AustLit

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

'From the riotous picnic races to the famous Mt Isa rodeo, from childhood in the yumba to gutsy outback pubs, Unbranded presents a strikingly original vision of Australia. With a rollicking cast of stockmen, shearers, barmaids and tourists, this novel is the story of three men. Sandy is a white man; Bindi, a Murri; Mulga is related on his mother's side to Bindi, and on his Irish father's side to Sandy. Their saga . and enduring friendship . covers forty years in the mulga country of the far west. It tells how Sandy achieves his dream of owning a cattle empire; how Bindi regains part of his tribal lands for his people, and how Mulga finally sits down to write about their shared experiences. Mulga's journey also brings him face-to-face with the dark side of urban despair and his people's struggle with alcohol...' (Source: WorldCat website)

'Jesse has sworn to protect his sister, Rachel, no matter what. It's a promise that cannot be broken. A promise made in blood. But, when it comes down to life or death, how can he find the courage to keep it? Set on the back roads of Australia, Blood is a boy's odyssey through a broken-down adult world.' (Source: Publisher website)

'Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was fifteen. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney. Ruby is an amazing woman whose sense of humour has endured through all the hardships she has experienced.' (Source UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

'In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.'

'Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging.'

'Heat and Light presents an intriguing collection while heralding the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian writing.' (Publication summary)

'Since Archie Weller was runner-up for the first Vogel Award in 1980 for his novel The Day of the Dog, he has become an important voice in contemporary Indigenous writing. The Window Seat is a collection of his best short fiction and a tribute to his contribution to Australian literature.

'These stories are honest, brutal and moving. In 'The Window Seat', we witness an old woman's journey home through the eyes of an disgruntled white traveller who sits beside her; in 'Stolen Car', a young Aboriginal man learns his first lesson in rough justice, and in 'Dead Dingo', we see another rallying against what his friends, life and fate are offering him. (Publisher's blurb.)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

'A collection of short stories that encapsulates the story of the Aboriginal narrator, her partner Antman, their dog Fleabag and their life in travelling in rural Australia.'  (Source: Narragunnawali resource)

'These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

'These poems are anything but motionless. Their emotions cut, determined to map out another possibility, a place of personal and social reconciliation.' (Source: Back cover)

'A vital Aboriginal perspective on colonial storytelling

'Indigenous lawyer and writer Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the local Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonizers’ stories. Citing works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, she explores the tropes in these accounts, such as the supposed promiscuity of Aboriginal women, the Europeans’ fixation on cannibalism, and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Behrendt shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – which in Australia led to the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the laws enforced against them. ' (Publication summary)