Are we letting them down? Indigenous women writers

To coincide with NAIDOC Week, ANZ Lit-Lovers blog is hosting Indigenous Literature Week. This post is the Australian Women Writers Challenge contribution.

This year's NAIDOC theme is "They dared to challenge: Spirit of the Tent Embassy: 40 years on." The theme "celebrates the champions who lived to renew the spirit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972. Forty years ago, the embassy became a powerful symbol of unity. Its founders instilled pride, advanced equality and educated the country on the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. To move forward, we must acknowledge our forbearers, learn from their experiences and ask ourselves… what have their sacrifices meant for me and my family today?" (From NAIDOC Week website)

The sacrifice and struggles of generations of Indigenous activist have helped to create a growing community of Indigenous writers, including many talented women. But are these women achieving the recognition they, and their communities, deserve?

In January, an unpublished Indigenous writer from Katoomba, NSW, helped to launch the Australian Women Writers 2012 Challenge. On Australia Day the AWW blog celebrated by publishing an essay by Dr June Perkins on Indigenous Australian women's writing. Now that the challenge has reached the halfway point, it's a good time to assess whether it is helping to raise the profile of Indigenous Australian women writers.

This week, I went back over all the reviews that have been posted for the challenge and added a label of the genre to the Mr Linky box entries. I hesitated when I came across a book by an Indigenous author. Should I put "Indig" next to the link? Or would such labelling ghettoise these writers, when the strength of their writing and the interest generated by their chosen subject should be enough to attract attention? (It's the same question I faced when mounting a challenge dedicated to championing women writers.) Also, what if I missed a particular author who may identify as Indigenous but whose background is not known to me or made obvious in the review?

In the end, I didn't add the extra label: the 80-character limit for Mr Linky entries decided the issue. Instead, as a contribution to Indigenous Literature Week, I've listed below as many links to reviews of books by Indigenous writers that I recognised. (If I've missed any, please let me know and I'll add them.) From this list, we can judge how the challenge has fared so far in addressing the issue of recognising and promoting work by Indigenous women.

The result?

Books by Indigenous women reviewed for AWW challenge Jan-Jun, 2012 (alphabetical):

• Bandler, Faith. Welou, My Brother Reviwed by John Nebauer* 
• Heiss, Anita. Avoiding Mr Right. Reviewed by Cathy Powell
• Heiss, Anita. Manhattan Dreaming. Reviewed by Suburban Sonnet, Christine
• Huggins, Rita and Jack Huggins, Aunty Rita. Reviewed by M D Brady
• Kartinyeri, Doris. Kick the Tin. Reviewed by M D Brady 
• Kennedy, Gayle. Me, Antman and Fleabag. (Short Stories) Reviewed by Jenny Schwarz*
• Morgan, Sally. My Place. Reviewed by  M D Brady, Michelle
• Pilkington, Doris. Rabbit Proof Fence. Reviewed by Ann-Marie
• Wright, Alexis. Carpentaria. Reviewed by: Kate Rizetti, M D Brady, Tony's Reading List, Jo Tamar
• Wright, Alexis. Plains of Promise Reviewed by M D Brady

* Inadvertently left off original post.

Collected:

Southerly 71:2 (Literary Journal) Reviewed by Phillip A. Ellis: Special issue for Indigenous Writers

To put these results in perspective: so far, of over 900 reviews, only eight ten books by Indigenous/Aboriginal Australian women have been reviewed for the AWW challenge, representing the work of only five seven authors. Among 366 participants signed up for the challenge, only 10 12 reviewers have chosen to review work by Indigenous writers. Of these reviewers, at least two are non-Australian, M D Brady (US) and Ann-Marie (Sweden). Of the 13 15 reviews listed above, six were written by these two non-Australian bloggers.

Why so few reviews of books by Indigenous women?

