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y separately published work icon UQP Black Australian Writing series - publisher  
Issue Details: First known date: 1990... 1990 UQP Black Australian Writing
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

This Black Australian Writing series has evolved out of the writing community that has been inspired by the David Unaipon Award.

Includes

y separately published work icon Holocaust Island Graeme Dixon , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 Z362876 1990 selected work poetry 'Graeme Dixon's ballads speak out on contemporary and controversial issues, from Black deaths in custody to the struggles of single mothers. Contrasted with these are poems of spirited humour and sharp satire. In Holocaust Island a powerful new voice emerges from a history of displacement.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990
y separately published work icon Paperbark : A Collection of Black Australian Writings Jack Davis (editor), Stephen Muecke (editor), Mudrooroo (editor), Adam Shoemaker (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 Z299632 1990 anthology poetry drama short story criticism prose autobiography biography (taught in 2 units)

'This is the first collection to span the diverse range of Black Australian writings. Thirty-six Aboriginal and Islander authors have contributed, including David Unaipon, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Gerry Bostock, Ruby Langford, Robert Bropho, Jack Davis, Hyllus Maris, William Ferguson, Sally Morgan, Mudrooroo Narogin and Archie Weller. Many more are represented through community writings such as petitions and letters.

Collected over six years from all the states and territories of Australia, Paperbark ranges widely across time and genre from the 1840s to the present, from transcriptions of oral literature to rock opera. Prose, poetry, song, drama and polemic are accompanied by the selected artworks of Jimmy Pike, and an extensive, up-to-date bibliography.The voices of Black Australia speak with passion and power in this challenging and important anthology.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990
y separately published work icon Caprice : A Stockman's Daughter Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1991 Z152202 1991 single work novel

'A fictional account of one woman's journey to find her family and heritage, Caprice won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers. Its publication marked the beginning of Doris Pilkington Garimara's illustrious writing career.

Set in the towns, pastoral stations and orphanage-styled institutions of Western Australia, this story brings together the lives of three generations of Mardu women. The narrator Kate begins her journey with the story of her grandmother Lucy, a domestic servant, then traces the short and tragic life of her mother Peggy.

Kate was born into the institutionalised world of the Settlement, taught Christian doctrine and trained for a career as a domestic. Gradually and painfully she sheds this narrowly prescribed identity, as she sets out on the pilgrimage home.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1991
y separately published work icon No Regrets Mabel Edmund , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992 Z1358413 1992 single work autobiography A life story of an Aboriginal woman growing up in central Queensland coast. Her experiences begin with a happy childhood who was later on taken in by the women of the South Sea Island community. Later on in life Mabel takes up art and gets involved as a black activist in the local politics and issues that affect her as an Aboriginal person. St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992
y separately published work icon Black Life : Poems Jack Davis , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992 Z271137 1992 selected work poetry St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992
y separately published work icon Unbranded Herb Wharton , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992 Z88763 1992 single work novel

'From the riotous picnic races to the famous Mt Isa rodeo, from childhood in the yumba to gutsy outback pubs, Unbranded presents a strikingly original vision of Australia. With a rollicking cast of stockmen, shearers, barmaids and tourists, this novel is the story of three men. Sandy is a white man; Bindi, a Murri; Mulga is related on his mother's side to Bindi, and on his Irish father's side to Sandy. Their saga . and enduring friendship . covers forty years in the mulga country of the far west. It tells how Sandy achieves his dream of owning a cattle empire; how Bindi regains part of his tribal lands for his people, and how Mulga finally sits down to write about their shared experiences. Mulga's journey also brings him face-to-face with the dark side of urban despair and his people's struggle with alcohol...' (Source: WorldCat website)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992
y separately published work icon My Kind of People : Achievement, Identity and Aboriginality Wayne Coolwell , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 Z963420 1993 anthology life story 'Wayne Coolwell, ABC television and radio presenter, travels throughout Australia and the world to interview twelve Aborigines about their lives. These twelve express their individual sense of Aboriginality and the discovery of spirituality, their ambitions, and their diverse hopes for the future of Australia.' Source: Libraries Australia (Sighted 13/12/07) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993
y separately published work icon Conned! Eve Mumewa D. Fesl , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 Z1390877 1993 single work prose

'Language is power. It is used to describe and direct events fictional and true. This book describes how historians have manufactured a flattering Australian race relations history. Even today shameful colonial attitudes prevail - a new colonialism has emerged through our language.

