image of person or book cover 7901480948860138237.jpg
Cover image courtesy the publisher.
y separately published work icon Auntie Rita single work   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 1994... 1994 Auntie Rita
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

"Most people call me Auntie Rita, whites as well as Aboriginal people. Auntie is a term of respect of our older women folk. You don't have to be blood-related or anything. Everyone is kin. That's a beautiful thing because in this way no one is ever truly alone, they always have someone they can turn to."

Rita Huggins told her memories to her daughter Jackie, and some of their conversation is in this book. We witness their intimacy, their similarities and their differences, the '"fighting with their tongues". Two voices, two views on a shared life.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

Exhibitions

6939401
8705502
8733014
8931289
15517603

Teaching Resources

Teaching Resources

This work has teaching resources.

Teachers' notes via publisher's website.

Notes

  • Dedication: This book is dedicated to Albert and Rose, Jack, Gloria and Kenny

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Auntie Rita : The Classic Memoir of an Aboriginal Woman’s Love and Determination
    • Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,: Aboriginal Studies Press , 1994 .
      image of person or book cover 7901480948860138237.jpg
      Cover image courtesy the publisher.
      Extent: x, 160 p.p.
      Description: illus., map, ports
      Reprinted: 1996 , 2005 , 2010
      Note/s:
      • Foreword by Lillian Holt.
      • Introduced by Jackie Huggins with interpolations in her voice throughout the text.
      • Includes glossary of Aboriginal words from Wakka Wakka and Pitjara.

      • Released as ebook in 2012.

      ISBN: 0855752483, 9780855752484
Alternative title: Die Stimme meiner Mutter
Language: German
    • Leipzig,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Araki Verlag ,
      2010 .
      image of person or book cover 456404942384692953.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 156p.
      Description: illus., maps, port., genealogical table
      ISBN: 9783941848030, 3941848038

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

Reflections of Aunti Rita Kirk Page , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 18 December no. 841 2024; (p. 34)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography ; Our Flag, Our Story : The Torres Strait Islander Flag Bernard Namok , Thomas Mayo , 2024 single work picture book
Mother and Daughter : Lived Aboriginal History Julie Andrews , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 458 2023; (p. 31-32)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography

'Family photographs add so much to Aboriginal autobiography. Aboriginal people will scan them to see who they know and what the buildings, clothes, and area looked like then. Photographs are an open invitation to connect with your people, no matter where they are from.' (Introduction)

Writing the Aboriginal Women’s Auto/Biographical Experience : Jackie Huggins and Jeanine Leane Ishmeet Kaur , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Claiming Space for Australian Women's Writing 2017; (p. 275-289)

'Autobiographies by Aboriginal Women writers have gradually emerged for almost three decades now. Varied and interesting experiments are visible in the life-writing form by Aboriginal writers. In an attempt to write accounts of their own life and experiences, Aboriginal writers have employed different narrative techniques and methods. This chapter is a case study of life narratives by two contemporary Aboriginal women writers Jackie Huggins (Auntie Rita) and Jeanine Leane (Purple Threads.) The focus is on the different methods of writing while “recalling the past”. Interestingly, these narratives create “matriarchal spaces” of expression being written by women who are recalling either their mother’s experiences or Aunties’ stories. The chapter makes an attempt to relocate this idea of history from a feminist perspective.'

Source: Abstract.

Our Truths - Aboriginal Writers and the Stolen Generations BlackWords : Our Truths - Aboriginal Writers and the Stolen Generations Anita Heiss , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: The BlackWords Essays 2015; (p. 4) The BlackWords Essays 2019;

In this essay Heiss demonstrates that stories, poetry, songs, plays and memoirs are 'living' evidence of truths otherwise untold or appropriated (Source: Introduction)

y separately published work icon Entangled Subjects : Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures Of Talk, Text, And Modernity Michèle Grossman , Netherlands : Rodopi , 2013 Z1938856 2013 single work criticism

'Indigenous Australian cultures were long known to the world mainly from the writing of anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, missionaries, and others. Indigenous Australians themselves have worked across a range of genres to challenge and reconfigure this textual legacy, so that they are now strongly represented through their own life-narratives of identity, history, politics, and culture. Even as Indigenous-authored texts have opened up new horizons of engagement with Aboriginal knowledge and representation, however, the textual politics of some of these narratives - particularly when cross-culturally produced or edited - can remain haunted by colonially grounded assumptions about orality and literacy.

