Conclusion : Black Words on White Pages single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 1989... 1989 Conclusion : Black Words on White Pages
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This study concludes that Black Australian writing and Aboriginal/White relations are so closely interrelated that the denigration of Aboriginal culture demeans the productions of that culture, while it also potentially threatens Australian interracial harmony. Shoemaker argues that much Aboriginal writing is overtly and unashamedly socio-political, that much of it examines Aboriginal/European conflict, and much is based upon an observation and analysis of actual events. While not all Aboriginal writers are activists, their work is inescapably socio-political, because it expresses a culture which has survived despite nearly two centuries of oppression, and because it has been consciously produced to express and investigate relationships with dominant White Australian society.

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    y separately published work icon Black Words, White Page : Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988 Adam Shoemaker , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1989 Z106800 1989 single work criticism (taught in 1 units)

    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'.

    St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1989
    pg. 265-282
Last amended 2 Mar 2011 18:08:12
265-282 Conclusion : Black Words on White Pagessmall AustLit logo
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