AustLit

Ommundsen, Wenche. Multicultural Writing in Australia. St Lucia, QLd: AustLit, 2004.

Ommundsen states:

'Multiculturalism has been government policy in Australia since the early 1970s, when it was recognised that the earlier expectation that migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds quickly assimilate into the mainstream culture was both unrealistic and undesirable. Exactly what multiculturalism means, and what its implications are, or should be, for the national culture have been subjects of lively, sometimes heated debate ever since. The nature of multicultural writing and its relationship to the overall category of Australian literature have become important issues in this debate ...

'The history of multicultural additions to the national literature closely reflects trends in Australian immigration since World War II. Apart from the (relatively small) number of non-Anglo writers who had made their home in Australia before this time, the first writers identified as multicultural belonged to the (predominantly European) migrant groups who arrived in the country in large numbers in the 1940s and 1950s: Greeks, Italians, Balts, Poles, Jews, to name just some of the larger groups.'