Before Otherness and Beyond: The Dynamics of Material Transnationalism. Australian Indigenous Authors in the US Marketplace
Keywords:
Indigenous literature, Aboriginal literature, publishing, reception, transnationalism, America, USA.Abstract
This paper traces the history of the publication and reception of Indigenous Australian literature--fiction, poetry and life-writing--in the USA, drawing on aspects of book history/publishing studies and cultural sociology. Indigenous Australian novels in particular have prompted a rich international critical literature focused in recent years on notions of Indigenous transnationalism or equivalent concepts. While acknowledging the pertinence and generative power of such modes of reading, paying close attention to the dimension of 'material transnationalism'--the ways in which books have or have not travelled into the US marketplace, their circulation or lack of circulation--offers a different perspective, one that qualifies more familiar transnational or world literature paradigms. Australian Aborignial or Indigeous writing has not had an impact as such--as a field in its own right--in the USA, although recent genre framings through dystopian fantasy/climate fiction have given mre prominence to certain titles.References
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