AustLit

Instead of seeing Such is Life in the traditional terms of a celebratory nationalist narrative, Stephen Cowden seeks to locate it within the historical social conflicts of its time. As these issues are still very much alive today, he believes that a re-reading of the novel in this sense assist a greater understanding of the social contours through which Australian identity has been developed.

David Milroy discusses the development of 'Indigenous theatre' in Australia, seeing a current tendency to 'catch up' theatre, re-writing history from the Indigenous people's point of view. He sees the Yirra Yaakin company as setting the stage for a new understanding of Indigenous theatre, unshackled by the expectations of the past.

Lo is concerned about what she sees as 'happy' or uncritical hybridity in Australian society, concluding that 'What's needed is a more critical way of looking at how the discourse of hybridity is articulated and mobilised as a critical strategy so that issues of power inequities are not overlooked and more care is taken to understand what is lost, as much as what is gained, in the process of crossing cultures.'