Australian Multicultural Writers
Wenche Ommundsen
(lead researcher),
Michael Jacklin
(researcher),
St Lucia
:
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource
,
2000-2006
Z1798438
2000
website
bibliography
biography
Australian Multicultural Writers reflects the diversity of Australia's literary community and the diversity of Australian culture in general. It contains biographical details of writers who have identified particular cultural backgrounds, and bibliographical description of their works, published both in English and in more than fifty other languages. Australian Multicultural Writers includes writers who have identified both an indigenous heritage and additional cultural heritages. BlackWords includes all writers who have identified their Indigenous heritage.
'Say, you’re a school teacher in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and you’re looking for a play for your class to perform that is set in Broome. Or maybe you’re a crime writer playing with the idea of writing a novel set in Sydney and want to check out what other crime novels have been set there. Perhaps you just found out that your great aunt once wrote a series of poems, and you want to know more. It could even be that you’re an author wanting to find the reviews of your latest short story collection. All this, and more, can be found in AustLit. Scholars of Australian literature know how valuable AustLit has been for over two decades, but anyone with an interest in Australian literary culture will find something worth exploring in Australia’s national literary database. AustLit will not only answer your questions, it will surely inspire more.' (Introduction)
As a researcher for AustLit, I have tried to identify and locate points of entry through which even a monolingual researcher might access and build awareness of Australia’s multilingual literatures. Community language newspapers, which have existed in Australian since the nineteenth century, and which continue with substantial circulations in the twenty-first century, are excellent resources if one is fluent in the respective language. Bilingual or multilingual magazines or newspapers are not as common, but can provide an English reading researcher with documentation of community literary activities that would otherwise remain inaccessible. These magazines are like islands – multilingual islands in the midst of the dominant monolingual literary culture. In the Australian literary context it may be appropriate to think of the production of literature in other languages as islands of literary activity where multiple languages are maintained amidst the surrounding English writing. In this essay I’ll discuss a number of literary journals that provide access to Australia’s multilingual literary activities. Two of these are indeed multilingual, carrying articles and creative writing in a number of languages. The third is bilingual, publishing content in English and Vietnamese only, but will be included it here as an indication of the breadth and significance of writing in Australia in languages other than English, writing that is diasporic and transnational as well as multilingual. (Author's abstract)
