The Genesis of Thea Astley's Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
Keywords:
Thea Astley, Palm Island, Aboriginals, postcolonial fictionAbstract
A work of traditional scholarship rather than of literary criticism, this essay discusses the Thea Astley novel that relies most heavily on sources, including black and white histories, biographies, language dictionaries, and news reports. It demonstrates the obscurity and diversity of the sources on which Astley drew, and the creativity of her responses to their political, religious and racial assumptions. It seeks to understand something of Astley's creative processes, and to define their limits.References
Astley, Thea. The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow. Ringwood, Victoria: Viking Penguin, 1996.
Barthes, Roland. ‘The Death of the Author’. Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London and New York: Longman, 1988: 167-72.
Cantle, Merle. Jewels of Fine Gold. An Autobiography of a Missionary Pioneer among the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia. Sydney: Outreach Book Service, 1980.
Close, Cecily. ‘Arthur Greening, Publisher of The Scarlet Pimpernel’. The Latrobe Journal 78 (Spring 2006): 39-55. 14 March 2020. http://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-78/t1-g-t4.html.
De Satgé, Oscar. Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1901.
Frings, J. W. Occult Arts: An Examination of the Claims Made for the Existence and Practice of Supernormal Powers, and an Attempted Justification of Some of Them by the Conclusions of the Researches of Modern Science. London: William Rider and Son [?1913].
Frings, J. W. My Island of Dreams. London: George Newnes, n.d.
Greening, Arthur. The Curse of Kali: A Tale of the Thugs in India. London: Jarrolds, [1922].
Gribble, Ernest R. The Problem of the Australian Aboriginal. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1932.
Maguire, John P. Prologue: A History of the Catholic Church as Seen from Townsville 1863-1983. Toowoomba: A Church Archivists’ Publication, 1990.
Mackenzie, Compton. My Life and Times: Octave Six 1923-1930. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967.
Oates, Lynette F. Kuku-Yalanji Dictionary. AIATSIS Australian Indigenous Languages. Albury, NSW: Graeme van Brummelen, 1992. [Compiled from two hand-written word lists by Norman Baird; from Gugu-Yalanji Vocabulary by William and Lynette Oates (1964); and from Kuku-Yalanji Dictionary by Henry D. and Ruth Hershberger (1984)]. 17 February 2020 https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/0444_access.zi.
Prior, Renarta. ‘Straight from the Yudaman’s Mouth’: The Life Story of Peter Prior before, during and after the Robert Curry Days Never Told Before. Townsville: Department of History and Politics, James Cook U, 1993.
Raggatt, Tony. ‘Island Nightmare’. Townsville Bulletin, 12 March, 1994.
Reynolds, Henry. The Other Side of the Frontier. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1982.
Reynolds, Henry. With the White People. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1990.
Rosser, Bill. Dreamtime Nightmares: Biographies of Aborigines under the Queensland Aborigines Act. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1985; Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1987 [Recorded and transcribed 1979].
Sayer, Mandy. ‘Thea Astley Comes out of the Shadows’. Good Weekend 28 September 1996: 17-20, 23.
Author. ‘“This Fiction, It Don’t Go Away”: Narrative as an Index to Palm Island’s Past and Present’. Queensland Review 16.1 (2009): 35-67.
Author. ‘“All the Tiresome Homosexuals”: Gay Love in Thea Astley’s Novels and Stories’. Queensland Review 26:2 (2019): 269-83.
Thaiday, Willie. Under the Act. Townsville: NQ Black Publishing, 1981.
Tindale, Norman Barnett. Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974. 17 March 2020. http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindaletribes/wulgurukaba.htm.
Watson, Joanne. Palm Island through a Long Lens. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies P, 2010.
Wilkinson, David. Arthur Greening, That Damned Elusive Publisher. High Wycombe: Rivendale P, 2016.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The copyright for articles in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution in educational and other non-commercial sectors.Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.1/au/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