'Conned! challenges established perceptions of indigenous Australians or Koories, as the author prefers to name Aborigines. Dr Fesl, a recognised linguist and Koorie culture specialist, brings unique insight to the suppressive role and divisive politics of language - a dilemma that affects all Australians, black and white. She makes clear the invisible text which creates a false and oppressive image of Koories as being inferior and in need of paternalistic aid.' (Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993
y separately published work icon Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 Z32091 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 8 units) 'The destinies of two families, black and white, are fatally interwoven... in this frontier novel. Racial brutality and the tragic account of the Myall Creek massacre underscore the story of Ginny and Wollumbuy, Kamilaroi people of Warrumbungle Range. Mysterious killings follow the arrival Karl and Gundrun Maresch, a German couple who establish a Lutheran mission near the young settlement of Coonabarabran.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993
y separately published work icon My Bundjalung People Ruby Langford Ginibi , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994 Z91230 1994 single work autobiography

'When Ruby Langford Ginibi was eight years old, her father collected his daughters from the Box Ridge mission and drove them to safety out of reach of the white authorities and the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families. Today an established author and Aboriginal activist, Ruby travels back to her home in Bundjalung country to trace and record the history of her community, her roots. The reader is taken aboard on the journey home, down the backroads of northern New South Wales into the homes and conversations of cousins, aunties, and tribal elders. The experience is direct and the feelings are shared. Ruby Langford Ginibi writes with the humour, exuberance and unbending truth for which her first book, Don't Take Your Love to Town, won such renown.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994
y separately published work icon Bridge of Triangles John Muk Muk Burke , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994 Z24005 1994 single work novel 'Chris Leeton is tormented but also sustained by his growing need to cross over the landscape of his Aboriginal ancestors... In the struggle to keep the family together in Sydney's grim commission housing, schoolboy Chris is tender witness to poverty and despair. In time he comes to understand that they are exiles in their own land. He senses that it is his generation that must cross the bridge back to that landscape which defines his people's existence.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994
y separately published work icon Cattle Camp : Murrie Drovers and Their Stories Herb Wharton , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994 Z271270 1994 anthology prose (taught in 2 units) Wharton's stories, based on interviews and conversations with Murri stockmen and women, document the contribution of Aboriginal workers to Australia's pastoral history. Wharton says: 'I felt honoured to be allowed to write the stories of these Aborigines, whose names are now recorded as part of the history of Australia' (Foreword to Cattle Camp). St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994
y separately published work icon The Sausage Tree Rosalie Medcraft , Valda Gee , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1995 Z249590 1995 single work life story The title The Sausage Tree, celebrates the authors' favourite childhood game. 'This memoir tells of the sisters' childhood spent during the Depression in small-town Tasmania. For the family of nine, thrift was a virtue and home-grown food and hand-made clothing were a necessity. In later years, they learned of their Aboriginal heritage as descendants of Manalargenna, leader of the Trawlwoolway people of Cape Portland in north-east Tasmania.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1995
y separately published work icon Where Ya' Been, Mate? Herb Wharton , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z532226 1996 selected work short story poetry criticism biography

'Unforgettable characters emerge from this vintage Herb Wharton collection which ranges from city to bush, from tall tales to amusing parables. There's Rainbow Jack the opal digger; Dr Roo, who when the dingbats are upon him boxes his own shadow; and stockmen with nicknames such as Wild Duck, Grease Paint and Diamond Jim.

'Along with campfire yarns and memories drawn from childhood are stories from Herb's other life in the big city and on the literary trail.' (Publication summary)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996
y separately published work icon Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996
y separately published work icon Dreaming in Urban Areas Lisa Bellear , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z174905 1996 selected work poetry

'These poems are anything but motionless. Their emotions cut, determined to map out another possibility, a place of personal and social reconciliation.' (Source: Back cover)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996
y separately published work icon Warrigal's Way Warrigal Anderson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z184613 1996 single work autobiography 'Warrigal has every reason to believe that the suits from the Department are coming to take him away. With five pounds from his mother and hasty instructions, he hops on what he thinks is a train to Swan Hill. Instead he finds himself on a life-long journey.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996
y separately published work icon Steam Pigs Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z399534 1997 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

