Cirrus@Austlit

Balakrishnan argues that, in Craft for a Dry Lake, Kim Mahood 'turns away from the myth of the outback associated with her father and her childhood idealisation of it, and envisions a syncretic identity that partakes of both the white settler and Aboriginal traditions that constitute her heritage. Secondly, the notion of the child as an emblem of the self that remains deep within the individual recurs, so the autobiographical narration of childhood becomes a way of giving meaning to the self. Mahood, in Craft for a Dry Lake negotiates between these versions of subjectivity in her quest for authentic, albeit syncretic selfhood.'