AustLit

Ashcroft discusses the conceptual and actual boundaries which contain/construct the notion of 'home'. He suggests that 'home' is deeply connected to a sense of self and 'like that sense of self, "home" brings with it the inescapable tyranny of limits, of borders. Whether home is a place, a location, a feeling, a tradition, an ethnicity, it carries with it the sometimes imperceptible, but ever-present reality of boundaries'. He illustrates this argument with examples from Arnold Zable's Jewels and Ashes (1991) and Ameican writer Toni Morrison's Paradise (1998) as well as a number of critical texts.

This article considers the 'demise of the family story-telling tradition' and emphasises the importance of the telling of life-narratives in the process of ageing. Longley focuses on 'migrant' families and takes examples from her own experience. The article contains much autobiographical and biographical material and is illustrated with portraits showing Longley's parents, herself and her siblings.

This short article provides a comparative analysis of the works listed. Dhawan concludes that the differences depicted in the literary works examined (which he reads as largely autobiographical) override any superficial similarities, regardless of the fact that each of the Australian-born writers has their 'original base-inheritance' in India.

The term 'Anglo-Indian (Raj)' is used to identify the white colonial population of India rather than the 'mixed-race' community to whom the term is now most usually applied. Crane describes how links between Australia and India were already established by the early nineteenth century. He then goes on to compare two pieces of 'mutiny literature' - the short story 'Mrs James Greene', from Ethel Anderson's Indian Tales (1948), and Sir Gilbert Leigh or Pages from the History of an Eventful Life, a little known novel by New Zealand writer W. L. Rees.

This article focuses on the 'double-displacement' that affects those of Indian origin who emigrate from the countries their forebears were sent to as indentured labour. It also examines the concept of 'home' and, in particular, the sense of both multiplicity and fracture which accompany the notion of home in Satendra Nandan's autobiography.

This article considers the importance Satendra Nandan places on the writing, reading and study of literature, which he believes may affect 'a healing touch' to 'the anguished soul'.

This is a short, comparative account of the works listed which examines the portrayal of Australia and Australians in each text. Driesen chooses not to emphasise issues relating to displacement and loss (what she terms 'the shadow-side of the experience of diaspora'), focusing instead on the positive aspects of migration.

In this reading of Lazaroo's An Australian Fiance Byrappa uses feminist critical theories to emphasise endurance and survival against the odds.

Majumdar compares Yasmine Gooneratne's A Change of Skies (1991) to The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003).

Pillai argues that only creole music provides a sanctuary against the 'cycle of violence and protest and struggle for human rights' in the novel examined.

In this essay Hasluck comments on 'diaspora' and describes some of the ruminations that led to the creation of his novel, The Country Without Music. He ties the Borgesian preoccupation with illusion and reality to the notion (in law) of the alibi and then links both to the concept of diaspora. Hasluck discusses how fictive alternatives (what if the French had colonised Australia?) and alternative communities form some of the themes that animate his novel.

This work is a 'ficto-critical look at an unusual example of diaspora where over a period of more than 100 years a small but continuous stream of Valtellinesi working men (from Lombardy valley in north Italy) and their wives and families - the latter following the breadwinner years later in most cases - migrated from what was in those days one of the poorest areas in the Italian Alps to find a new life. They began working at first in the gold-mining industry in Western Australia.' (Source: Author's introduction, Southerly, 2011)

This essay includes biographical information regarding the Casella family's arrival in Western Australia.

'In this scene Ira-Jane is planning to go to Sicily on a journalistic assignment, whilst there she hopes to catch up with an old couple who had been grandparents to her in her childhood in Perth.'