'I haven't got a 'boyfriend', Mum." "Fine way to be carrying on then, out all Sat'dy night with a strange fella..." "Muuum. " "Don't you marm me, my girl. When I was your age I wasn't out running around with any stray bloke with a flash car and the gift of the gab. "And when I'm your age, thought Sue maliciously, I won't be ringing up my kids to scab money and make their lives a misery into the bargain. Sue Wilson, young and Aboriginal, escapes her "too-large, too-poor family in a too-small" north Queensland town for Logan City's frontier sprawl. Entering "the mythic world of Work" she discovers that the view from behind the bar is less than glamorous, but pays the rent. When she meets Roger the good times begin to roll until she finds herself starring in a feature with medium level violence. Melissa Lucashenko's first novel makes no apologies. With direct and gutsy language, her characters live their lives in the shadows cast by indifferent affluence.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997
y separately published work icon Talking About Celia : Community and Family Memories of Celia Smith Jeanie Bell , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z1394643 1997 single work life story 'Talking About Celia...is a montage of memories and pictures taking the reader inside an Aboriginal community and inside the life of an extraordinary Murri woman. People like Celia Smith are remembered through the stories told and re-told by their family and community...Celia left her mark on south-east Queensland communities and there are also many others around Australia who will remember her.' Source : Talking About Celia : Community and Family Memories of Celia Smith (1997). St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997
y separately published work icon Our Land is Our Life : Land Rights : Past, Present and Future Galarrwuy Yunupingu (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z1602420 1997 anthology essay

'Our Land is Our Life is a rare opportunity to sit down with Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Michael Dodson and Patrick Dodson, Noel Pearson, Lois O'Donoghue, Michael Mansell, Peter Yu, and many more whose names appear in the daily media. In this collection the most influential indigenous leaders of our time provide analyses and reveal their passions for their people and land, and for the Australia we all want to call home. Our Land is Our Life is inspired by the twentieth anniversary of the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act, and coincides with the final year for lodgement of claims. As the ground is shifting beneath indigenous Australia, in a political sense, there is an even greater need to stand firm on the central issue of land rights. To forsake our land is to deny not just ourselves but also the future of Australia, socially, environmentally and culturally. This collection features valuable archival material, including photographs and cartoons, as well as landmark documents.

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997
y separately published work icon Land Window John Graham , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998 Z378260 1998 selected work poetry

'In contemporary language and imagery, this poetry collection reflects a deep and abiding Aboriginality and an understanding that bridges past and present, nature and technology, the traditional and the modern. Chosen as a highly-commended entry in the David Unaipon Awards for unpublished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. Land Window, looks out onto the world, proclaiming humanity's eternal connection to the earth.' (Source: Google Books website)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998
y separately published work icon Killing Darcy Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998 Z464956 1998 single work novel young adult

'Angry young Koori Darcy Mango is on parole, and looking for his mob in Northern New South Wales. Befriending the Menzies family wasn't at all what he had in mind, but then neither was the old house hidden in the bush near Desperation Creek. Why does the camera from the house take pictures of the past? It's Darcy's fate to find out.' (Source: UQP website)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998
y separately published work icon Black Angels, Red Blood Steven McCarthy , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998 Z154363 1998 single work novel

'On the surface there's not much to distinguish Tim's life from any other on the fringe- where dope, booze and women are his pleasure as well as his pain. He has family in the bush, and the lives of his city friends are transacted in the face of poverty and police harassment. It is only in Tim's relationship with the Old Man that we glimpse another and little known world where the rules are different, but so too the retribution.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998
y separately published work icon Sister Girl : The Writings of Aboriginal Activist and Historian Jackie Huggins Jackie Huggins , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998 Z215395 1998 selected work prose interview essay biography (taught in 4 units) The articles in this collection 'represent a decade of writing by Aboriginal historian and activist Jackie Huggins. These essays and interviews combine both the public and the personal in a bold trajectory tracing one Murri woman's journey towards self-discovery and human understanding...Sister Girl examines many topics, including community action, political commitment, the tradition and value of oral history, and government intervention in Aboriginal lives. It challenges accepted notions of the appropriateness of mainstream feminism in Aboriginal society and of white historians writing Indigenous history. Closer to home, there are accounts of personal achievement and family experience as she revisits the writing of Auntie Rita with her mother Rita Huggins - the inspiration for her lifework.' (Source: Back cover, 1998 UQP edition) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1998
y separately published work icon Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z509740 1999 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'Roo Glover has two highly desirable talents - he can fight, and he can run like the clappers. In the inner-city's harsh code there are losers and survivors, and Roo's a survivor. He's made it through adoption, through juvenile detention, through poverty. He's an athlete in training, aching towards the dream of Olympic qualification. He's even coping with being white in the turbulent Aboriginal family of his girlfriend. But when cousin Stanley dies in custody, and Roo finds his father the same week, trouble starts to catch up with him.' (Source: UQP Website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999
y separately published work icon Yumba Days Herb Wharton , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z551934 1999 single work autobiography young adult

'The Yumba, an Aboriginal settlement, is home to Herbie, his brothers,

sisters, relations and friends on the outskirts of town. From his back

door the view of his playground stretches beyond the banks of the

Warrego River, as far as the eye can see. The fun-loving Herbie learns

his culture from both Aboriginal and white worlds: from his tribal

elders and from the local townies. For Herbie his Yumba is a village

peopled with friends and family, who keep an eye on him and his mates.

