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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Andrew's sister Anna likes fighting for causes, and she's getting Andrew
involved in her latest one - the plight of East Timorese asylum-seekers
in Australia. Andrew's never broken the law before. But the law and the
government don't seem to care about a stranger who's had to run for her
life. Escaping a hostile regime. Seeking refuge . . .'. (Source: bookseller's website.)
Affiliation Notes
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This work is affiliated with the AustLit subset Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing because it contains references to East Timor and East Timorese people.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Writing East Timor for Children : Mobilizing Sympathy
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship , September vol. 22 no. 2 2016; (p. 108-123) 'Novels about East Timor in English and Portuguese for children have been scarce. Despite a contemporary background of revisionist approaches to history, the nationalist focus of such material means that certain stories are handled rarely, even those that interpellate the nation in some way. This article examines ways in which support for East Timor is underwritten in the few novels for children and young adults that deal with East Timor in English and Portuguese, concluding with a brief assessment of the extent to which they realize Herbert Kohl’s suggestions of appropriate strategies for what he terms “Radical Children’s Literature.”' -
Australian Popular Fiction and the Moral Drama of East Timor
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Understanding Timor-Leste 2013 : Proceedings of the Timor-Leste Studies Association Conference, 15-16 July 2013 2013; (p. 246-250) 'From the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975 until the referendum on independence in 1999 and up until the present, East Timor has been a place whose destiny Australian governments have felt they have the right to intervene in. Indeed, this assumed right goes back to the invasion of neutral Portuguese Timor by Australian forces in World War II, thereby condemning thousands of Timorese to their deaths at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Of this initial assumption of Australia’s agency in East Timor there has been surprisingly little creative remediation, although there has been much and moving commentary in nonfiction. The marginality of Portuguese Timor to Australia in the 1940s may be read both in the decision to invade and in subsequent uninterest in interpreting what is one of Australia's closest neighbours. Although the Indonesian invasion and brutal occupation vastly increased the amount of coverage given to the territory, somehow this too was almost never accompanied by the analytical possibilities of creative work. From Tony Maniaty’s anguished representation of the period immediately before the invasion, The Children Must Dance (1987), through Gail Jones’s theoretically reflective short story ‘Other Places’ (1992), Bill Green’s satire on Australian political immorality, Cleaning Up (1993), or Libby Gleeson’s book for children Refuge (1998), to take some of the registers through which the country was dealt with, East Timor was rarely processed in Australia through the protocols of imaginative narrative (on these texts, see Callahan 2010; 2012a; 2012b).' (Introduction) -
Disappearing Race : Normative Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation in Australian Refugee Narratives
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrating Race : Asia, (Trans)Nationalism, Social Change 2011; (p. 235-251) -
History and Shame : East Timor in Australian Fictions
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , November vol. 12 no. 3 2010; (p. 401-414) This essay examines a series of Australian texts in an attempt to perceive the ways in which East Timor has functioned as a test of the operation of Australian memory and the processing of national shame over the failure of the nation to aid a neighbouring people who had aided Australia at great cost during the Second World War. After introducing the notion of shame and the contrast between official Australian policy and public sentiment over the issue of East Timor from the date of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, a contrast rooted in the nation's sense of itself as being a sponsor of freedom, democracy and the fair go, the essay examines a series of fictional texts dealing with East Timor in some way, and then returns to the concept of shame and its relevance in this context. The texts dealt with include fiction for adults and children: Tony Maniaty's The Children Must Dance (1984), Gail Jones's Other Places (1992), Bill Green's Cleaning Up (1993), Kerry Collison's The Timor Man (1998), Libby Gleeson's Refuge (1998) and Josef Vondra's No-name Bird (2000), along with the Australian-Canadian miniseries Answered by Fire (2006) and the Australian film Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009). As expected, concerned observers share many features of their reaction to events in East Timor, but inevitably, as they read East Timor they are also reading Australia and its relation to an ethics of conviction that might have dealt more honourably with the invasion and oppression on its doorstep. The analysis draws on the work of Jeffrey Olick, Avishai Margalit and Michael Morgan in its approach to regret, shame and memory. -
In the Wake of the Tampa : Multiculturalism, Cultural Citizenship and Australian Refugee Narratives
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Dislocations 2006; (p. 21-35) Through the concept of cultural citizenship, Ommundsen comments on recent literary portrayals of asylum seeking and refugee experiences and how they might speak to contemporary views on multiculturalism in Australia.
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Untitled
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: Magpies : Talking About Books for Children , March vol. 13 no. 1 1998; (p. 38)
— Review of Refuge 1998 single work novel -
Untitled
1999
single work
review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 13 no. 2 1999; (p. 18)
— Review of Refuge 1998 single work novel -
Young Adults
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 1 March 1998; (p. 12)
— Review of Refuge 1998 single work novel -
Getting into the Picture
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 4 April 1998; (p. 10)
— Review of Refuge 1998 single work novel ; A Man Called Possum 1998 single work biography -
Political Issues for a Younger Generation
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 April 1998; (p. 21)
— Review of Refuge 1998 single work novel ; The Tiger 1998 single work novel -
Libby Gleeson
1998
single work
column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , May vol. 42 no. 2 1998; (p. 10) -
In the Wake of the Tampa : Multiculturalism, Cultural Citizenship and Australian Refugee Narratives
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Dislocations 2006; (p. 21-35) Through the concept of cultural citizenship, Ommundsen comments on recent literary portrayals of asylum seeking and refugee experiences and how they might speak to contemporary views on multiculturalism in Australia. -
History and Shame : East Timor in Australian Fictions
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , November vol. 12 no. 3 2010; (p. 401-414) This essay examines a series of Australian texts in an attempt to perceive the ways in which East Timor has functioned as a test of the operation of Australian memory and the processing of national shame over the failure of the nation to aid a neighbouring people who had aided Australia at great cost during the Second World War. After introducing the notion of shame and the contrast between official Australian policy and public sentiment over the issue of East Timor from the date of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, a contrast rooted in the nation's sense of itself as being a sponsor of freedom, democracy and the fair go, the essay examines a series of fictional texts dealing with East Timor in some way, and then returns to the concept of shame and its relevance in this context. The texts dealt with include fiction for adults and children: Tony Maniaty's The Children Must Dance (1984), Gail Jones's Other Places (1992), Bill Green's Cleaning Up (1993), Kerry Collison's The Timor Man (1998), Libby Gleeson's Refuge (1998) and Josef Vondra's No-name Bird (2000), along with the Australian-Canadian miniseries Answered by Fire (2006) and the Australian film Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009). As expected, concerned observers share many features of their reaction to events in East Timor, but inevitably, as they read East Timor they are also reading Australia and its relation to an ethics of conviction that might have dealt more honourably with the invasion and oppression on its doorstep. The analysis draws on the work of Jeffrey Olick, Avishai Margalit and Michael Morgan in its approach to regret, shame and memory. -
Disappearing Race : Normative Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation in Australian Refugee Narratives
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrating Race : Asia, (Trans)Nationalism, Social Change 2011; (p. 235-251) -
Standing Up for Our Writes
1998
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 March 1998; (p. 9)
Last amended 6 Dec 2021 14:17:29
Subjects:
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cTimor-Leste,cSoutheast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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cAustralia,c
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