in Melbourne for the past 40 years. “It is a love story,” she told the Malta Independent on Sunday, “and the women are fictitious characters” but it gives the reader an opportunity to discover a bit more about Malta’s history and culture as it deals with complex migration experiences and describes what society was like in the late 19th century. The book is the result of ten years of graduate research on Maltese women. From MaltaTopics

The book BIRDS OF PASSAGE by Dr Lou Drofenik nee’ Zammit was launched at the Maltese Centre in Parkville on March 15. It is the story of five women who left Malta, a small island still gripped by the vicissitudes of the World War, to experience a new life in Australia. The book is a treasure-trove of aspects of social and political life in Malta at the time contrasted to life on the new continent. This is what the Consul General of Malta for Victoria Dr Clemente Zammit said in introducing the author:

To those who, as I did, knew Lou a long time ago in Malta, “Birds of Passage” is an apt description of her rather short-lived life on the island. I knew her as a child through my nanna Stella, who would later describe Lou and her sister Georgina as outstanding students, blessed with talents that belied their humble origins and that were beyond the reach of most of us coming from the same background.

In the kind of sheltered life we lived in those days – in the embrace of loving, tight-knit families – we were rather awed to learn in our teens that Lou and her sister were leaving the nest in search of discovery in a far away land. Little did it cross our minds that the move could well have been motivated by a desire, among others, for intellectual development. It seemed as if their leaving was an act of betrayal to a lifestyle in the shadow of the imposing basilica of St Helen in the village of Birkirkara. It was as if all of a sudden the narrow streets of the village had come to symbolize the drabness of social life in Malta still ravaged by the destruction of World War II...