But there's always escape to the surrounding hopbush plain, a larrikin's

paradise. Herbie's rollicking adventures range from school-age antics

to his teenage years as a stockman and, briefly-on into the present and

his wry observations in travelling the world as an author.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999
y separately published work icon Is That You, Ruthie? Ruth Hegarty , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z226781 1999 single work autobiography (taught in 3 units) 'It that you...? Matron's voice would ring out across the dormitory. In that pause sixty little girls would stop in their tracks, waiting to hear who was in trouble. All too often the name called out would be that of the high spirited dormitory girl Ruthie. In the depression years Queensland's notorious Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission became home to four-year old Ruth until her late teens when she was sent out to serve as a domestic on a station homestead.' (Source: University of Queensland Press website) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999
y separately published work icon When Darkness Falls John Bodey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z382204 2000 selected work prose Indigenous story young adult 'Set in the Kimberley region of Western Australia this is a collection of powerful love stories from the past. Each story explores different aspects of love - from mothers' love to lustful love, from forbidden or dutiful love to innocence.' (Source: Back cover, UQP 2000 edition) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000
y separately published work icon When Darkness Falls John Bodey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z382204 2000 selected work prose Indigenous story young adult 'Set in the Kimberley region of Western Australia this is a collection of powerful love stories from the past. Each story explores different aspects of love - from mothers' love to lustful love, from forbidden or dutiful love to innocence.' (Source: Back cover, UQP 2000 edition) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000
y separately published work icon Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism Aileen Moreton-Robinson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z1009223 2000 single work criticism (taught in 8 units)

In this important and beautifully written book, Aileen Moreton-Robinson gives us a compelling analysis of white Australian feminism seen through Indigenous Australian women's eyes. She unpacks the unspoken normative subject of feminism as white middle-class woman, where whitemess marks their position of power and privilege vis-a-vis Indigenous women, and where silence about whitemess sustains the exercise of that power. And she examines the consequences of practices for Indigenous women and White women.' (Source: Preface, Talkin' Up to the White Women, 2000)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000
y separately published work icon Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight Samuel Wagan Watson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668862 2000 selected work poetry (taught in 2 units) 'In a voice youthful, passionate and questioning, these poems reflect on growing up and on letting go; on urban dwellers in love and lust; and on the artist and his Murri community. The politics are unguarded and often amusing, and the language is playful, rhythmic and evocative. Ghosted by ancestors and muses, Watson's cityscape interweaves past and present.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000
y separately published work icon Bitin' Back Just Call Me Jean Vivienne Cleven , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2001 Z669132 2001 single work novel (taught in 7 units) 'When the Blackout's star player Nevil Dooley wakes one morning to don a frock and 'eyeshada', his mother's idle days at the bingo hall are gone forever. Mystified and clueless, single parent Mavis takes bush-cunning and fast footwork to unravel the mystery behind this sudden change of face... Hilarity prevails while desperation builds in the race to save Nevil from the savage consequences of discovery in a town where a career in footy is a young black man's only escape. Neither pig shoots, bust-ups at the Two Dogs, bare-knuckle sessions in the shed or even a police siege can slow the countdown on this human time bomb.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2001
y separately published work icon The Mish Robert Lowe , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002 Z918181 2002 single work life story

'Robert Lowe's affection and regard for "The Mish", a property in Victoria's southwest, originally an Aboriginal mission, is warmly conveyed in this candid memoir. In the 1950s and 60s when Robert was growing up, "The Mish" was a close knit community made up of the Aboriginal descendants of Framlingham Aboriginal Mission Station, founded in 1865. Robert's adventurous boyhood was a secured and unfettered time spent with his siblings and cousins enjoying hunting, fishing and eel trapping.

'Teachings by the community elders instilled in him a connection to the land and spirituality he would in turn pass on to following generations. When Robert and his bride leave "The Mish", a new chapter begins in a nearby town where acceptance and respect are hard won.'

Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002
y separately published work icon Itinerant Blues Samuel Wagan Watson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002 Z963167 2002 selected work poetry (taught in 1 units)

'leaving behind neon nights and misspent passions, these poems take to the highway with the muse riding shotgun' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002
y separately published work icon Her Sister's Eye Vivienne Cleven , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002 Z985143 2002 single work novel (taught in 7 units)

'...always remember where you're from... To the Aboriginal Families of Mundra this saying brings either comfort or pain. To Nana Vida it is what binds the generations. To the unwilling savant Archie Corella it portends a fate too cruel to name. For Sophie Salte, whose woman's body and child's mind make her easy prey, nothing matters while her sister Murilla is there to watch over her.

