ABSTRACT
Gail Jones explains, "sorry business" refers to the work of mourning, and with ceremonial grief, that is implicitly and explicitly shared. She reads sorry-in-the-sky in this way, as a frail yet insistent communication, an entanglement of apology and mourning. In Sorry, her novel that engages with the ethics of reconciliation and reflects on discourses of apology in Australia, Gail Jones reflects not only on the voices of the Stolen Generations that remain unheard or forgotten but also how equivocal the word "sorry" can be by way of response: apology remains silenced or stifled by stutter in the novel. The chapter discusses the graphic mobilization of the formal apology by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Busby's WE ARE SORRY to reflect on the cultural politics of emotion that circulate around and through Stolen Generations testimony, which hinge on the word "sorry."
