Abstract
As the first novel written by an Indigenous Australian to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Alexis Wright’s 2006 epic Carpentaria traverses Australia’s traditionalist literary landscape and allows her readers access into the kaleidoscopic style of Aboriginal storytelling and history. Through her poignant depiction of a town in crisis, Wright challenges established notions of time and authenticity while considering the place of storytelling in contemporary Australia. Still feeling the effects of the white imperialism that arrived with the first fleet, Carpentaria’s predominantly white readership is forced to reassess whether it is truly ‘post colonial’. Through her fairly blunt, ironic characters who serve as representations of the division between Western pragmatism and Indigenous spirituality, Wright eases her readers into the long overdue flow of cross-racial dialogue.
Highlights
Set in the fictional town of Desperance on the Gulf of Carpentaria where Wright herself is from, the novel centres on the hostile relationship between members of the indigenous Pricklebush clan and the white inhabitants of the town their land surrounds
Mimicking Indigenous oral tradition by creating a story that exists both in the present and past, and in reality and the dreaming, Carpentaria disorientates white readers to remind them that regarding literature, not all Indigenous people “considers whiteness essential and infinitely desirable” (Fannon, F cited in Ghosh, D and Gillen, P. 2007, p175)
Despite recent thermo luminescence dating techniques calculating there has been Indigenous presence in Australia for between 50 and 65,000 years, less than 1% of NSW land currently belongs to Aboriginal people
Summary
Set in the fictional town of Desperance on the Gulf of Carpentaria where Wright herself is from, the novel centres on the hostile relationship between members of the indigenous Pricklebush clan and the white inhabitants of the town their land surrounds. Seeking to illustrate the destruction and grief caused by the initial offences as well as their erasure from history, Wright interweaves the trauma occurring in Desperance with the rich, endless spiritual history of her land and people.
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