Out of the salon and into the streets: contextualising Australian indigenous women's writing

Abstract

The field of cultural production defined as “Aboriginal women's writing” has undergone a number of marked shifts over the last 20 years, particularly over the last decade as the genre of Australian Indigenous life-writing has gained an increasing domestic and international profile. This essay explores some of the national-cultural contexts in which contemporary Australian Indigenous women's writing has developed, some of the feminist critical frameworks informing its publication and reception, and the challenges posed by Australian Indigenous women's writing to the general interest both in life-writing as genre and to cross-cultural feminist practices in the material structures governing the production of Australian Indigenous women's texts.