For Murilla, fierce protector and unlikely friend to Caroline Drysdale, wife of the town patriarch, what matters is survival. In a town with a history of vigilante raids, missing persons and unsolved murders, survival can be all that matters'. (Source: back cover, 2002 edition)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002
y separately published work icon Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002
y separately published work icon Under the Wintamarra Tree Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002 6013129 2002 single work life story autobiography

'Doris Pilkington Garimara was born on traditional birthing ground under a wintamarra tree. This is her life story which follows on from her mother, Molly Craig's story in ~Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Doris begins with the basic migration of her Mardu ancestors from the Western Australian desert to the cattle stations and settlements on its fringes.

Generations later, living in a workers' camp with her family on Balfour Downs Station, three-year old Doris' life is forever changed when she is removed by authorities to Moore River Native Settlement. This institution, for children judged to be identifiably of mixed race, was the place Molly had so famously escaped from a decade before.

The life of an institutional orphan, as seen through the eyes of a child, is movingly revealed... Leaving behind the regimentation of assigned routines and endless regulations, Doris goes to Perth to train as a nurse's aide but the racist culture of an institutional upbringing leaves an indelible mistrust of her own people. This is the obstacle she has to overcome when as a wife and mother she makes the courageous but difficult choice to find her mother and father, and to begin the journey to reclaim her Mardu heritage.' Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2002
y separately published work icon Bittersweet Journey Ruth Hegarty , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003 Z1050885 2003 single work autobiography (taught in 1 units)

'The first step on Ruth's journey is towards freedom. After twenty-two years under government control as an inmate of Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission, she marries and enters an inviting yet uncertain world in the nearby settlement with her husband Joe. The settlement — with its origins as a camp for displaced Aboriginal families, its system of food rations and shortage of housing and jobs — is a difficult start for the young couple. Humour, a supportive circle of family and friends and Ruth's own resourcefulness prevail, and eventually the Hegartys achieve the basics of a house for their growing family.

The invasive powers of the Native Affairs Department continue to affect their lives even when, years later, they move to the city. Ruth's determination and irrepressible sense of fairness ... characterise a life vigorously committed to social justice and community causes.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Fresh Cuttings : A Celebration of Fiction and Poetry From UQP's Black Writing Series Sue Abbey (editor), Sandra R. Phillips (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003 Z1063168 2003 anthology poetry extract (taught in 1 units) 'These individual "cuttings", or extracts, have been gathered from novels and poetry collections published in UQP's Black Writing series since 1990.' (Fresh Cuttings, 2003) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Fresh Cuttings : A Celebration of Fiction and Poetry From UQP's Black Writing Series Sue Abbey (editor), Sandra R. Phillips (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003 Z1063168 2003 anthology poetry extract (taught in 1 units) 'These individual "cuttings", or extracts, have been gathered from novels and poetry collections published in UQP's Black Writing series since 1990.' (Fresh Cuttings, 2003) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Home Larissa Behrendt , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1113719 2004 single work novel (taught in 10 units)

'A story of homecoming, this absorbing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at "the place where the rivers meet", the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story of Candice's Aboriginal family, the twentieth century falls away.

Garibooli, renamed Elizabeth, is sent to work as a housemaid, but marriage soon offers escape from the terror of the master's night-time visits. Her displacement carries into the lives of her seven children - their stories witness to the impact of orphanage life and the consequences of having a dark skin in post-war Australia. Vividly rekindled, the lives of her family point the direction home for Candice.

Home is a ... novel from an author who understands both the capacity of language to suppress and the restorative potency of stories that bridge past and present.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004
y separately published work icon Smoke Encrypted Whispers Samuel Wagan Watson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1123977 2004 selected work poetry (taught in 5 units)

'These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004
y separately published work icon Whispers of This Wik Woman Fiona Doyle , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1148019 2004 single work life story

'This absorbing and personal account of Wik activist Jean George Awumpun offers a rare understanding of Aboriginal identity and traditional land. To illustrate her proud Alngith Wikwaya beginnings, Awumpun's early history is told through family member and Alngith descendant Fiona Doyle. This ancestral history combines with the story of Awumpun's struggle in the Wik native title claims, which advanced the earlier Mabo Decision onto mainland Australia.

