AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
-
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
-
Minding Your 'Ps and Qs' : Poetry, Propaganda, Politics and Pictures,
single work
criticism
(p. 38-49)Halliday critiques two picture books, The Last of His Tribe (Henry Kendall )and The Drover's Boy (Ted Egan & Robert Ingpen) by asking who speaks, who is silenced and what constructions are used to reinforce this silence in texts which purport to represent Aboriginal people and their experiences. Halliday argues that these texts (like many others), say more about the construction of white identity than they do about Aboriginality and that they reinforce an ideologiocal position that is fundamentally racist (p.38). This occurs through the representation of Aboriganal people as '...a race whom history has passed by' and Halliday asks the question, are these texts are an attempt to reconcile [white] feelings of shame and sorrow or are they blatant propganda?(pp.38, 47) She concludes her analysis by arguing that while these texts may introduce the child reader to some of the untold stories and lost histories of Aboriginal people, essentially they reinforce 'a dominant white hegemony as the desired norm for Australian society' (p.47).Note:
Sighted: 29/03/18
-
A Review of Reading Race : Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature,
single work
criticism
(p. 50-55)
McGillis offers an insightful review of Clare Bradford's critical text, Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature, which posits that Bradford's work is crucial in recognizing the 'continual cultural practice of the effacement of Aboriginality' (p.52). McGillis gives an overview of each chapter, briefly referring to the main points of Bradford's analysis including the link between religious tropes and women and children, Aboriginal masculinity in colonial texts and gender representations in contemporary books. McGill posits that it is Bradford's acumen as a 'close reader' that effectivly articulates the more sinister side of Aboriginalism, specifically 'the apparent sympathy of non-Aboriginal for Aboriginal peoples that manifests itself in a paternalistic and appropriating attitude, or as Bradford puts it, "...[T]he warm glow of Aboriginalism conceals its appropriating and controlling strategies" (p.52).
Note:Sighted: 29/03/18
