Cirrus@Austlit

'This is the first collection to span the diverse range of Black Australian writings. Thirty-six Aboriginal and Islander authors have contributed, including David Unaipon, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Gerry Bostock, Ruby Langford, Robert Bropho, Jack Davis, Hyllus Maris, William Ferguson, Sally Morgan, Mudrooroo Narogin and Archie Weller. Many more are represented through community writings such as petitions and letters.

Collected over six years from all the states and territories of Australia, Paperbark ranges widely across time and genre from the 1840s to the present, from transcriptions of oral literature to rock opera. Prose, poetry, song, drama and polemic are accompanied by the selected artworks of Jimmy Pike, and an extensive, up-to-date bibliography.The voices of Black Australia speak with passion and power in this challenging and important anthology.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In February 1983 a significant event took place at Murdoch University - the first Aboriginal Writers' Conference. And, as the editors point out, no mere collection of papers can do justice to that historic gathering,. Nevertheless, anyone interested in Aboriginal writing - from its proud beginnings as an oral tradition through its exciting contemporary voice to the strong promise of its future - will want to read Aboriginal Writing Today.'

'Faith Bandler gives a fascinating account of how she researched her novels. Catherine Berndt offers a sensitive analysis of oral literature and, as an added bonus, introduces three story tellers...Gerry Bostock describes the early days of black theatre and points out how Aboriginal drama fits into a long tradition of protest literature stretching back to classical Greek dramatists. Jack Davis provides a valuable overview of Aboriginal writing... and Kevin Gilbert discusses the policies Aboriginal writers have adopted and offers some provocative suggestions for future policies.'

'Colin Johnson talks about the problems of trying to handle Aboriginal themes within white forms, whilst Cliff Watego continues the discussion with a penetrating analysis of Kath Walker's poetry. Finally, Bruce McGuinness and Denis Walker combine two formidable talents to talk about the politics of Aboriginal literature.'

'For the Record offers the reader an unusual glimpse, through Aboriginal eyes, of key issues and events in Aboriginal and Australian history by bringing together examples of Aboriginal journalism from a wide range of Aboriginal and mainstream publications.' (Source: Back cover)

'In Writing Never Arrives Naked, Penny van Toorn engages our minds and hearts. In this academically innovative book she reveals the resourceful and often poignant ways that Indigenous Australians involved themselves in the colonisers' paper culture. The first Aboriginal readers were children stolen from the clans around Sydney Harbour. The first Aboriginal author was Bennelong – a stolen adult. From the early years of colonisation, Aboriginal people used written texts to negotiate a changing world, to challenge their oppressors, protect country and kin, and occasionally for economic gain. Van Toorn argues that Aboriginal people were curious about books and papers, and in time began to integrate letters of the alphabet into their graphic traditions. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal people played key roles in translating the Bible, and made their political views known in community and regional newspapers. They also sent numerous letters and petitions to political figures, including Queen Victoria. Penny van Toorn challenges the established notion that the colonists' paper culture superseded Indigenous oral cultures. She argues that Indigenous communities developed their own cultures of reading and writing, which involved a complex interplay between their own social protocols and the practices of literacy introduced by the British. Many distinctive features of Aboriginal writing today were shaped by the cultural, socio-political and institutional conditions in which Aboriginal people were living in colonial times.' (Source: Publisher's website)

Shoemaker's primary concern is to look at the beginning of 'black people's' writing in Australia since the 1960s and focus on the nascent literary canon emerging through Aboriginal writing. Shoemaker moves the readership through non-Aboriginal authors such as Katharine Susannah Prichard (1929) and Xavier Herbert (1938) in a chapter entitled 'Popular Perceptions of Unpopular People to Progress and Frustrated Expectations: The Era Since 1961'. Where Aboriginal writing begins, for Shoemaker's purposes, is an area of literary production he describes as 'fourth world literature'.