Set within the explosive cultural shifts of the 1960s and 1980s, Becoming Kirrali Lewis chronicles the journey of a young First Nations Australian teenager as she leaves her home town in rural Victoria to take on a law degree in the city of Melbourne in 1985. Adopted at birth by a white family, Kirrali doesn t question her cultural roots until a series of life-changing events force her to face up to her true identity. Her decision to search for her biological parents sparks off a political awakening that no one sees coming, least of all Kirrali herself as she discovers her mother is white and her father is a radical black activist. Narrative flashbacks to the 1960s, where Kirrali s biological mother, Cherie, is rebelling against her parent s strict conservatism sees her fall into a clandestine relationship with a black man. Unmarried and pregnant, Cherie s traumatic story of an unforgiving Australian society give meaning to Kirrali s own rites of passage nearly twenty years later. The generational threads of human experience are the very things that will complete her. If only she can let go."