AustLit

'The Tao master Zhuangzi proverbially dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and feeling truly a butterfly as he went. Upon awakening, he was no longer able to discern whether he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.' (Introduction)

Winnie Siulolovao Dunn in conversation with Sydnye Allen and Shirley Le.

'I count nine book bays. Seven shelves each. From floor to ceiling with not a bit of wall to spare. There are brimming boxes under a table which takes up much of the floor space; will I get to them? We’ll see. At least three other alcoves elsewhere in the building sprout volumes: one with discards in the recess near the entrance, and one in each of the two residency rooms – Connie called these the reference collections. Actually, make that four: there’s a trolley of books in one corner of the library itself; part of somebody’s work in progress, Rowena told me at my induct ion.'(Introduction)

'The first ever real ‘direct action’ I properly participated in occurred at the front end of 2017 — a planned occupation of the streets and gates surrounding the Villawood Detention Centre. In order to apprehend or stall the deportation of a man whose brother had been given asylum without him, activists kept watch over every entrance 24/7. Many of us were inexperienced, idealistic. Once a decision has been made, all you can really do is protest.' (Introduction)

'In her groundbreaking 1988 study of women’s biography Writing a Woman’s Life, literary scholar Carolyn Heilbrun wrote:

Feminist criticism, scholarship, and theory have gone further in the last two decades than I, even in my most intense time of hope, could have envisioned. Yet I find myself today profoundly worried about the dissemination of these important new ideas to the general body of women.'  (Introduction)

'On 9 May 1933, the day before the Nazis burned her book as part of their action against books of ‘un-German spirit’, Helen Keller wrote an open letter to them, which was published on the front page of the New York Times. ’You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe,’ she said, ‘but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.’ Today, if Helen Keller is thought of at all, it’s as the blind and deaf girl who, through the efforts of her teacher, learned to communicate. There’s scant acknowledgement that she was even capable of having ideas, and she’s often reduced to nothing more than testament to the ideas of others. However, Keller not only spoke, but read and wrote four languages, and was a prolific poet and essayist. The ideas that led to the Nazis burning her book Out of the Dark were contained in the essay ‘Why I Became a Socialist’.' (Introduction)

'In the opening essay of The World Was Whole, Fiona Wright connects our bodies and our living spaces, and the way we strive to feel at home – ‘comfortable and comforted’ – in each. This is a book about the complexities of home, about being unhomed, about the body as home, and about the spaces we work to make home, our dwellings and our neighbourhoods. When life is marred by unbelonging and grief, it is the habits and routines of being homed that bring comfort and even joy.'  (Introduction)

'The unofficial poet laureate of Australia Les Murray died in April 2019. I first met him at the Adelaide Arts Festival in the early 70s where i asked Ted Hughes did he kill Sylvia Plath, cos i couldn’t see how come he was in Australia out on bail. After a few other confrontations, i found myself alongside Les Murray, and he said that before i left poetry i’d make a big splash — and i remember turning to him and thinking he better not jump in the pool or there won’t be any water left. He may have been a good poet ‘with a genius for language’ as John Kinsella said but he had ‘some terrible politics’. Elsewhere i’ve talked about Les’s supposed decadency from the great James Murray the lexicographer who gave us the dictionary ‘proper’ — more foundation stories? — and my reaction to his appropriating and usurping the ‘ethnic’ debate by taking centre-stage with a book entitled Ethnic Radio. This ‘self-styled bard of the people’ even claimed be a descendant of Aboriginal stock — he seemed to be everything — a great publicist being No 1.'  (Introduction)