AustLit

'This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.' (Publication abstract)

'This chapter highlights the abundance of cultural and literary forms and themes featured in Polish-language periodicals published in Australia. With over 150 individual titles published before the 1990s and contributions from a relatively high number of sophisticated writers, the Polish-language press is a unique Australian LOTE (Languages Other Than English) phenomenon. The chapter argues that this profusion of literary work indicates that these periodicals served predominantly as a means of self-expression, reinforcing the cultural identities and sense of belonging of a dislocated diasporic intelligentsia, and that this function might have been more important to some editors than dealing with issues of interest to the broader migrant community. These periodicals shed light on hidden histories of migration to Australia, and hence refine perspectives on Australia’s migrant communities, past and present.'

Source: Abstract.

The paper examines life narratives of women of Polish background who migrated to Australia as displaced persons after the Second World War and whose memories and testimonies are collected in three volumes: Polish Migrants’ Stories/Życiorysy Polskich Emigrantów (2006), Lest we forget/Ocalić od zapomnienia (2004) and Wyrwane Drzewa: wspomnienia Polek emigrantek [Uprooted Trees: Memoirs of Polish Women Immigrants] (2000). The paper challenges the notions of vulnerability and victimhood usually associated with women migrants and their narratives, and throws light on diversity of gender roles, behaviours and attitudes that emerge from the memories of war, experiences of living in transit, within and outside refugee and migrant camps, by referring to the ways the authors present themselves, their achievements, autonomy and agency in their life narratives. Reaching beyond victim stories, yet being informed by them, the paper suggests how post-war life stories—in which women narrate themselves as active agents, able to manage the achievement of belonging, and exploit their power to act as well as to represent—can be incorporated into an understanding of migration. [Author's abstract]

This collection of essays resulted from a workshop convened at the Centre for European Studies, Australian National University in 2013. Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams writes that the event was organised in part to counter 'the under-representation of writers of Eastern European origin amongst Australian minority writers'.