Cirrus@Austlit

(Publication abstract)

'This chapter is a critical comparative analysis of the Muslim women’s corporeal capacitation of hijab as a sartorial strategy as represented in the Australian-Muslim writer Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Does My Head Look Big in This? (2005) and the Australian-American journalist Geraldine Brooks’s travelogue on the Middle East, Nine Parts of Desire (1994). Contextualising transnationally the sociopolitical significance of hijab, and reflecting on the geopolitical positionalities of these two Australian women authors, this chapter argues that to homogenise hijab as a coherent identity is a myopic observation. The chapter concludes with the assertion that the significance of hijab goes beyond the orient-occident paradigm; rather it is located in the subjectivity and selfhood of the individual wearer of hijab.'

Source: Abstract

'Ranging from feminist movements, Labour Movement to celebration of Australian natural world, Mary Gilmore has been a legend. Gilmore’s complex yet “eternal” love for the legendary Australian national poet, Henry Lawson, and their extraordinary intellectual literary partnership has remained in oblivion. Gilmore’s biographers have often doubted that Lawson’s literary fame is the result of Gilmore’s silent sacrifice of her literary space because of her blind love for Lawson. Based on Gilmore’s extensive collection of verse, prose, biographies and unpublished letters, this chapter explores the feminist space of relationship between two talented and self-reliant Australian women writers, Dame Mary Gilmore and Henry Lawson’s mother, Louisa Lawson and their literary life in relation to Henry Lawson.'

Source: Abstract.

'This volume explores the subterfuges, strategies, and choices that Australian women writers have navigated in order to challenge patriarchal stereotypes and assert themselves as writers of substance. Contextualized within the pioneering efforts of white, Aboriginal, and immigrant Australian women in initiating an alternative literary tradition, the text captures a wide range of multiracial Australian women authors’ insightful reflections on crucial issues such as war and silent mourning, emergence of a Australian national heroine, racial purity and Aboriginal motherhood, communism and activism, feminist rivalry, sexual transgressions, autobiography and art of letter writing, city space and female subjectivity, lesbianism, gender implications of spatial categories, placement and displacement, dwelling and travel, location and dislocation and female body politics. Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing tracks Australian women authors’ varied journeys across cultural, political and racial borders in the canter of contemporary political discourse.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.