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Notes
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Dedication: for my teachers
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Epigraph: 'Thin love ain't love at all' - Toni Morrison, Beloved
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Author's note: This novel is set mainly on the Arakwal lands of the Bundjalung Nation. Like the characters, however, the specific locations of Tin Wagon Road, Piccabeen and Lake Majestic are entirely fictional. They exist only in the author's imagination.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Sound recording.
- Braille.
Works about this Work
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Representations of Agreement-Making in Australian Post-Mabo Fiction
2024
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , 4 November vol. 23 no. 2 2024;'It has been widely argued that a ‘culture of agreement making’ as an alternative to litigation in native title and other areas of political and legal activity emerged in Australia in the early 2000s (Langton and Palmer). This paper explores the ways in which this development has been taken up in post-Mabo fiction. It begins by surveying the debates around the possibilities and limitations of current frameworks of agreement-making, especially their ability to deliver “equitable outcomes for Indigenous parties” (Langton and Palmer 1), and the endemic inequality produced by settler colonialism. It then examines four novels which include agreements between white and Aboriginal characters in the light of these debates: Peter Goldsworthy’s Three Dog Night (2003), Jessica White’s Entitlement (2012), Melissa Lucashenko’s Mullumbimby (2013) and Kim Scott’s Taboo (2017). Three Dog Night highlights the politics of cross-cultural negotiation in a narrative marked by transgressive desire and the blurring of normative boundaries. In Entitlement an imaginative revisioning of the process of bargaining reverses the usual power imbalance between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal characters such that the former secure their ‘entitlements,’ making visible the presence of inequity in the contractual scene. Mullumbimby explores the conflict generated by native title litigation in Aboriginal communities, but also explores modes of resolving or pre-empting such discord through agreement. Taboo displaces a settler Australian desire for ‘reconciliation’ with a Noongar emphasis on ‘reconstitution’ (109), tracing the emergence of a tentative agreement-making project within a context of incremental acknowledgments of the traumatic effects of modern repetitions of colonial violence. In all four narratives a residue of unresolved conflict suggests a cautious, critical engagement with the ‘culture of agreement-making.’' (Publication abstract)
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Melissa Lucashenko's Mullumbimby : The Female Body as the Locus of Knowing and Tradition
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Mabo’s Cultural Legacy : History, Literature, Film and Cultural Practice in Contemporary Australia 2021; -
Australia in Three Books
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , September / Spring vol. 80 no. 3 2021; (p. 18-21)
— Review of The Vivisector 1970 single work novel ; Dark Places of the Heart 1966 single work novel ; Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
Responsive Topographies : Reading the Ontopoetics in Mullumbimby and The Swan Book
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Swamphen : A Journal of Cultural Ecology , no. 7 2020;'The ways in which European settlers have disrupted Australian lands, and disrupted the relationship that First Nations people have to Indigenous Country, are massive and manifold. This despoliation has deep and lasting implications because Country relies on a dialogue between people and place, and this dialogue is based on millennia of accumulated knowledges. Mitigating the despoliation requires the acknowledgement of this dialogue’s importance, and one mode of making it legible, particularly to European settlers, is through works of Indigenous literature.' (Introduction)
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Sovereignty, Mabo, and Indigenous Fiction
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 344-360)'Native title was increasingly being seen as a regime of limited property rights that could be curbed by governments at a whim. [...]while many Aboriginal people have certainly benefited from native title determinations 3 since the Native Title Act was passed in 1993, Mabo-based native title offers no recompense to the majority of Aboriginal people living in Australia today, because most of them have been dispossessed of their traditional lands, or their native title rights have been extinguished by land grants to settlers. For Watson, the gains of native title have been "meagre at best, illusory at worst" (284). [...]as the Mabo decision and the native title claims process have proved increasingly disappointing for more Aboriginal people in their aspirations for justice and land rights, attention has returned to sovereignty, something that was expressly denied them in Mabo. The recognition of native title rights in the Mabo decision of 1992, while "truly a catalytic political event" (Russell 279), also provided no advances on the question of sovereignty. [...]all three of these state initiatives from the early 1990s functioned, in effect, to displace calls for a treaty and indigenous sovereignty for a number of years. Wright's narrator explains that "Aboriginal Law handed down through the ages since time began" provides the foundational basis for living on the land (2). [...]the machinations and the history of the "white" nation-state are subordinated to Aboriginal Law early in this novel, and the carriers of Aboriginal Law are established as sovereigns of this place.' (Publication abstract)
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Book Mark
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 23 February 2013; (p. 34)
— Review of As the River Runs 2013 single work novel ; Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
Melissa Lucashenko : Mullumbimby
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , March 2013;
— Review of Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
The Longing for Belonging
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 9 March 2013; (p. 30)
— Review of Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
Black and White Blurs as Mother Reclaims Her Country
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 13-14 April 2013; (p. 30-31) The Age , 13-14 April 2013; (p. 27) The Canberra Times , 13 April 2013; (p. 23)
— Review of Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
Thorny Nests
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 351 2013;
— Review of Mullumbimby 2013 single work novel -
Black Russian
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 23-24 February 2013; (p. 16-18) 'Anger and humour dance side by side as author Melissa Lucashenko explores the complexities of identity.' -
Melissa Lucashenko
Susan Chenery
(interviewer),
2013
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 9-10 March 2013; (p. 28-29) The Canberra Times , 9 March 2013; (p. 19) 'While celebrating the Aboriginal connection with the land, this novelist doesn't shy away from confronting issues...' -
Winning Words
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 27-28 July 2013; (p. 4-5) -
Excerpt from Mullumbimby : Friday Night at the Nudgel
2013
single work
extract
— Appears in: Ora Nui : Special Edition : A Collection of Maori and Aboriginal Literature (p. 93-96) -
Brisbane Writers the Last Word in Talent
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 1 May 2014; (p. 50)
Awards
- 2014 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Indigenous Writing
- 2014 shortlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
- 2014 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2014 longlisted The Stella Prize
- 2013 winner Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award — Deloitte Fiction Book Award
- Mullumbimby, Mullumbimby - Brunswick Heads area, Far North Coast, New South Wales,