In her Australia Day post, Dr June Perkins discussed a number of prominent Indigenous Australian women writers (read more here). At the end of Dr Perkins' essay was a list of Dr Anita Heiss selected "top 10" reads. They were:

1. Butterfly Song by Terri Janke (2005) ~ Young Adult
2. Bitin’ Back by Vivienne Cleven (2001) ~ Contemporary/Humour
3. Too Flash by Melissa Lucashenko (2002)
4. Carpentaria by Alexis Wright ~ Literary
5. Swallow The Air by Tara June Winch (2006)
6. Every Secret Thing by Marie Munkara (2009) ~ Contemporary
7. Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane (2011) ~ Short Stories
8. Watershed by Fabienne Bayet-Charlton (2005)
9. Legacy by Larissa Behrendt (2009) ~ Contemporary
10. The Boundary by Nicole Watson (2011) ~ Crime

Of these, only Miles Franklin award-winner, Alexis Wright, and Dr Heiss herself have had books reviewed for the challenge.

What about the others?

One possibility for the lack of reviews is the date of release. At a cursory glance, many of the books reviewed for the challenge appear to be new releases, reviewed by established book bloggers. (This, incidentally, begs the question as to whether these books would have been reviewed in any case, with or without the challenge, but that's for another day.) Perhaps there has been a scarcity of books published by Indigenous women this year? Participants in the challenge might already have reviewed some of the above books in previous years (e.g. Whispering Gums' March 2011 review of Marie Mukara's Every Secret Thing and review of Carpentaria). Without further research along these lines, it's difficult to say.

Another possibility is that the preference for popular or "genre" books exhibited by challenge participants - something the list of "genre" alongside the books reviewed has helped to identify - may be working against Indigenous authors. There could be a perception that Indigenous women writers, apart from Dr Heiss, don't write "popular"-style books. If so, is this perception justified? At least a couple of books challenge such a view. As an avid reader of crime, I've long been looking forward to reading Nicole Watson's The Boundary, which I've heard is a great read. (If the library queue doesn't shorten soon, I might have to buy myself a copy.) So why has Watson's book not received the attention of other 2011 releases such as, say, debut author PM Newton's The Old School (reviewed five times) or Sulari Gentill's A Few Right Thinking Men (twice) or any number of novels by Kerry Greenwood (eleven reviews)?

Could we be letting our Indigenous women writers down? If so, there's time to rectify the matter. The challenge has another six months to run.

As a start, if you have read or reviewed any book by an Indigenous Australian woman - even if it wasn't read for the AWW challenge - perhaps you could leave a comment below? Or if you can recommend any books not listed here, please do. (I'd love to know if any Indigenous authors are writing Fantasy, SciFi or Speculative Fiction.) Alternatively, please join Lisa Hill and others at ANZ LitLovers blog for Indigenous Literature Week, even if it's only to read and comment on their reviews.

If you do decide to read an Indigenous author and the above books don't appeal, check out Anita Heiss's 100 Black Books Challenge, or Yvonne Perkins' compilation of Indigenous Australian Histories and Biographies for inspiration.

Let's add another dimension to the challenge and see whether, by the end of 2012, all the books above have at least one review.

 

From comments:
Readers' recommendations:
Don't Take Your Love to Town - Ruby Langford Ginibi (Memoir)
Interrogation of Ashala Wolf - Ambelin Kwaymullina (Book 1 of SF/Psych Thriller series)
Is that You, Ruthie? - Ruth Hegarty (Memoir)
Am I Black Enough For You? - Anita Heiss (Memoir) 
Black Chicks Talking - Leah Purcell (reviewed by Heidi Reads) 
Grace Beside Me - Sue McPherson (reviewed by Emma) Debut YA novel

Other finds:
An Aboriginal Mother Tells of the Old (Penguin 1984) - Elsie Roughsey; edited by Paul Memmott and Robyn Horsman 

More reviews:
Every Secret Thing - Marie Munkara (Heidi Reads) 
Bitin' Back - Vivienne Cleven (Heidi Reads)
Skin Painting - Elizabeth Hodgson (Heidi Reads) ~ "Poetry as memoir"
Swallow the Air - Tara June Winch (Heidi Reads)
Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions - Bobbi (Roberta) Sykes (Heidi Reads)
My Bundjalung People by Ruby Langford Ginibi (reviewed by M D Brady) 

Other authors:
Fiona Doyle


If you're a GoodReads user, you can find a list of the above books on a special GoodReads AWW challenge group page (care of Shelleyrae of Book'd Out blog).
 

