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y separately published work icon Plains of Promise single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1997... 1997 Plains of Promise
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'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.)

Exhibitions

8711002
9428942
17203417
19730740
19567105

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Les Plaines de l'Espoir
Language: French
    • Arles,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Actes Sud ,
      1999 .
      image of person or book cover 5988299435229240183.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 335p.
      Note/s:
      • Babel series, 544.
      • Traduction de: Plains of promise.
      ISBN: 2742738509, 9782742738502, 276092274X, 9782760922747
    • Arles,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Actes Sud ,
      2002 .
      image of person or book cover 2307336186010162024.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 335p.
      ISBN: 2742724893, 9782742724895

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Debut a Promise Fulfilled Geordie Williamson , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10 September 2022; (p. 17)
30 Years After Mabo, What Do Australia’s Battler Stories – and Their Evasions – Say about Who We Are? Jeanine Leane , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 22 July 2022 2022;

'The Mabo decision in 1992 was a turning point for Australia. It finally overturned the dishonest doctrine of terra nullius and recognised Indigenous land rights. It was a moment of hope, accompanied by a productive tension.' (Introduction)

The Voice and the Canon Geordie Williamson , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 18 June 2022; (p. 17)

'Literature by Indigenous Australians - the voice from the heart - is the true core of the Australian canon, writes Geordie Williamson The ur-text of the Australian canon appeared just over two centuries ago, in 1819, when First Fruits of Australian Poetry by Barron Field, a Supreme Court judge of New South Wales with literary pretensions, was published in Sydney.' (Introduction)

Alexis Wright’s Fiction, Aboriginal Realism, and the Sovereignty of the Indigenous Mind Cornelis Martin Renes , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth : Essays and Studies , vol. 44 no. 2 2022;

'The Indigenous Australian author Alexis Wright has developed a novelistic oeuvre that experiments with written forms of fiction, and paints an Aboriginal universe that does not need European epistemology to sustain itself. Rather, it questions western values, certainties, and convictions and problematizes the western way of seeing and doing in the island-continent. Her latest novel, The Swan Book, in manifesting its spiritual and mystical connections to the holistic universe known as the Dreamtime, foregrounds this epistemological turn, which is premised on the ontological relationship Aboriginal people have with “Country,” their traditional land. Alexis Wright’s fiction, which she herself has called an instance of “Aboriginal reality” or “Aboriginal realism,” as opposed to magic realism, is an epic tour de force that juxtaposes the Indigenous and European traditions in startling ways but also speaks across a cultural divide – the discursive gap between colonized and colonizer, belonging and non-belonging, assimilation and sovereignty – which this essay will address.' (Publication abstract)

‘That Old Man Making Fun of Me’ : Humour in the Writings of Aboriginal and Asian Relationships Xu Daozhi , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 2 2019;

'This article explores the role of humour in three contemporary Aboriginal texts that document Aboriginal–Asian relationships. Humour in Aboriginal texts has mostly been studied with reference to the ostensible binaries between Aboriginal and European, Black and White, colonised and colonisers. Scant critical attention has been paid to the place of humour in revealing and concealing the dynamic interrelations between Aboriginal people and Asian immigrants living under a colonial regime. This article investigates humour as a textual device that transmits subversive ideas contesting stigma and stereotypes of Aboriginal and Asian peoples regarding their identities, bodies, and inter-racial intimacies. Through close readings of Alexis Wright’s novel Plains of Promise (1997), Tex and Nelly Camfoo’s autobiography Love against the Law (2000) and Anita Heiss’s historical romance Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (2016), this article considers three specific modes of humour in Aboriginal texts: self-deprecation, puns/wit, and boasting. The article contends that these different forms of humour draw attention to a range of unsettling issues and power relations concerning oppression and resistance, stigmatisation and normalisation, institutional control and surveillance. Further in each of these texts humour works to deconstruct images of discrete and maligned racialised otherness.' (Publication abstract)

The Pointed Review Larissa Behrendt , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: National Indigenous Times , 29 November vol. 6 no. 143 2007; (p. 30)

— Review of Carpentaria Alexis Wright , 2006 single work novel ; Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , 1997 single work novel
Problems with Victim Support Rosemary Sorensen , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 4 May 1997; (p. 8)

— Review of Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , 1997 single work novel
Abused and Beaten Tegan Bennett Daylight , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10-11 May 1997; (p. rev 9)

— Review of Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , 1997 single work novel ; The Ballad of Siddy Church Lin Van Hek , 1997 single work novel
Generations Suffer the Agony and the Exodus Nicholas Jose , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17 May 1997; (p. 9s)

— Review of Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , 1997 single work novel
Books in Brief Jim Buckell , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , May vol. 2 no. 4 1997; (p. 28)

— Review of Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , 1997 single work novel
Re-Surfacing through Palimpsests : A (False) Quest for Reposession in the Works of Mudrooroo and Alexis Wright Francoise Kral , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , vol. 25 no. 1 2002; (p. 7-14)
Author's abstract: Mudrooroo and Alexis Wright seem to have little in common. Mudrooroo belongs to the first generation of Australian Aboriginal writers and wrote many novels and critical studies as well as poetry. As for Alexis Wright, she wrote her first novel in 1997. Yet the landscapes they describe are charaterized by the same tension between a homogeneous surface and sub-layers that criss-cross, overlap and surface, thus posing a threat to the apparent unity of colonial space. This essay addresses the issue of palimpsestic landscapes and characters as clues to pinpoint the specificities of Aboriginal aesthetics. It also focuses on the use of intertextual references as a means to subvert colonial discourse.
Homelands vs 'The Tropics' : Crossing the Line Lyn Jacobs , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 2 no. 2003; (p. 167-178)
'In Australian fictions, "the tropics" feature as paradisiacal retreats, mosquito-infested war zones, touristic destinations or sites-of-last-resort on terminal pathways north. But they are also homelands and cross-cultural spaces where the nexus between Indigenous and non-indigenous people, as well as the environment, climate and geography, is distinctive ... This paper considers "the tropics" as contested sites in Australia and New Guinea, and indicates tensions between writing about or from within homelands' (p.167).
An Interview with Alexis Wright Jean-François Vernay (interviewer), 2004 single work interview
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 119-122)
Discomforting Readings : Uncanny Perceptions of Self in Alexis Wright's 'Plains of Promise' and David Malouf's 'Remembering Babylon' Cornelis Martin Renes , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Eucalypt , February no. 2 2003;
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.

Awards

1998 shortlisted Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book Award South-East Asia and Pacific Region
shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award
shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
Last amended 8 Mar 2024 14:27:13
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