ALEXIS WRIGHT: ABORIGINAL ART, CULTURAL HERITAGE, RECONCILIATION, WRITING AND HISTORY



Samah Tawhid Ahmed, MA., Part-time Instructor of English as a Foreign Language, Employed at AMIDEAST's partner in Beni-Suef, The Scientific Center for Consultation and Development (SCCD)



Abstract

Aboriginal literature has often been seen as mostly negative “grievance literature", monotonously focused on complaints about white oppression, prejudice, cruelty, etc. The present paper shows how an intercultural dialogue has been made possible between colonized and colonizer, without allowing the abuses of the colonial era to fade into oblivion. In the face of internal and external forms of colonization, the Aborigines developed an “art of resistance" to which white Australia has in turn responded.

Alexis Wright highlights in her novel Carpentaria (2006) the uniquely Aboriginal experience of living. She uses stylistic and narratological means to associate her readers with the horror of colonization while simultaneously distancing them from it, and she shows how the colonized played a vital role in shaping how the white settlers encountered and experienced what was for them virgin territory. The author advocates reconciliation.