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y separately published work icon The Road from Coorain single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 1989... 1989 The Road from Coorain
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'One women's journey from a childhood in Australia's outback to adulthood as a successful American career woman. The Road From Coorain is about Everywoman, for it is about childhood loneliness, anguished parent-child relationships, dawning sensibility, discovering a vocation, and finding one's own sense of self.' (Source: Bunch of Grape Bookstore website)

Exhibitions

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon The Road from Coorain Sue Smith , 2000 (Manuscript version)11632068 11632060 2000 single work film/TV

Adaptation of Jill Ker Conway's The Road from Coorain, focusing on her childhood at a remote sheep station and her secondary and tertiary education in Sydney.

Notes

  • Volume 1 of Conway's memoirs

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Richmond, East Melbourne - Richmond area, Melbourne, Victoria,: London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Heinemann ,
      1989 .
      image of person or book cover 3016317883406741443.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 238p.
      ISBN: 0855613211, 0434142441
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Knopf ,
      1989 .
      Extent: 238p.
      ISBN: 0394574567
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Mandarin ,
      1990 .
      Extent: 237p.
      ISBN: 0749303603
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      1990 .
      image of person or book cover 9070539193384103008.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 238p.
      Edition info: 2nd ed.
      ISBN: 0855615486, 0679724362 (pbk.)
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Minerva ,
      1992 .
      Extent: 238p.
      ISBN: 0749398949
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      1998 .
      Extent: 237p.
      ISBN: 0749398949
Alternative title: Harukanaru daichi Kurein : Osutoraria busshu kara no tabidachi
Language: Japanese

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording, large print, braille.

Works about this Work

Australia in Three Books Rick Morton , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 79 no. 1 2020;

— Review of Damascus Christos Tsiolkas , 2019 single work novel ; The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography ; Staying : A Memoir Jessie Cole , 2018 single work autobiography

'For the longest time, the Australia I knew was all myth. Early reading didn’t dispel this languid stereotype because part of that upbringing was made possible only by the claustrophobia of the culture itself. It was a narrow existence, filled with outback hardship or romance novels, bush memoirs (how embarrassing that I appear to have done the same thing) and writers from America or worse, England. In short, the authors I knew were not a representative sample of this country. This is not a problem if your range is bigger and broader, but to the extent that my range left my cultural Umwelt at all, it stopped at Not Without My Daughter. Life, then, is about pushing back the borders of our observable universe. Especially when such a quest reveals much about the place we call home.' (Introduction)

“Nothing but land” : Women’s Narratives, Gardens, and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback (International) assertion Tom Lynch , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Western American Literature , vol. 48 no. 4 2014; (p. 374-399)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography ; No Roads Go By Myrtle Rose White , 1932 single work autobiography ; Beyond the Western Rivers Myrtle Rose White , 1955 single work autobiography

'This essay applies ecocriticism, informed by a transnational, settler-colonial theory, to a comparative analysis of texts by three US and three Australian women authors. Through an examination of both “wild” and domestic landscapes, the essay works to establish how these authors manifest the “settler-colonial imaginary” through their glorification of the process of establishing English-style gardens on homesteads founded in territory depicted as an “unland.” The essay reads the insistent use of a “nothing but” construction in descriptions of uncultivated land in both the Australian and US texts as signifying the literary imagining of the “unland” of the colonized territory, a discursive clearing of the land, as it were, to make room for settlement. From there, it proceeds to compare and contrast the different ways in which these texts imagined settlers’ occupation of land as an ecological struggle to wrest an arid or semi-arid landscape into a space amenable for the production of an English garden—the symbol of the settler-colonial project’s ultimate success. It then discusses texts by settler women in both Australia and the United States that imagine settlement in a more ecologically sustainable way, signaling a potential “counter-colonial” gesture of reconciliation with place.' [publisher's summary]

Our Cup Runneth Over : Life-Stories from Fremantle Go National Per Henningsgaard , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Telling Stories : Australian Life and Literature 1935–2012 2013; (p. 431-436)
y separately published work icon Contesting Childhood : Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory Kate Douglas , New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press , 2010 Z1836606 2010 single work criticism 'The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authors - from first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others." "Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.' (Publisher's blurb)
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology Jack Bowers , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
Untitled Scott Whitmont , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , December 2003 / January vol. 83 no. 6 2004; (p. 34)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography
Australian Herstories Make a Debut Nan Bowman Albinski , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 5 no. 2 1991; (p. 121-123)

— Review of Stories of Herself When Young : Autobiographies of Childhood by Australian Women 1990 single work biography ; Wild Card : An Autobiography, 1923-1958 Dorothy Hewett , 1990 single work autobiography ; The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography
A Quest to be Taken Seriously Carol Treloar , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 9 September 1989; (p. 14)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography
An Arduous Journey from Outback to Ivied Halls Keith Henderson , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: Christian Science Monitor , 26 July 1989; (p. 14)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography
Autobiography's Path Needs a Paving of Irony Marion Halligan , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 September 1989; (p. 9)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography
y separately published work icon Fictions of White Australia : Identity, Land and Community in Contemporary Australian Women's Life Narratives Philippa Sawyer , 1996 Z1019304 1996 single work thesis
The Roundabout and the Road : Shirley Walker, Jill Ker Conway and Female Autobiography Ken A. Stewart , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: 'Unemployed at Last!' : Essays on Australian Literature to 2002 for Julian Croft 2002; (p. 119-132)
Reads comparatively, and against each other, the autobiographies of Conway and Walker, 'approximate contemporaries, career academics ... whose autobiographies explore issues relating to family, secondary and university education, female fulfilment and "liberation", local and national culture, and urban and rural experience' (120).
True Tales That Nurture: Defining Auto/Biographical Storytelling Donna Lee Brien , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Folklore , November vol. 19 no. 2004; (p. 84-95)
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology Jack Bowers , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
y separately published work icon Contesting Childhood : Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory Kate Douglas , New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press , 2010 Z1836606 2010 single work criticism 'The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authors - from first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others." "Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.' (Publisher's blurb)
Last amended 31 Oct 2020 15:11:20
Settings:
  • c
    United States of America (USA),
    c
    Americas,
  • New South Wales,
  • Bush,
  • Australian Outback, Central Australia,
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
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