Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Queer Poetics : ‘Family Trees’ and ‘Throat’
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Monthly no. 166 May 2020 19212793 2020 periodical issue 2020 pg. 46

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Till ‘Real Voices’ Wake Us, and We Drown : The Mire of Identity Politics Mindy Gill , 2022 23914852 2022 single work column

'We can learn much about a culture by listening to how it talks about its art. The way non-white writers, for want of a better phrase, tend to be reviewed in Australia tells us a lot about how we determine cultural value. Some reviewers place a premium on the author’s biography – her identity – rather than on her work itself. The reviewer avoids critical engagement with the text in favour of a kind of reverential praise of its political messaging. This messaging isn’t necessarily determined by the content of the work, but rather by a mistaken conflation of the work with the author’s cultural identity. It’s a kind of habit, a reflexive way of reading literature, especially literature by non-white authors, as if the mere act of writing a book were fundamentally and inevitably political – or, as they say, an ‘act of resistance’.' 

y separately published work icon Till ‘Real Voices’ Wake Us, and We Drown : The Mire of Identity Politics Mindy Gill , 2022 23914852 2022 single work column

'We can learn much about a culture by listening to how it talks about its art. The way non-white writers, for want of a better phrase, tend to be reviewed in Australia tells us a lot about how we determine cultural value. Some reviewers place a premium on the author’s biography – her identity – rather than on her work itself. The reviewer avoids critical engagement with the text in favour of a kind of reverential praise of its political messaging. This messaging isn’t necessarily determined by the content of the work, but rather by a mistaken conflation of the work with the author’s cultural identity. It’s a kind of habit, a reflexive way of reading literature, especially literature by non-white authors, as if the mere act of writing a book were fundamentally and inevitably political – or, as they say, an ‘act of resistance’.' 

Last amended 2 Mar 2022 10:51:03
46 Queer Poetics : ‘Family Trees’ and ‘Throat’small AustLit logo The Monthly
Review of:
  • Throat Ellen van Neerven 2020 selected work poetry
  • Family Trees Michael Farrell 2020 selected work poetry
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