Through an examination of key moments in the theorizing of orality and literacy and key texts in cross-culturally produced Indigenous life-writing, Entangled Subjects explores how some of these works can sustain, rather than trouble, the frontier zone established by modernity in relation to 'talk' and 'text'. Yet contemporary Indigenous vernaculars offer radical new approaches to how we might move beyond the orality-literacy 'frontier', and how modernity and the a-modern are productively entangled in the process. ' (Source: Angus & Robertson website www.angusrobertson.com.au)

An Auntie's Perspective Talim Arab , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography
A Loving Labour Kate Pritchard Hughes , 1995 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Women's Book Review , March vol. 7 no. 1 1995; (p. 13-14)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography
Book Offers Unique Insight 1995 single work review
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 25 Jaunary no. 93 1995; (p. 14)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography
'A Brisbane mother and daughter have teamed up to present a unique insight into the paternalistic policies of the 1920s in south-east Queensland.' (Source: Koori Mail Ed.93 1995)
Untitled Elisabeth Bähr , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Zeitschrift fur Australienstudien , no. 25 2011; (p. 157-160)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography
Mother and Daughter : Lived Aboriginal History Julie Andrews , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 458 2023; (p. 31-32)

— Review of Auntie Rita Rita Cynthia Huggins , Jackie Huggins , 1994 single work biography

'Family photographs add so much to Aboriginal autobiography. Aboriginal people will scan them to see who they know and what the buildings, clothes, and area looked like then. Photographs are an open invitation to connect with your people, no matter where they are from.' (Introduction)

Rethinking Emplacement, Displacement and Indigeneity : Radiance, Auntie Rita and Don't Take Your Love to Town Ceridwen Spark , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 75 2002; (p. 95-103, notes 191-192)
y separately published work icon Cross Talk : Collaborative Indigenous Life Writing in Australia and Canada Michael Jacklin , 2004 Z1351079 2004 single work thesis This thesis provides a comparative analysis of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts produced in Australia and Canada. Drawing on the large body of Indigenous life writing texts produced in both countries, the critical and theoretical literature surrounding these texts, and twenty-nine interviews conducted during the course of research with participants in Aboriginal and First Nations collaborative life writing, the author argues that literary criticism needs to take into account the co-operative basis of textual production as well as the constraining factors that shape the outcome of collaborative texts. Further, he argues for the importance of non-Indigenous critics acknowledging the centrality of Indigenous protocols in both the production and reception of collaborative Indigenous life writing. The thesis is based upon the premise that readers and producers of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts can and should talk to each other and that each group can benefit from such cross talk.
Dialogic Selves: Discursive Strategies in Transcultural Collaborative Autobiographies by Rita and Jackie Huggins and Mark and Gail Mathabane Rocio G. Davis , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Biography , Spring vol. 28 no. 2 2005; (p. 276-294)
'This article addresses the project of transcultural collaborative autobiographies by Rita and Jackie Huggins and Mark and Gail Mathabane to read how the intersection of racial policies in Australia and the US, and discourses on race and racial relations, affect their personal stories. These texts make significant structural and thematic points in the context of collaborative discourse, illustrating how a particular sense of selfhood evolves and is performed in and through this multilayered dialogue.' - Author's abstract
Troubled Canadian Gazing : Aboriginal Women's Lifestorytelling, Multicultural Nationalism, and the Australian-Canadian Comparative Model Jennifer Kelly , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Balayi , vol. 2 no. 1 2001; (p. 137-167)
In this article, Jennifer Kelly is 'concerned in particular with how the Australian-Canadian comparative model constrains the analysis of the diverse nationalist aspirations of the multiple Aboriginal nations whose territories are overlain by Canada and Australia' (138). In her analysis, Kelly draws on numerous Aboriginal women's life writing texts from both Australia and Canada.
Reciprocal Bonds : Re-Thinking Orality and Literacy in Critical Perspectives on Indigenous Australian Life-Writing Michèle Grossman , 2005 single work essay
— Appears in: Script and Print , vol. 29 no. 1-4 2005; (p. 115-129)
Last amended 8 Dec 2023 12:30:56
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