The Other Literature of Australia

Abstract

I have titled this essay “The Other Literature of Australia”. By this, I mean the writing by and about migrants in Australia as distinct from that which is more generally thought of as distinctively Australian, and that we have in recent years come to call multicultural. To put the subject in context, I will begin by giving you some idea of the changes in Australia’s population and attitudes to migrants since the country’s settlement just over 200 years ago; I will go on to deal with the efforts of the country’s early writers to develop a distinctive Australian literature and the effects of this on migrant writing; I will refer to the recent more visible emergence of migrant writers; and I will elaborate a little on the theme of the migrant being in a sense an exile in Australia, a theme which I will illustrate by quoting from my own writing.