Cirrus@Austlit

'This book presents the first comprehensive survey of being a local, in particular in Australia. In Australia the paradox is that the locals are not indigenous peoples but migrants with a specific ethnic heritage who became localised in time to label other migrants as the newcomers and outsiders. It explores questions via a multidisciplinary cultural studies approach and a mixed methodology that blends a critical language study of being local with auto-ethnographical accounts.' (Publication summary)

'A reconciliation movement spread across Australia during the 1990s, bringing significant marches, speeches, and policies across the country. Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians began imagining race relations in new ways and articulations of place, belonging, and being together began informing literature of a unique new genre. This book explores the political and poetic paradigms of reconciliation represented in Australian writing of this period. The author brings together textual evidence of themes and a vernacular contributing to the emergent genre of reconciliatory literature. The nexus between resistance and reconciliation is explored as a complex process to understanding sovereignty, colonial history, and the future of society. Moreover, this book argues it is creative writing that is most necessary for a deeper understanding of each other and of place, because it is writing that calls one to witness, to feel, and to imagine all at the same time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.