Beautifully written and astounding: AWW Short Stories via Paddy O'Reilly.

Short stories are perfect for the age of short attention spans, according to some. But not according to P.A. O'Reilly. O'Reilly, whose novel The Fine Colour of Rust was released on March 1, finds short story collections by Australian women both "beautifully written" and "astounding." She provided AWW with her "starter list".

O'Reilly writes:

The idea of the Australian Women Writers 2012 Challenge is brilliant – not only bringing into focus the gender imbalance in coverage of books, but actually doing something about it. And the reviews are evidence that readers are thrilled to be discovering new books and authors. Now I hope you’ll allow me to add another flavour to the challenge: short stories.

I’ve read plenty of comments about short stories being perfect for the contemporary world because, well, they’re short. Short attention span of the digital age, people having less free time, perfect length to read in a commuter ride and so on and so forth.

I think that’s rubbish. The less free time idea seems to presume that most people in ye olde reading days used to sit down for a ten or twenty (or, in the case of some doorstoppers, fifty) hour stretch to read. I imagine the butler brought meals and visitors were turned away at the door, ‘I’m sorry, but madam cannot be disturbed - she is Reading a Novel.’ The majority of readers have always picked up a book when they had a couple of free hours or at bedtime or on that commuter ride, and read a chapter or two.

And the short attention span? Tell that to someone who spends three solid hours struggling with a  computer that’s eaten a document or minuting a meeting at work or looking after a two-year-old.

So here’s my proposition. Don’t try reading reading short stories because they fit into a busy lifestyle or you catch the tram to work or you can only concentrate for twenty minutes (!). Try reading short stories because beautifully written ones are astounding. A short story is designed to be read in a sitting and I urge you to get up after that reading and leave the story inside you to do its work. When you read a collection of stories, try to resist the urge to read one straight after another. Think of how you feel after gorging on a whole box of chocolates.

You may think you don’t like short stories much, but chances are you still remember a few. Man turns into a bug, village has a lottery, something about an overcoat. Yet it’s not the plot that makes a short story memorable. A short story works in a different way. It travels through you, into your hidden places. There is a single essence to a short story but it flavours everything you know. A short story has what in cooking we call umami. And in a short story, the extraordinary power of words is there, pulsing in front of you, each word essential, each word working with all its possibilities.

Try reading some short stories by Australian women. You probably know the names of our world famous short story writers Cate Kennedy and Margo Lanagan. If you haven’t yet, read them. But in recent years there have also been quite a few collections by other women writers published in Australia. Here’s a starter list of contemporary Australian women short story authors who’ve published recently - so many straight off the top of my head that I had to sort them alphabetically. I think you’ll love them.

• Julie Chevalier - Permission to Lie
• Amanda Curtin - Inherited
• Irma Gold - Two Steps Forward
• Catherine Harris - Like Being a Wife
• Karen Hitchcock - Little White Slips
• Tiggy Johnson - Svetlana or Otherwise
  Jennifer Mills - The Rest is Weight (forthcoming) 
• Josephine Rowe - How a Moth Becomes a Boat 
• Gretchen Schirm - Having Cried Wolf
• Leah Swann - Bearings 
• Tara June Winch - Swallow The Air

No doubt I’ve left out many wonderful writers, so please add o the list in the comments section. Also, I’m woefully uninformed about speculative fiction, horror and SF collections - do give us some recommendations.

Paddy O′Reilly is from Melbourne. Her work has been published and broadcast widely both in Australia and internationally. Her short story collection THE END OF THE WORLD garnered much review coverage in Australia and was shortlisted for several awards. Her debut novel, THE FACTORY, was broadcast in fifteen episodes as the ABC Radio National Book Reading in 2009. She has also written screenplays. Paddy has spent several years living in Japan, working as a copywriter and translator.

 

Paddy's new book The Fine Colour of Rust is currently on sale as an ebook via the following bookstores participating in the challenge (careful of the price differences).