Using photographs, traditionally inspired art and language terms, Fiona Doyle invites us into the heart of Cape York's Wikwaya country.' Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004
y separately published work icon Swallow the Air Dust on Waterglass Tara June Winch , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1265164 2003 selected work short story (taught in 33 units)

Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006
y separately published work icon Home to Mother Doris Pilkington Garimara , Janice Lyndon (illustrator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1265739 2006 single work children's fiction Molly, Gracey and Daisy are on the run, determined to escape the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls follow the rabbit-proof fence 1,600 kilometres north, knowing it would lead them home. Source: Publisher's blurb. St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006
y separately published work icon All My Mob Ruby Langford Ginibi , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007 Z1381114 2007 selected work autobiography (taught in 3 units)

'This ... collection of stories features a foreword by Dr Pam Johnston that places Ruby’s anecdotes in the context of a country which seems incapable of healing its past or of creating a better future for Indigenous people. Featuring the best stories from Ruby’s Real Deadly, plus many unpublished gems dating as far back as 1992, All My Mob’s portrayal of family life, ‘home’, and life as an Aborigine in today’s Australia is fascinating, often confronting and unforgettable.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007
y separately published work icon Me, Antman and Fleabag Gayle Kennedy , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007 Z1307235 2006 selected work short story humour

'A collection of short stories that encapsulates the story of the Aboriginal narrator, her partner Antman, their dog Fleabag and their life in travelling in rural Australia.'  (Source: Narragunnawali resource)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007
y separately published work icon Don't Take Your Love to Town Ruby Langford Ginibi , Ringwood : Penguin , 1988 Z496435 1988 single work autobiography (taught in 10 units)

'Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was fifteen. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney. Ruby is an amazing woman whose sense of humour has endured through all the hardships she has experienced.' (Source UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007
y separately published work icon Skin Painting Elizabeth Hodgson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2008 Z1427342 2007 selected work poetry

'My story cannot be painted onto a canvas - it is skin painting.

Brave, haunting and evocative, this powerful volume is poetry as memoir. From her early experiences in an institution and the effect of this on her family to the illustration of her strength as an adult, Elizabeth Hodgson helps make a slice of Aboriginal experience accessible and resonant. Skin Painting explores themes of art, identity, sexuality and loneliness. It is both universal and intimated, honest and important.'

Source: Publisher's blurb

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2008
y separately published work icon Every Secret Thing Marie Munkara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2009 Z1523127 2008 selected work short story (taught in 4 units)

'In the Aboriginal missions of far northern Australia, it was a battle between saving souls and saving traditional culture.

'Every Secret Thing is a rough, tough, hilarious portrayal of the Bush Mob and the Mission Mob, and the hapless clergy trying to convert them. In these tales, everyone is fair game.

'At once playful and sharp, Marie Munkara's wonderfully original stories cast a taunting new light on the mission era in Australia.' (From the publisher's website.)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2009
y separately published work icon Ten Hail Marys : A Memoir Kate Howarth , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2010 Z1680974 2008 single work autobiography

'In January 1966, Kate Howarth gave birth to a healthy baby boy at St Margaret's Home for unwed mothers in Sydney. In the months before the birth, and the days after, she resisted intense pressure to give up her son for adoption, becoming one of the few women to ever leave the institution with her baby. She was only sixteen years old.

'What inspired such courage?

'In Ten Hail Marys, Kate Howarth vividly recounts the first seventeen years of her life in Sydney's slums and suburbs and in rural New South Wales. Abandoned by her mother as a baby and then by "Mamma", her volatile grandmother, as a young girl, Kate was shunted between Aboriginal relatives and expected to grow up fast. A natural storyteller, she describes a childhood beset by hardship, abuse, profound grief and poverty, but buoyed with the hope that one day she would make a better life for herself.

'Frank, funny and incredibly moving, Ten Hail Marys is the compelling true story of a childhood lost, and a young woman's hard-won self-possession.' (From the publisher's website.)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2010
y separately published work icon The Boundary Nicole Watson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2011 Z1622544 2009 single work novel crime (taught in 2 units)

'Hours after rejecting the Corrowa People's native title claim on Brisbane's Meston Park, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered in his home. Days later, lawyers against the claim are also found dead.

Aboriginal people were once prohibited from entering Brisbane's city limits at night, and Meston Park stood on the boundary. The Corrowa's matriarch, Ethel Cobb, is convinced the murders are the work of an ancient assassin who has returned to destroy the boundary, but Aboriginal lawyer Miranda Eversely isn't so sure.

When the Premier is kidnapped, the pressure to find the killer intensifies ... While the investigation forces Detective Sergeant Jason Matthews to confront his buried heritage, Miranda battles a sense of personal failure at the Corrowa's defeat. How far will it take her to the edge of self-destruction?' Source: www.uqp.com.au/ (Sighted 25/03/2011).

