The role of Aboriginals in Australian Literature

This book deals with the role of Aboriginals in Australian literature by contrasting the auto-and hetero-images of Aboriginal identity positions in selected works by white and Indigenous authors after 1950. In doing so, there is an analysis to what extent Aboriginal identity positions are depicted differently in the books of Indigenous and white Australian writers. The literary corpus consists of five pairs of texts from different periods, where one book written by a white Australian author and one by an Aboriginal will be contrasted. These selected texts from the 1950s onwards are examined and compared as to the basis of identity constructions as well as recurrent themes and motifs that are essential for Aboriginal identity constructions. Moreover, this work does not only focus on the discrepancy between the roles of Aboriginals in the works of Indigenous and white Australian authors, but also on the development in the literary texts from the 1960s until the 2000s.