AustLit logo
image of person or book cover 6974882120190174874.jpg
Image courtesy of UQP
y separately published work icon Hard Yards single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1999... 1999 Hard Yards
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.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Roo Glover has two highly desirable talents - he can fight, and he can run like the clappers. In the inner-city's harsh code there are losers and survivors, and Roo's a survivor. He's made it through adoption, through juvenile detention, through poverty. He's an athlete in training, aching towards the dream of Olympic qualification. He's even coping with being white in the turbulent Aboriginal family of his girlfriend. But when cousin Stanley dies in custody, and Roo finds his father the same week, trouble starts to catch up with him.' (Source: UQP Website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

Exhibitions

6943689
18388406
18387981

Notes

  • Epigraph: 'It was genocide.' Sir Ronald Wilson, Report of the Inquiry into the Removal of Aboriginal Children.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Negotiations of Violence and Anger in Aboriginal Novelist Melissa Lucashenko’s Hard Yards Anne Brewster , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 8 no. 3 2014; (p. 339-353)
'This article analyzes a young Aboriginal man’s search to belong and the triangulated violence that complicates his relationship with his white father and the young men of the Aboriginal family that he seeks to join. It investigates how Roo and the young Aboriginal men struggle against the systemic racialized differentiation and segregation of white and black subjects and bodies. Roo, and the Aboriginal family into which he is eventually incorporated, negotiate his ambiguous whiteness and, with it, the legacy of the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Roo’s story articulates a countervailing narrative to this assimilationist policy – a narrative of indigenous autonomy. The novel’s parallel but inverse story of Roo’s violent white policeman father, it is argued, figures a traumatized “mainstream” whiteness that refuses intersubjectivity with its racialized others. The affective labor that these two intertwined stories (Roo and his father and Roo and the young Aboriginal men) perform and the ways in which it positions white liberal readers and critics is examined. The analysis of the anger articulated in this novel cautions against first-world intellectuals’ identification with indigenous anger. It is argued that the novel’s affective labor defamiliarizes and functions as a readerly corrective to the universalism of whiteness.' (Publication abstract)
Cross-Cultural Alliances : Exploring Aboriginal Asian Literary and Cultural Production Peta Stephenson , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Lost in the Whitewash : Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in Australia, 1901-2001 2003; (p. 143-162)
Peta Stephenson surveys Aboriginal-Asian cross-cultural production, considering representations of Aboriginal-Asian relations, influences on the construction of contemporary Aboriginality, and Aboriginal perceptions of Asian identity.
[Review] Hard Yards Jill Midolo , 2001 single work review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 15 no. 1 2001; (p. 42)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
The Courier-Mail Book of the Year Shortlist [2000] Rosemary Sorensen , 2000 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 30 September 2000; (p. 5)
A Stake in the Outcome Jenny Pausacker , 1999- single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January no. 217 (p. 31)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
A Stake in the Outcome Jenny Pausacker , 1999- single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January no. 217 (p. 31)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
Paperbacks Debra Adelaide , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 11 December 1999; (p. 12)

— Review of Visible Panty Line Gretel Killeen , 1999 selected work prose ; Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
Life and Death on the Run Samuel Wagan Watson , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 2 October 1999; (p. 7)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
Powerfully Reconciling Story Awaits Behind a Black Cover Ian McFarlane , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times Sunday Times , 28 November 1999; (p. 20)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel ; The Salt Letters Christine Balint , 1999 single work novel
[Review] Hard Yards Sally Morrison , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , November vol. 4 no. 10 1999; (p. 24)

— Review of Hard Yards Melissa Lucashenko , 1999 single work novel
Cross-Cultural Alliances : Exploring Aboriginal Asian Literary and Cultural Production Peta Stephenson , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Lost in the Whitewash : Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in Australia, 1901-2001 2003; (p. 143-162)
Peta Stephenson surveys Aboriginal-Asian cross-cultural production, considering representations of Aboriginal-Asian relations, influences on the construction of contemporary Aboriginality, and Aboriginal perceptions of Asian identity.
The Courier-Mail Book of the Year Shortlist [2000] Rosemary Sorensen , 2000 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 30 September 2000; (p. 5)
Negotiations of Violence and Anger in Aboriginal Novelist Melissa Lucashenko’s Hard Yards Anne Brewster , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 8 no. 3 2014; (p. 339-353)
'This article analyzes a young Aboriginal man’s search to belong and the triangulated violence that complicates his relationship with his white father and the young men of the Aboriginal family that he seeks to join. It investigates how Roo and the young Aboriginal men struggle against the systemic racialized differentiation and segregation of white and black subjects and bodies. Roo, and the Aboriginal family into which he is eventually incorporated, negotiate his ambiguous whiteness and, with it, the legacy of the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Roo’s story articulates a countervailing narrative to this assimilationist policy – a narrative of indigenous autonomy. The novel’s parallel but inverse story of Roo’s violent white policeman father, it is argued, figures a traumatized “mainstream” whiteness that refuses intersubjectivity with its racialized others. The affective labor that these two intertwined stories (Roo and his father and Roo and the young Aboriginal men) perform and the ways in which it positions white liberal readers and critics is examined. The analysis of the anger articulated in this novel cautions against first-world intellectuals’ identification with indigenous anger. It is argued that the novel’s affective labor defamiliarizes and functions as a readerly corrective to the universalism of whiteness.' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 27 Oct 2023 09:48:08
X