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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This issue of Cordite Poetry Review in particular focuses on the racist act of Brownface, especially in Australia. Brownface stems from the dehumanisation of Black people in the form of Blackface. Award-winning Afro-Caribbean-Australian author Maxine Beneba Clarke writes that Blackface was created when ‘White performers liberally applied black greasepaint or shoe polish and used distorted dialogue, exaggerated accents and grotesque movements to caricature people of African descent’ in the name of ‘art’.' (Winnie Siulolovao, from Editorial introduction)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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A Mouth Saying Stroh-beh-ree,
single work
essay
'For reasons sufficient to the writer, as ‘Papa’ would say, certain places, people and words have been left out of these notes. Some are secret and some are known by everyone. There is, for instance, no mention of the row of shophouses in Bugis Junction, with their 19th Century carvings of flowers and patterned panels and broken wooden shutters, among them his childhood home, that he tore down when he grew up, nor of the jade green and lotus pink Peranakan tiles of a girls’ school, nor of dilly dallying, nor of Mt Sinai and Tan Kim Cheng and Goodwood and Randy Wick, nor of the sour smell of her breath when she kissed me and drank coffee from a condensed milk can and rolled white Gardenia bread into little balls between her fingers and sat and ate with one elbow resting on a raised knee. These notes are the straying and breaking of the root of an utterance, the strange fruit of constraint.' (Introduction)
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Maar Bidi : Carving Sovereignty and Desire in Indigenous Youth Storytelling,
single work
essay
'Academia has inherited a long history of non-Indigenous people speaking for Indigenous people and defining Indigeneity and Indigenous cultural heritage – each recurring act erasing Indigenous voices and agencies to speak. Within the discipline of Indigenous Studies, scholars are carving out new transformative pedagogical spaces to create Indigenous-determined stories and storylines. We advocate that, now more than ever, next-generation Indigenous storytelling is needed to nurture intergenerational story cycles which imagine and enliven Indigenous-determined futures.' (Introduction)
- Kupu Rere Kēi"My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems.", single work poetry
- They Risei"it used to be all", single work poetry
- Never Seeni"I’m sitting in the bath of a small dot on the map somewhere in the Wimmera Mallee. It’s the home of small", single work poetry
- Eyadi"30 May 2020", single work poetry
- 2 Lifei"No, please don’t", single work poetry
- Guadalupapii"1AM", single work poetry
- I Am Forever Guilty of Whitefacei"he has to", single work poetry
- Hakka Landi"Hakka were Yellow River people but", single work poetry
- Empathyi"When you call islamophobia, I listen", single work poetry
- Sonnet Lua – Malaga / Journeyi"Defending my life’s purpose I have sworn", single work poetry
- Sonnet Tolu – Agaga / Souli"When I consider that which life has spared,", single work poetry
- Jonahi"I said I got the keys like minit man, know the swag infinite fam", single work
- To All the Hands Who Found Mei"to all the hands who found me", single work poetry
- In Protesti"On the AM peak hour train,", single work poetry
- If He Asks You Where You’re fromi"it was the shattering of ceramic at first / my skin its own kind of sepulchre / we watch the black sky together /", single work poetry
- What Am I to You?i"Tick boxes, drop down menus", single work poetry
- Coconut Headi"I’ve held,", single work poetry
- Between Us, single work