AustLit

'Antipodean China was born from a decade of cross-cultural literary exchange between the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and the Chinese Writers’ Association. It features writings from a wide spectrum of literary figures including writers, poets, translators, and critics, who positively engage with issues of difference in the cross-hemispherical other while envisioning connections between the two countries from a literary perspective. This is embodied in the multi-chapter dialogue between Alexis Wright and the Tibetan writer Alai, which re-imagines the parameters of nation and locality in literary writings.' (Introduction)

'Australian Aboriginal stories have thrived for thousands of years through oral tradition and Aboriginal author Alexis Wright invokes this tradition in the construction of her novel Carpentaria. This article investigates the orality of Carpentaria, which stages “oral” narrators who speak differently to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readerships. First, using Bakhtin’s notion of “speech genre”, the article explores why Wright creates these two narrative layers. Second, it investigates the language use and tone of voice in the framing narrative that addresses non-Indigenous readers. Third, it looks closely at Wright’s linguistic experimentation in the embedded narrative, creating multiple oral effects through language and mobilising the storytelling dynamics of performance, spontaneity, rhythms and mnemonics. Finally, it discusses how her creative use of orality plays off and with its Western literary conceptions and enacts cross-cultural communication between the two readerships.' (Publication abstract)