Mudrooroo: A Likely Story
Identity and Belonging in Postcolonial Australia
1st Edition
Published on 14. August 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
268 pages
978-90-5201-356-5 (ISBN)
Description
Mudrooroo: A Likely Story reads the fiction of one of Australia's most controversial and enigmatic literary figures against the backdrop of the likelihood that he assumed an Aboriginal identity to which he was not entitled. As he is neither black nor white, Colin Johnson (a.k.a. Mudrooroo) writes on issues of identity and belonging from the position of an outsider. The book argues that the experimental nature of Johnson's creative body of work coupled with the complexities of his 'in-between' status, mean that both the man and his writing evade neat categorisation within mainstream literary criticism. Also examined here is how the denial of his white mother impacts upon the gender politics of Johnson's fiction in a way that opens up exciting new possibilities for critical comment and textual analysis.
More details
Person
The Author: Maureen Clark is an Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. She received her Ph.D. in English Studies from Wollongong University in 2004. She has published numerous articles in refereed academic journals world-wide and her work on Colin Johnson/Mudrooroo has been cited by scholars and critics in the field of Australian literature.
Content
Contents: An important new perspective on the debate over Johnson¿s identity linked to the analysis of his fiction ¿ The complexities of identity formation tied to notions of belonging within the constraints of Australiäs racial boundaries and power relations ¿ Issues of `in/authenticity¿ and the future place of the author¿s creative body of work in Australian literature ¿ The complex notion of `passing¿ within the trans-cultural coded exegesis of racial classification in Australia ¿ The textual appropriation of the Indigenous female body as a stage for masculinist (colonial) discourses.