AustLit logo

AustLit

Imogen Mathew Imogen Mathew i(9264544 works by)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Educating the Reader in Anita Heiss’s Chick Lit Imogen Mathew , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 10 no. 3 2016;

' In this essay, I use a close reading of Anita Heiss’s five chick lit novels to argue that racial identity profoundly affects the relationship between the chick lit novel and advice manual genre. In Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, Caroline Smith contends that the chick lit novel critiques and satirizes regimes of female control through its engagement with the domestic advice manual. This relationship, however, does not always work in the way Smith assumes because the protagonist is not always white: she may be Latina, Chinese, South-East Asian, or, as Anita Heiss shows, Aboriginal Australian: Heiss’s fiction serves as an advice manual, designed to expose readers to the correct norms and behaviors for interacting with Australia’s First Peoples.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1 Reviewing Race in the Digital Literary Sphere : A Case Study of Anita Heiss’ Am I Black Enough for You? Imogen Mathew , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 60 2016;
1 Love in the Time of Racism : ‘Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms’ Explores the Politics of Romance Imogen Mathew , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 7 September 2016;
— Review of Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms Anita Heiss , 2016 single work novel 'Popular media forms, from Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry to the dystopian sci-fi television series Cleverman, have often been used by Aboriginal Australians to inform and entertain. The latest example of this type of political and artistic endeavour is Wiradjuri author Anita Heiss' new work Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms. ...'
1 “The Pretty and the Political Didn’t Seem to Blend Well” : Reconciling Competing Ideological Imperatives in Anita Heiss’ Chick Lit Imogen Mathew , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015; 'In recent decades, chick lit has become a ubiquitous – if not always celebrated – feature of the contemporary literary, social and cultural landscape. In Australia, Anita Heiss is one of the genre’s preeminent practitioners, and the only Aboriginal author writing chick lit for a mainstream, middleclass audience. A close reading of two of her novels (Not Meeting Mr Right and Manhattan Dreaming) reveals a deep political engagement running through her fiction. On the one hand, this political engagement is expressed by Heiss’ commitment to foregrounding the lives and experiences of young, urban, Aboriginal women. On the other hand, the narrative is peppered with references to, and discussion of, urgent political issues: from banning the burqa in France to protesting the Northern Territory intervention in Melbourne. While Heiss’ political engagement is of an unapologetically, left-wing, liberal cast, the analysis undertaken in this article will show that a surprisingly conservative bias forms the subtext to many of the political interventions in Heiss’ fiction. Galvanised by the question of why there should be such competing ideological imperatives at work in her fiction, this article will argue that the demands of an inherently conservative genre restrain and limit the extent to which chick lit can be used to promulgate a socially progressive vision.' (Publication abstract)
X