Canaan (son of Ham) al Hakam tells that "Canaan is the father of the Sudan (Sub Saharan Africans) and the Abyssinians". The German historian Johannes Aventinus (fl. c. 1525) recorded a legend that Canaan's sons "the "Arkite"" and "the "Hamathite"" first settled in the area of Greece, and gave their names to the regions of Arcadia and Emathia. According to , Noah became drunk then cursed his grandson Canaan, for the transgression of Canaan's father, Ham. This is the "Curse of Canaan", to which the misnomer "Curse of Ham" has been attached since Classical antiquity. <poem> "Ham's transgression:" And Ham, the father of Canaan,
The Dressmaker (Ham novel) sent her manuscript to Duffy & Snellgrove, who picked it up for publication. According to Ham, the novel is a product of serendipity. In 1996, she enrolled in the writing programme of RMIT University but on her arrival she found that it was already full. As she was leaving, novelist Antoni Jach advised her to take a novel course instead. In novel-writing class, she got an assignment of "a 500-word synopsis of her book", which she recalled as "I had an idea and started writing it. Then you had to hand in 3,000 words, and then you had to hand