ReadCloud bookshops participating in the AWW challenge include:

Australian Online Bookshop
Shearers Bookshop, Leichhardt, NSW
Pages and Pages Booksellers, Mosman, NSW.
The Book Shuttle
Better Read Than Dead Newtown, NSW

Booki.sh shops participating in the challenge include:
Avid Reader, Brisbane
Readings

If you are an Aussie bookshop participating in the challenge and you're not represented here, please let AWW know.

 Do you know any other recent outstanding collections of short stories by Australian women that could be included here?

Aboriginal Women Writers – The fight for Literacy and Literary Freedom

To celebrate Australia Day 2012, Australian Women Writers approached a number of prominent indigenous Australian women, including well-known fiction writer and National Year of Reading Ambassador, Dr Anita Heiss. Dr Heiss had a prior commitment writing for Mamamia and instead sent a list of her 10 favourite fiction titles (see below). Another Australian woman writer, Dr June Perkins, stepped in to discuss Indigenous women writers who paved the way for the success of contemporary authors such as Dr Heiss and others. Thanks, both Anita and June.

AWW's first guest blog: "Aboriginal Women Writers – The fight for Literacy and Literary Freedom and a true name calling" by Dr June Perkins

 
My search to understand and identify Aboriginal women’s literature began naively and in earnest with a letter to Oodgeroo (Noonuccal).* I was probably twenty and had heard a lot about her work in Aboriginal people gaining citizenship rights and was keen to interview her for an article I was writing. Instead she said I should contact younger people like Lydia Miller (Kuku Yalanji) as she was more contemporary than Oodgeroo.

I was interested in Aboriginal women’s literature because as a girl (Bush Mekeo/Írish/French Australian background) I wanted to find out about the stories of the original people of the land I lived in and see if they had anything in common with my own experience. 

I had forward-thinking teachers who had shared the sorry history of the treatment of Aboriginal people in Tasmania and so-called Aboriginal issues were not invisible to me. From a young age I was mistaken as Aboriginal and subsequently subjected to a lot of racist comments at school.

This made me both upset to be name-called and curious – and I was lucky to have people around me, including an Aboriginal girl from Mornington Island who was boarding and went to my school, and another classroom friend, to see that Aboriginal people were in many ways just like everyone else and I wondered why they were so put down.

They were not token friends, but very caring girls, and the girl from Mornington told the best ghost stories! Actually, come to think of it, my friends were all a mini united nations and we didn’t fit any moulds of what you might call "mainstream".

Many of the early writers like Oodgeroo and, with respect, the recently passed away Ruby Langford Ginibi (Bundjalung), began with a sense of connection to place, people and history. They wore the mantle of spokesperson for the cause of Aboriginal rights to be respected, acknowledged and treated the same as any other human being because they had realised the pen is a mighty tool in the fight for justice. There are so many writers that should be mentioned, like Jackie Huggins (Bidjara), a fearless academic and wonderful writer who wrote an innovative biography with her mother, Aunty Rita, who is still an active intellectual teaching in the university system.

For Langford-Ginibi, incarceration, justice and identity formed the themes of her life writing whilst for Oodgeroo, a poetry exploring people, place and environment was a major concern. Oodgeroo was also noted for her friendship with Judith Wright.

This fight for justice was often a heavy burden to bear, and it could have led to the pigeonholing of Aboriginal women’s writing, to be eternally from the fringes and fixated upon the human rights agenda, but instead they became the footsteps to follow in and add to. Aboriginal English made its way into Aboriginal literature so that writers were not forced to simply fit the canon of other Australian literature, but this in itself was a battle.

Now many years later, and having been mentored at a playwrights conference by Lydia, a wonderful actress, I am happy to say that I always look out for up-and-coming Aboriginal women writers. For me they can write about any topic from Murri lives in the Bush, like Vivienne Cleven's, Bitin’Back, to an Aboriginal woman bureaucrat in Paris like Anita Heiss (Wiradjuri). The beauty of Aboriginal women’s writing is its current diversity and moving away from set definitions.