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2011
y separately published work icon Purple Threads Jeanine Leane , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2011 Z1716649 2010 selected work short story (taught in 2 units) 'Purple Threads is a humorous collection of rural yarns by a gifted storyteller. Jeanine Leane grew up on a sheep farm near Gundagai, and the stories are based on her childhood experiences in a house full of fiercely independent women. In between Aunty Boo's surveillance of the local farmers' sheep dip alliance and Aunty Bubby's fireside tales of the Punic Wars, the women offer sage advice to their nieces on growing up as Indigenous girls in a white country town.

The cast of strong Aboriginal women in a rural setting gives a fascinating insight into both Aboriginal and rural life. Farming is not an easy pursuit for anyone, but the Aunties take all the challenges in their stride, facing torrential rain, violent neighbours and injured dogs with an equal mix of humour and courage. Purple Threads uses an irreverent style reminiscent of Gayle Kennedy's Me, Antman & Fleabag and Marie Munkara's Every Secret Thing, but offers a unique perspective on the Australian country lifestyle.' Source: Publisher's website
St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2011
y separately published work icon Double Native Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012 Z1849273 2012 single work autobiography

'A moving memoir about living across two cultures. Growing up "on country" on the west coast of Queensland's Cape York Peninsula in the 1970s and '80s, Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung had an idyllic traditional life.

At the age of 16, she decided to pursue her dream of performing and moved to Sydney to attend the NAISDA Dance College. There she studied with the legendary Page brothers before they founded Bangarra Dance Theatre and met her future husband and father of her three daughters.

But the missing piece of her life was her father. As a young woman, she finds her father and carves out a fragile relationship with him. This inspires her to better understand her Austrian ancestry and how it meshes with her Indigenous identity.

Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung is the model of a modern woman: mother and professional; performer and creator; teacher and student, urban dweller and remote community inhabitant. As such she shares the joys and challenges that come with growing up in a divided community and carving out a career as a solo parent.

Double Native is a powerful and candid memoir that offers a rare insight into the burgeoning years of the contemporary Indigenous dance movement and what it means to straddle two cultures.' Source: http://uqp.uq.edu.au/ (Sighted 16/03/2012).

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012
y separately published work icon Mazin Grace Dylan Coleman , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012 Z1804070 2011 single work novel (taught in 1 units) 'Growing up on the Mission isn't easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn't know what to say. Pappa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn't help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn't understand.'
Source: Publisher's website
St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012
y separately published work icon Good Morning, Mr Sarra : My Life Working for a Stronger, Smarter Future for Our Children My Life Working for a Stronger, Smarter Future for Our Children Chris Sarra , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012 Z1906540 2012 single work autobiography Chris Sarra is best-known nationally as the school principal who turned around the toxic culture and poor attendance rates at Cherbourg State School in Queensland. Slowly, Sarra's 'Strong and Smart' vision lifted community expectations and transformed Cherbourg into a school with below-average rates of truancy, growth in student numbers and low levels of vandalism. Under Chris' leadership the school became nationally acclaimed for its pursuit of the 'Strong and Smart' philosophy and Chris' work there was featured on ABC's Australian Story (2004). In November 2009 he was named Queensland's Australian of the Year. Good Morning, Mr Sarra is the story of the ordinary, yet extraordinary, life behind this vision. From his childhood as one of ten children in a country town, to the galvanising of his educational philosophy at university, to its support at a national level. Now with his Stronger Smarter Institute, Chris Sarra is pursuing and achieving improved outcomes in literary, numeracy and attendance for Indigenous children across the country. By providing leadership and education to a new generation of Aboriginal students,he is offering them the means to determine their own futures.(Publisher blurb) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2012
y separately published work icon Mullumbimby Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2013 Z1911852 2013 single work novel (taught in 8 units) 'When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree change, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. When Jo unexpectedly finds love on one side of the Native Title divide she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the Good Life.' (Source: TROVE) St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2013
y separately published work icon Not Just Black and White Not Just Black and White : A Conversation Between a Mother and Daughter Lesley Williams , Tammy Williams , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2015 8859509 2015 single work biography

'Lesley Williams was forced to leave the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family at a young age to work as a domestic servant. Apart from pocket money, Lesley never saw her wages – they were kept ‘safe’ for her and for countless others just like her. She was taught not to question her life, until desperation made her start to wonder, where is all that money she earned? And so began a nine-year journey for answers.'

