AustLit

'The article offers the author's insights related to indigenous Australians focusing on the family of Paul Behrendt and her daughter Larissa whose Aboriginal genealogies have been heard at an Australian court. It discusses the case of Australian journalist Andrew Bolt about race discrimination against Larissa wherein Bolt loses the case.' (Publication abstract)

'Gabrielle Lord: My 2014 novel, Dishonour, highlighted the plight of an Australian Iraqi girl, eighteenyear-old Rana, desperate to avoid a forced marriage. She fears being taken out of Australia by her brothers and forced to marry a “traditional” Muslim Iraqi cousin twice her age and live under sharia law, reduced to endless child-bearing and cooking, a second-class servant, living under the domination and sanctioned violence of her husband and his family. Rana wants to complete a pharmacy degree and marry the man of her choice, a young graduate Copt. She wants the freedoms that Australian women take for granted, but which are prohibited under sharia. I interviewed women who had left Islam. I was shocked to hear that they live in fear of their own families and communities. Then I met “Asiya”, a highly intelligent Iraqi girl in her early twenties, elegant and insightful, who spoke frankly about her own childhood and her observations of family life as a young Muslima in Sydney’s western suburbs. She feels passionately about the isolation of young girls and the forced marriages of two of her sisters, at the ages of twelve and thirteen.' (Introduction)

'Daughter of the Territory is an excellent title for Jacqueline Hammar’s fine memoir—and valuable if informal social history—of the Northern Territory, but I wondered if “From We of the Never Never to Whitlam” might have been a good subtitle. She captures the Top End in a way redolent of Mrs Aeneas Gunn’s 1908 classic We of the Never Never and takes it jauntily through to the present day, though racing and thinning towards the end, seemingly under the weight of change since about 1970 and the pages needed to cover a century.' (Introduction)

'The article discusses censorship in literature in Australia. It mentions that literary censorship in the country is increasingly progressive and has attracted liberal attitudes through the 20th century as expressed by author Lionel Shriver in his [sic] keynote address to the Brisbane Writers Festival in September 2016. It cites the literary pieces where literary censorship is evident.' (Publication abstract)

'An excerpt from an article "Short Takes XXI," by Alan Gould is presented which discusses topics including author Clive James' view about Australian poets, challenge by Christian, and collected poems by Philip Larkin.' (Publication abstract)

'A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience getting back his 13-old son who was abducted by two men.' (Publication abstract)