y separately published work icon Australian Book Review periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2021... no. 432 June 2021 of Australian Book Review est. 1961 Australian Book Review
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'ABR has added an eleventh issue in 2021 – at no extra cost to subscribers – brimming with commentary, review essays, and creative writing. Ilana Snyder contextualises the recent turmoil in Israel and Palestine; Hessom Razavi turns our attention to the plight of refugees detained by Australia; Declan Fry examines the writings of Stan Grant; James Boyce laments the state of salmon-farming industry in Tasmania; and Martin Thomas revisits Patrick White three decades after his death. Elsewhere, explore a new short story by Josephine Rowe; poetry by Omar Sakr, Sarah Holland-Batt, and Derrick Austin; and much more.

'This issue is generously funded by Matthew Sandblom and Wendy Beckett’s Blake Beckett Fund.' (Publication summary)

 

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2021 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
The Gospel of Stan Grant : Questions of History and Identity, single work

'Let’s start with a portrait. The year is 1993. The book is My Kind of People. Its author is Wayne Coolwell, a journalist. Who are Coolwell’s kind of people? Ernie Dingo, for one. Sandra Eades. Noel Pearson. Archie Roach. And there, sandwiched between opera singer Maroochy Barambah and dancer Linda Bonson is Stan Grant, aged thirty. Circa 1993, Grant is a breakthrough television presenter and journalist whose mother remembers him coming home to read the newspaper while the other kids went to play footy. ‘[T]here was a maturity and a sense of order about him,’ Coolwell writes. The order belies his parents’ life of ‘tin humpies, dirt floors, and usually only the one bed for all the kids in the family’. They are unable to afford a football (Grant relies on rolled-up socks). His sister, one of three siblings, sleeps on a fold-out table. In one house, they have to chase away a group of occupying emus before they can move in.' (Introduction)

(p. 7-9)
‘I Intend to Do for Myself’ Examining Indigenous Lives under Exemption, Marilyn Lake , single work review
— Review of Black, White and Exempt 2021 anthology autobiography ;

'In the process of British colonisation, Aboriginal people lost their country, kin, culture, and languages. They also lost their freedom. Governed after 1901 by different state and territory laws, Aboriginal peoples were subject to the direction of Chief Protectors and Protection Boards, and were told where they could live, travel, and seek employment, and whom they might marry. They were also subject to the forced removal of their children by state authorities. Exemption certificates promised family safety, dignity, a choice of work, a passport to travel, and freedom. Too often, in practice, exemption also meant enhanced surveillance, family breakup, and new forms of racial discrimination and social segregation.' (Introduction)

(p. 10)
The Gifti"In the garden, my father sits in his wheelchair", Sarah Holland-Batt , single work poetry (p. 11)
A Pen on Fire : The Enduring Appeal of Inga Clendinnen, Tom Griffiths , single work review
— Review of Inga Clendinnen : Selected Writings Inga Clendinnen , 2021 selected work criticism ;
'It is wonderful to immerse oneself for days in the precise, elegant, passionate words of historian Inga Clendinnen (1934–2016), as this welcome collection of her writings enables one to do. Clendinnen’s distinctive voice comes through: warm, confidential, witty, and driven by a fierce intelligence. All her major writings are here – essays, articles, lectures, memoirs, and extracts from her books – deftly selected by James Boyce, a historian thirty years younger than Clendinnen and himself a highly original thinker and writer. As Boyce observes in his perceptive introduction, ‘Clendinnen’s subject was nothing less than human consciousness.’' (Introduction)
(p. 15-16)
The Digital Cliff : Protecting the National Archives of Australia, Peter McPhee , single work essay

'Many readers will recall reports of the fire in April 2021 that damaged the University of Cape Town’s library, which, among other riches, housed invaluable collections of unique manuscripts and personal papers, and one of the most extensive African film collections in the world. The extent of the damage is still being assessed. Even worse, the fire that destroyed the National Museum of Brazil in July 2018 consumed twenty million objects, including unique documents, the oldest human remains ever found in Brazil, and audio recordings and documents of extinct indigenous languages.' (Introduction)

(p. 26)
What Distance Burnsi"Smoke softens the trees, a swift omen scented before seen.", Omar Sakr , single work poetry (p. 33)
Open Page with Stan Grant, single work interview

'Stan Grant is the ABC’s international affairs analyst and Vice-Chancellor’s chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. He won the 2015 Walkley Award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs and is the author of On Thomas KeneallyThe Australian DreamAustralia DayThe Tears of Strangers, and Talking to My Country.' (Introduction)

(p. 34)
River of Dreams : Anita Heiss’s New Novel, Jane Sullivan , single work review
— Review of Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray Anita Heiss , 2021 single work novel ;
'There are two famous statues in the Gundagai area. One is the Dog on the Tuckerbox. The other is of two heroes, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who, with other Wiradjuri men, went out in their bark canoes on many exhausting and dangerous forays to rescue an estimated sixty-nine people from the Great Flood of 1852.' (Introduction)
(p. 38)
Karuna’s Story : On the Depths of a Mother’s Love, Yen-Rong Wong , single work review
— Review of One Hundred Days Alice Pung , 2021 single work novel ;

