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- Title
Converging Histories: Kim Scott and Hazel Brown's Kayang and Me.
- Authors
Kanwar, Neelima
- Abstract
The notion of Aboriginality or Indigenity is complex and polysemous. Self-identification has varied connotations for the Indigenous people of Australia, yet the Indigenous communities with shared experiences of dispossession, dislocation and alienation in their own land have a unified sense of identity as well. Acknowledging their link with the land, the Aboriginals consider connection with the land as central to their being of Aboriginality. Like most other Indigenous population in the world Aboriginal people of Australia too have been denied a history, rather have been thought to be without history. Their stories have been dismissed just as myths or folklore. Their oral literature has been inconsequential in front of history proper as demanded by the White Australians. Without the 'appropriate' means to transmit their history to the mainstream, Aboriginal voices have largely been excluded from historical constructions. The present paper aims to discuss Aboriginal writer Kim Scott and Hazel Brown's book Kayang and Me (2005) as a narrative which depicts the history of Wilomin Noongar community through the history of writer's own family. Kim Scott and his aunt Hazel Brown have constructed a story which reveals the deep connection of land, culture and identity among the Aboriginal people. With the juxtaposition of two voices the novel unravels the common stories in terms of colonization, oppression and racism which are unique in specific culture and social structure. The paper is divided into two parts. Part one depicts the distinct culture of Noongar community where family, belongingness and nature predominate. In part two the history of colonization becomes significant. As such cultural history and history of oppression converge to rearticulate, the position of Noongar community in particular and the Aboriginal people in general, in contemporary Australia.
- Subjects
ABORIGINAL Australians in literature; INDIGENOUS peoples in literature; RACISM in literature; KAYANG &; Me (Book); BROWN, Hazel; SCOTT, Kim
- Publication
Labyrinth: An International Refereed Journal of Postmodern Studies, 2014, Vol 5, Issue 4, p27
- ISSN
0976-0814
- Publication type
Literary Criticism