AustLit

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).