Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Global Invention of the Australian Novel
- 2 Colonial Adventure Novels
- 3 Beyond Britain and the Book
- 4 Transnational Optics
- 5 The Novel in the Late Colonial Period
- 6 Love Is Not Enough
- 7 The Australian Crime Novel, 1830–1950
- 8 The Novel Nation
- 9 Selling Australian Stories to the World
- 10 Women Writers and the Emerging Urban Novel, 1930–1952
- 11 The National Trilogy and Mining
- 12 Nation and Environment in the Twentieth-Century Novel
- 13 Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead and the Transnational Fiction of Provincial Development
- 14 The Mid-Century Australian Novel and the End of World History
- 15 Race, Romance and Anxiety
- 16 Whiteness, Aboriginality and Representation in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel
- 17 When the Twain Meet
- 18 From Bunyip to Boom
- 19 Unsettling Archive
- 20 The Novel at Arms
- 21 ‘Our Least-Known Best Seller’
- 22 Writing, Women and the Australian Novel
- 23 White Lies
- 24 The Economics of the Literary Novel
- 25 Mabo, History, Sovereignty
- 26 Indigenous Futurism
- 27 The Regional Novel in Australia
- 28 Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- 29 Grunge, Nation and Literary Generations
- 30 The Making of the Asian Australian Novel
- 31 Screening the Australian Novel, 1971–2020
- 32 Australian Fantasy, Crime and Romance Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 33 Uncertain Futures
- 34 A (Sovereign) Body of Work
- 35 The Novel Road to the Global South
- 36 The Fortunes of the Miles Franklin
- 37 The Arab Australian Novel
- 38 Riddling the Nation
- 39 Migrant Writing and the Invention of Australia
- Selective Bibliography: Studies of the Australian Novel, 2000–2021
- Index
39 - Migrant Writing and the Invention of Australia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2023
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Global Invention of the Australian Novel
- 2 Colonial Adventure Novels
- 3 Beyond Britain and the Book
- 4 Transnational Optics
- 5 The Novel in the Late Colonial Period
- 6 Love Is Not Enough
- 7 The Australian Crime Novel, 1830–1950
- 8 The Novel Nation
- 9 Selling Australian Stories to the World
- 10 Women Writers and the Emerging Urban Novel, 1930–1952
- 11 The National Trilogy and Mining
- 12 Nation and Environment in the Twentieth-Century Novel
- 13 Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead and the Transnational Fiction of Provincial Development
- 14 The Mid-Century Australian Novel and the End of World History
- 15 Race, Romance and Anxiety
- 16 Whiteness, Aboriginality and Representation in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel
- 17 When the Twain Meet
- 18 From Bunyip to Boom
- 19 Unsettling Archive
- 20 The Novel at Arms
- 21 ‘Our Least-Known Best Seller’
- 22 Writing, Women and the Australian Novel
- 23 White Lies
- 24 The Economics of the Literary Novel
- 25 Mabo, History, Sovereignty
- 26 Indigenous Futurism
- 27 The Regional Novel in Australia
- 28 Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- 29 Grunge, Nation and Literary Generations
- 30 The Making of the Asian Australian Novel
- 31 Screening the Australian Novel, 1971–2020
- 32 Australian Fantasy, Crime and Romance Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 33 Uncertain Futures
- 34 A (Sovereign) Body of Work
- 35 The Novel Road to the Global South
- 36 The Fortunes of the Miles Franklin
- 37 The Arab Australian Novel
- 38 Riddling the Nation
- 39 Migrant Writing and the Invention of Australia
- Selective Bibliography: Studies of the Australian Novel, 2000–2021
- Index
Summary
Writing by migrant authors constitutes the bulk of Australian literature, yet more often than not ‘migrant writing’ is used as a de facto label to indicate writing by non-anglophone authors. A further distinction is made with refugee writing, which is treated as a discrete subcategory within the larger field of migrant experience. This chapter restores migrant status to that of Australian settler writing, highlighting the ways in which Australian settler identity is formed through the repression of its migrant origins. It locates this impulse to distance settler identity from migrancy in the founding doctrine of terra nullius (used to justify the British colonisation of Australia), suggesting that this might be considered as a collective trauma, a mechanism that erased not only the country’s Aboriginal history but also its migrant past. Through a comparative analysis of works by Aboriginal authors Claire G. Coleman and Alexis Wright, migrant writers J. M. Coetzee and Felicity Castagna, and the refugee journalist and autobiographer, Behrouz Boochani, this chapter demonstrates the extent to which Australia has been invented by migrants and the migrant experience.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel , pp. 662 - 678Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023