Why non-Indigenous Australians should read First Nations writing
Reading can be a political act, an act of solidarity, an expression of willingness to listen and to learn from others with radically different histories and lives.
11 Jul 2017 12:00
Meera Atkinson
[This is archived content and may not display in the originally intended format.]
Writing and Publishing
Photo by Ben White via Unsplash
Do you read Australia’s First Nations (Indigenous) writers? If not, why not? People read for many reasons: information, entertainment, escape, to contemplate in company, to be moved. Reading can also be a political act, an act of solidarity, an expression of willingness to listen and to learn from others with radically different histories and lives.
Meera Atkinson is a writer and interdisciplinary scholar. She graduated with a PhD from the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University in 2013 and co-edited (with Michael Richardson) Traumatic Affect (2013), a volume exploring the nexus of trauma and affect in literature, film, and culture. The Poetics of Transgenerational Trauma is forthcoming and her hybrid creative non-fiction book, Traumata, will be published by UQP in 2018. Meera is a sessional teacher and guest lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney.
