Cirrus@Austlit

'Ruth Park’s inner Sydney novels explore the place of shame in mid-twentieth-century working-class lives, alert to the intersection of class with gender and race. Park is highly attuned to the complex psychosocial toll of poverty, which erodes self-worth and self-respect. She depicts moments in which intensely felt shame manifests, as well as the range of responses her characters have to their everyday circumstances and humiliating encounters. I focus in this essay on scenes in The Harp in the South (1948) and Poor Man’s Orange (1949) that involve more or less explicit representations of shame as awful and embodied. Specifically, my reading identifies the shame of privation, the shame of being rendered an object of study, female sexuality as a source of shame, racialised shame as historical stain and the shame of being patronised by experts and authorities. Throughout, I highlight Park’s character’s struggles against and transcendence of shame, either through outright defiance or by ignoring middle-class expertise that undermines intergenerational knowledge transmission and community norms. Finally, I show how Park’s characters invest in a source of collective pride – generosity and mutualism – which serves to recuperate their sense of moral worth.'  (Publication abstract)

'This book tells the story of Elsie Numitja Illi's life. Elsie is a Pitjantjatjara woman, born in the South Australian desert in 1954. Elsie shares her recollections of growing up at Yalata and Cundalee, as well as at Bulgunnia Station where her parents worked. Elsie trained as a nurse in Alice Springs, and tells of the many jobs she did in her life. Elsie reflects on her current life in Ceduna on the Far West Coast of South Australia. The book contains archival images of Ooldea, Yalata, and Bulgunnia Station.' (Publication summary)

'In 2015, Richie Benaud hosted an ‘Australia Day’ barbeque, a pantheon of colonial historical figures on his invite list. Benaud gathered the English navigator, Captain James Cook, who remapped and renamed the east coast of this continent in 1770, and Burke and Wills, whose agonising deaths at Coopers Creek in 1861 were possibly in part the result of them coming to rely on the seeds of an aquatic fern, nardoo (Marsilea drummondii), for nutrition.' (Introduction)

'Against Native Title is about one group's lived experience of a divisive native title claim in the outback town of Ceduna, where the native title claims process has thoroughly reorganised local Aboriginal identities over the course of the past decade.

'The central character in this story is senior Aboriginal woman Sue Haseldine, a self-styled charismatic rebel and master storyteller. Sue's extended family has experienced native title as an unwelcome imposition: something that has emanated from the state and out of which they gained only enemies. They rail against the logic of native title and oppose the extensive mineral exploration underway in their country.

'But this is not simply a tale of conflict. Threaded throughout is the story of a twice-yearly event called 'rockhole recovery'; trips that involve numerous days of four-wheel drive travel to a series of permanent water sources and Dreaming sites. Against Native Title captures the energy that fuels this unique, small-scale initiative. Rockhole recovery expresses the ways in which Sue Haseldine and her family continue to care for, and maintain connections to, Country - outside of the native title process.

'Against Native Title pursues a controversial and much neglected line of enquiry: the native title process is not necessarily a force for good. This is a vivacious and very human story, which makes a vital contribution to national debates around issues of Aboriginal futures in remote and regional areas. ' (Publication summary)