AustLit

Katherine Hallemeier employs a close reading of Rey Chow's essay "The Secrets of Ethic Abjection' (2012) and Brian Castro's autobiographical essays in Looking for Estrellita (1999) and his fictional autobiography Shanghai Dancing (2003) and argues that both authors 'are similar insofar as their writing challenges essentialist understanding of hybrid identity by in fact straddling the genres of autobiography and theory'. (p. 125)

James Dahlstrom looks for anti-American sentiment in Rolf Bolderwood's novel, Robbery under Arm. This is achieved by examining the novel 'in its historical context and by placing the author in this historical context and by treating the novel as colonial narrative.' (p. 145)

Janice Shaw examines Beverley Farmer's A Body of Water. Shaw states that the Farmer's term 'embrace of the mirror' is a motif that 'characterises Farmer's writing in terms of the relationships she presents. The gender issues revealed through these relationships are characterised by feelings of coldness, otherness, and love, being a reflection of the self which only serves to emphasise its 'selfish nature...' (p. 151)

The Blue Mountains have often been used as a backdrop in Australian literature. Elizabeth Hicks looks at several of these texts by Australian women which were written during the fifteen years between 1987 and 2002, a period which loosley corresponds to theat of third-wave feminism.