'It’s difficult to describe what it’s like to be raised in a Chinese family, especially when you are surrounded by markers of Western society. There is no such thing as talking back to your parents or refusing to do what they say. As a child, I never went to sleepovers. During my teenage and young adult years, I felt increasingly trapped in my own home. Everything I did was scrutinised; my parents never seemed to take into account my wants or needs. I found myself grasping for any scrap of independence, usually through lying or stealing or a combination of the two. As children, we are continually told that adults do things to protect us, especially when they are things we don’t particularly like. But when does protection morph into something uglier? When does it smother us, as if our agency has been stripped from us?' (Introduction)

(p. 39)
Houses of Unreason : A Triptych of Gothic Novels, Georgia White , single work review
— Review of The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan , 2021 single work novel ; Other People's Houses Kelli Hawkins , 2021 single work novel ; Sargasso Kathy George , 2021 single work novel ;

'Is it tautological to describe a work of fiction as ‘family Gothic’? After all, there’s nothing more inherently Gothic than the family politic: a hierarchical structure ruled by a patriarch, as intolerant of transgression as it is fascinated by it, sustaining itself through a clear us/them divide, all the while proclaiming, ‘The blood is the life.’ Yet three new Australian novels Gothicise the family politic by exaggerating, each to the point of melodrama, just how dangerous a family can become when its constituents turn against one another.' (Introduction)

(p. 40-41)
Bunker, Josephine Rowe , single work short story (p. 42-43)
A Period in the Shade : Patrick White Thirty Years on, Martin Thomas , single work essay

'The words are prescient, for Patrick White, who wrote them, has done rather well at dissolving into the impermanence of post-mortem obscurity. Perhaps unsurprisingly in view of the pandemic, the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020 left little imprint. No literary festival honoured the occasion, and no journal did a special issue. If White is looking down at us from some gumtree in the sky, he will be bathing in the lack of glory. He despised the hacks of the ‘Oz Lit’ industry as much as he loathed the ‘academic turds from Canberra’.' (Introduction)

(p. 44-48)
The Harwood Memorial Fruitcake Award : The Parodic Inventiveness of Gwen Harwood, Ann-Marie Priest , single work essay

'For much of her career, Gwen Harwood (1920–95) was best known for her hoaxes, pseudonyms, and literary tricks. Most notorious was the so-called Bulletin hoax in 1961, but over the years she orchestrated a number of other raids on literary targets, mainly aimed at challenging the power of poetry editors and gatekeepers. For L’Affaire Bulletin (as she sometimes called it), she submitted to that august magazine, under the pseudonym Walter Lehmann, a pair of seemingly unexceptionable sonnets on the theme of Abelard and Eloisa. Only after the poems were published did the Bulletin discover that they were acrostics; read vertically, one spelled out ‘So long Bulletin’, and the other, ‘Fuck all editors’. The first could have passed as a harmless joke, but the second threatened to bring the Vice Squad down on the Bulletin’s hapless editor, Donald Horne. He was not amused, and newspapers around the country echoed his tone of injured outrage. The appearance in print of an obscene word was shocking enough, but the revelation that the author of the sonnets was actually a woman turned shock to horror. To many in Australian society, it was an article of faith that, as an acquaintance of Harwood’s put it, ‘No WOMAN would ever write such a word.’ ‘I had a mental picture, as I heard her pronunciation of “WOMAN”, of little bluebirds with daisies in their beaks,’ Harwood wrote wryly.' (Introduction)

(p. 49-52)
Blurring the Lines : Three New Poetry Collections, James Antoniou , single work review
— Review of Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous Mark Anthony Cayanan , 2021 selected work poetry ; Errant Night Jerzy Beaumont , 2021 selected work poetry ; I Said the Sea Was Folded : Love Poems Erik Jensen , 2021 selected work poetry ;
(p. 55-56)
The Snares of History : Joanna Murray-Smith's New Play, Andrew Fuhrmann , single work review
— Review of Berlin Joanna Murray-Smith , 2020 single work drama ;

'Berlin, by Joanna Murray-Smith, is an intense, very wordy, imperfectly plotted, but nonetheless stylish play. ‘Stylish’ is a strange word to describe a play about young love sabotaged by tragic secrets and the legacy of the Holocaust. Shouldn’t it also be ‘heart-breaking’, ‘harrowing’, or at least ‘poignant’? Perhaps, but ‘stylish’ is the right word for a play – a thriller, in fact – that is also a swiftly argued essay on the difficulties faced by sensitive and ethical individuals who want to free themselves from the snares of history to make a new future.' (Introduction)

(p. 60)
Knotty Traumas : A Sophisticated Depiction of Mental Illness, Jordan Prosser , single work review
— Review of Wakefield Kristen Dunphy , Sam Meikle , Joan Sauers , Cathy Strickland , 2021 series - publisher film/TV ;
(p. 65-66)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 16 Apr 2024 09:52:49
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