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Lou Drofenik Lou Drofenik i(A89410 works by)
Gender: Female
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1 y separately published work icon The Confectioner's Daughter Lou Drofenik , Wandong : Lou Drofenik , 2017 14007664 2017 single work novel

'Spanning a century, The Confectioner's Daughter starts in a village bakery in Malta and flows seamlessly into the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne. The Confectioner's Daughter reveals the intimate world of women, from the Maltese grandmother - the matriarch who builds a fortune from her baking - to her granddaughter who is desperate to escape the village culture which she feels is suffocating her' (Publication summary)

 
1 y separately published work icon Bushfire Summer Lou Drofenik , Wandong : Lou Drofenik , 2013 6954545 2013 single work novel

'Set during the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires, this novel is a story of courage, loss and the realization that miracles can and do happen. The fires which devastated the tiny community of Cooper Creek affected the lives of those who experienced them in ways nobody expected. Lolly Winter, widowed after six months of marriage, buys a house in Cooper Creek. Fran Lupone who lives on the next property has come to terms with her violent past. This summer she discovers a secret her aunt kept from her when she brought her to Australia from Italy. Garth Evans lives in isolation further up the road, his life embittered by a childhood spent in an orphanage. Over the course of this dry, hot summer culminating in a catastrophe of immense proportions, these people come to terms with their frailties, their connections to each other and to the land they love. Bushfire Summer sweeps the reader into a summer etched in the Australian psyche. This novel is a celebration of people in rural communities, their generosity of spirit and their undeniable acts of heroism when disaster strikes.' (Publication summary)
1 Damned Whores or Founding Mothers? Representations of Convict Women in Australian Literature Prostitutas amaldiçoadas ou mães fundadoras? representações de mulheres detentas na literatura australiana Lou Drofenik , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture , January - June vol. 32 no. 1 2010; (p. 97-105) 'When writing about European settlement in Australia, nineteenth and early twentieth century writers focused on the lives of the male convicts and on the English middle class who were in charge of the colony. It was only in the latter part of the twentieth century that Australian feminist writers started to take an interest in the lives of women convicts. Working from different theoretical perspectives, feminist writers patiently unravelled the lives of convict women hidden within layers of archival material.

Thus started the debate of whether convict women should be regarded as Damned Whores or Founding Mothers. Were these women all prostitutes transported for their vices? Or were they women, who struggling for survival in their native land were transported for trivial crimes in order to populate a country which had long been settled by Aboriginal nations? Were these women Founding Mothers who left a legacy not only of Australian born children but also of values embedded in Australian culture? How does Australian literature represent these women? This essay deals with female convicts transported to Australia from Great Britain and Ireland. In this essay I will look at the way writers have depicted their lives and I will examine the way their narratives helped to shape the culture in which they lived and if their legacy lives in today's Australia.'

RESUMO. 'Prostitutas amaldiçoadas ou mães fundadoras? representações de mulheres detentas na literatura australiana. Quando os autores do século XIX e do início do século XX começaram a escrever sobre a colonização europeia na Austrália, focalizavam a vida dos detentos do sexo masculino e da classe média britânica que administrava a colônia. Foi apenas na segunda metade do século XX que as escritoras feministas começaram a se preocupar com a vida das detentas britânicas enviadas para o continente. A partir de várias perspectivas teóricas, as escritoras feministas, com muita paciência, fizeram emergir a vida das detentas, oculta ou suprimida dos arquivos da colônia. Iniciou-se então o debate: seriam as detentas Prostitutas Amaldiçoadas ou Mães Fundadoras? Será que todas estas mulheres eram prostitutas enviadas à colônia pelos seus vícios? Ou eram mulheres que lutavam para sobreviver na Inglaterra e na Irlanda e, acusadas de crimes triviais, foram transportadas à colônia para povoar o continente que por muitos séculos havia sido povoado por nações aborígines? Foram estas mulheres Mães Fundadoras que contribuíram, com o nascimento de seus filhos, para consolidar os valores inerentes à cultura australiana? Como a literatura australiana representa tais mulheres? O ensaio analisa as detentas britânicas e irlandesas que foram transportadas à Austrália, examinando como vários escritores descreveram a sua vida e como suas narrativas ajudaram a moldar a cultura em que viviam e como sua herança cultural persiste na Austrália contemporânea. '(Author's abstract)
1 1 y separately published work icon Birds of Passage Lou Drofenik , Wandong : Lou Drofenik , 2005 Z1200733 2005 single work novel historical fiction
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