There are many Aboriginal women writers in Australia who created the opportunities for the writers of today – not only Anita Heiss, but also Kerry Reed-Gilbert (Wiradjuri), Alexis Wright (Waanyi Nation), and Jennifer Martiniello (Arrente/Chinese/Anglo-celtic). I was happy to interview several of them when I was a uni student and to learn not only about their writing but their philosophies on life. They are different and yet many maintain close friendships with each other – Anita and Kerry are in constant touch, and another friend of theirs working in radio put me onto interviewing them. They encourage each other and the new generation of up and coming Aboriginal writers, both men and women.

Today’s writers, whilst they will often tackle identity and the continuing need for the recognition of Aboriginal people in the constitution, have created a literary freedom for a future generation of writers. They have been able to strive for a unity in their diversity of genres and voices – and have asked to be recognised as a non-homogenous group. 

They are happy to share their perspective as specific to a language group, urban or rural environment – and have pulled apart what it means to be black, Aboriginal, Indigenous and an Aboriginal woman. Aileen Moreton Robinson (Geonpul) and Leah Purcell (Goa Gungurri Wakka Wakka) both have works that tackle that diversity and need not to be subsumed into other’s agendas. Purcell’s Black Chick’s Talking is a remarkable set of interviews with a diverse group of creative Aboriginal women – which has an accompanying film, paintings and explores Aboriginal women’s creativity.

Aboriginal women writers have branched out to become fully part of the mainstream, and participate in genres like the "chick lit" written by Heiss in books like Paris Dreaming, as well as in film making. Although Heiss is not a writer anyone can pigeonhole having tackled almost every writing genre you can imagine and given it the stamp of her witty writing style.

Aboriginal women do not feel confined to write literature that is expected of them (there is a whole school of research into Aboriginal literature and art), but rather literature where they can explore new horizons. Yet, their unique ways of seeing the world can be incorporated into whatever fiction they write in subtle ways. They can pose questions like Am I black enough for you? and interrogate their own position with a freshness and humour past generations would not have even dreamed of – perhaps because back then it would have been a luxury and there were other more pressing needs.

Many Australians, particularly Aboriginal and well educated, are concerned at the low rates of literacy for many Aboriginal children. The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation states that 87% of Indigenous children in regional and remote areas struggle to read and write and fall well below the national literacy benchmarks. Many Aboriginal women (Heiss does lots of work in this area and so does runner Cathy Freeman) work extremely hard to encourage Aboriginal children to consider writing and reading cool things to do. Their commitment to education, literacy and in Heiss’s case the promulgation of other Aboriginal writers they respect and admire is inspiring. This is something that Aboriginal writers do not shy away from but embrace as communal responsibility.

The Aboriginal women of today, like those of the past, form footsteps for future Aboriginal women to walk in. Perhaps today’s dream is that one day Aboriginal people will walk alongside not only other Australian writers but Australian readers in terms of achievements in literacy.

*June's note: The language group/nation of Aboriginal women is included in brackets where I have been able to find it. 

June Perkins is a guest blogger for ABC open, poet and digital storyteller who is about to launch ebooks on the recovery from Cyclone Yasi process. She has guest blogged for Ilura Gazette and Critical Mass, and is currently a guest blogger for the Aftermath  project for ABC Open in North Queensland. You can find June on Facebook, Twitter (@gumbootpearlz), Flickr, as well as at her blogs: Aftermath, Pearlz Dreaming (WordPress), Unity Garden, Gumbootspearlz and at Book Creators Circle. 

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AWW writes: Which writers did Oodgeroo and early Indigenous Australian women writers pave the way for? Indigenous Australian writer Dr Anitia Heiss shares her list of "10 favourite novels by Indigenous Australian women":

1. Butterfly Song by Terri Janke 
2. Bitin’ Back by Vivienne Cleven 
3. Too Flash by Melissa Lucashenko
4. Carpentaria by Alexis Wright 
5. Swallow The Air by Tara June Winch 
6. Every Secret Thing by Marie Munkara 
7. Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane 
8. Watershed, by Fabienne Bayet-Charlton 
9. Legacy by Larissa Behrendt 
10. The Boundary by Nicole Watson

Have you chosen any of these books to read and review for the AWW challenge? If so, please comment below with a link to your review(s). Which other books by Indigenous Australian women - fiction and nonfiction - could you recommend?