'Inspired by her mother’s quest, a teenage Tammy Williams entered a national writing competition with an essay about injustice. The winning prize took Tammy and Lesley to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and ultimately to the United Nations in Geneva. Along the way, they found courage they never thought they had and friendship in the most unexpected places.' (Source: On-line)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2015
y separately published work icon Finding Eliza : Power and Colonial Storytelling Larissa Behrendt , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016 9186866 2016 multi chapter work criticism

'A vital Aboriginal perspective on colonial storytelling

'Indigenous lawyer and writer Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the local Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonizers’ stories. Citing works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, she explores the tropes in these accounts, such as the supposed promiscuity of Aboriginal women, the Europeans’ fixation on cannibalism, and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Behrendt shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – which in Australia led to the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the laws enforced against them. ' (Publication summary)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016
y separately published work icon After the Carnage Tara June Winch , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016 9383449 2016 selected work short story

'Ten years after the much-acclaimed Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch returns with an extraordinary new collection of stories'

'A single mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her young son. A Nigerian student undertakes a United Nations internship in the hope of a better future. A recently divorced man starts a running group with members of an online forum for recovering addicts. '

'Ranging from New York to Istanbul, from Pakistan to Australia, these unforgettable stories chart the distances in their characters’ lives – whether they have grown apart from the ones they love, been displaced from their homeland, or are struggling to reconcile their dreams with reality. A collection of prodigious depth and variety, After the Carnage marks the impressive evolution of one of our finest young writers.' (Source: Publisher's website)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016
y separately published work icon Common People Tony Birch , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2017 11496679 2017 selected work short story

'In this unforgettable new collection, Tony Birch introduces a cast of characters from all walks of life. These remarkable and surprising stories capture common people caught up in the everyday business of living and the struggle to survive. From two single mothers on the most unlikely night shift to a homeless man unexpectedly faced with the miracle of a new life, Birch’s stories are set in gritty urban refuges and battling regional communities. His deftly drawn characters find unexpected signs of hope in a world where beauty can be found on every street corner – a message on a T-shirt, a friend in a stray dog or a star in the night sky. 

'Common People shines a light on human nature and how the ordinary kindness of strangers can have extraordinary results. With characteristic insight and restraint, Tony Birch reinforces his reputation as a master storyteller.'

Source: Publication summary.
 

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2017
y separately published work icon Dancing Home Paul Collis , St Lucia : The University of Queensland , 2017 11671262 2017 single work novel

‘When he was in gaol, he’d begun to prepare himself for the fight of his life, a showdown with the policeman, McWilliams … he’d face life with death, and see who blinked first.’ 

'Blackie and Rips are fresh out of prison when they set off on a road trip back to Wiradjuri country with their mate Carlos. Blackie is out for revenge against the cop who put him in prison on false grounds. He is also craving to reconnect with his grandmother’s country. 

'Driven by his hunger for drugs and payback, Blackie reaches dark places of both mystery and beauty as he searches for peace. He is willing to pay for that peace with his own life. 

'Part road-movie, part ‘Koori-noir’, Dancing Home announces an original and darkly funny new voice.'

[source: Publisher's website]

St Lucia : The University of Queensland , 2017
y separately published work icon Talking Sideways : Stories and Conversations from Finniss Springs Reg Dodd , Malcolm McKinnon , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2019 15303859 2019 single work autobiography

'‘That’s the way it is with us mob. We were brought up to talk kind of sideways. That’s the respectful, true Aboriginal way.’

'Reg Dodd grew up at Finniss Springs, on striking desert country bordering South Australia’s Lake Eyre. For the Arabunna and for many other Aboriginal people, Finniss Springs has been a homeland and a refuge. It has also been a cattle station, an Aboriginal mission, a battlefield, a place of learning and a living museum.

'With his long-time friend and filmmaker Malcolm McKinnon, Dodd reflects on his upbringing in a cross-cultural environment that defied social conventions of the time. They also write candidly about the tensions surrounding power, authority and Indigenous knowledge that have defined the recent decades of this resource-rich area.

'Talking Sideways is part history, part memoir and part cultural road-map. Together, Dodd and McKinnon reveal the unique history of this extraordinary place and share their concerns and their hopes for its future.' (Publication summary)

St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2019

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Emerging Black Writing and the University of Queensland Press Deborah Jordan , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Resourceful Reading : The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary Culture 2009; (p. 156-175)
The article examines the role the University of Queensland Press played in publishing and promoting black writing since the late 1970s, and some of the difficult issues involved.
Emerging Black Writing and the University of Queensland Press Deborah Jordan , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Resourceful Reading : The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary Culture 2009; (p. 156-175)
The article examines the role the University of Queensland Press played in publishing and promoting black writing since the late 1970s, and some of the difficult issues involved.
Last amended 22 Mar 2019 14:55:48
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