Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:10:25.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - The Strength of Us as Women

A Poetics of Relationality and Reckoning

from Part IV - Embodied Poetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

Ann Vickery
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
Get access

Summary

Taking Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s anthology The Strength of Us as Women: Black Women Speak (2000) as touchstone, the chapter undertakes a conversation between two Aboriginal women poets from Narungga and Wiradjuri standpoints about the transformative power of Indigenous poetry and its significant contribution to literature in the world. Offering an alternative to the essay, the authors discuss embodied engagements with the colonial archive and the theme of relationality that informs so much of Aboriginal writing. The chapter considers the potential of poetry to be both an affective tool and literary intervention. It outlines the methods of Gathering and Archival-Poetic praxis as ways to explore the counter-narrative potential of poetry. In considering the role of memory work and memory-making, the authors also discuss blood memory and body memory.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Chadwick. Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts. Duke University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria and Keating, AnaLouise, eds. This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Araluen, Evelyn. “Resisting the Institution.” Overland no.227, 2017. https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-227/feature-evelyn-araluen/.Google Scholar
Bellear, Lisa. “Healing through Poetry.” The Strength of Us as Women, edited by Reed-Gilbert, Kerry. Ginninderra Press, 2000, pp. 7071.Google Scholar
Birch, Tony. “Promise Not to Tell: Interrogating Colonialism’s Worst (or Best) Kept Secrets.” First Person: International Digital Storytelling Conference, ACMI, 4 February 2006. www.acmi.net.au/global/media/first_person_birch.pdf.Google Scholar
Brewster, Anne. Giving This Country a Memory: Contemporary Aboriginal Voices of Australia. Cambria Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Bunda, Tracey. “The Sovereign Aboriginal Woman.” Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, edited by Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Routledge, 2020, pp. 7585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Emilie. “Indigenous Spectrality and the Politics of Postcolonial Ghost Stories.” Cultural Geographies vol.15 no.3, 2008, pp. 383–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cariou, Warren. “Haunted Prairie: Aboriginal ‘Ghosts’ and the Spectres of Settlement.” University of Toronto Quarterly vol.75 no.2, 2006, pp. 727–34.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr. “Relativity, Relatedness, and Reality.” Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader, edited by Deloria, Barbara, Foehner, Kristen, and Scinta, Sam. Fulcrum Publishing, 1999, pp. 3239.Google Scholar
DeShazer, Mary. A Poetics of Resistance: Women Writing in El Salvador, South Africa, and the United States. University of Michigan Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckermann, Ali Cobby and Fogarty, Lionel, eds. “A Handful of Sand: Words to the Frontline.” Southerly vol.71 no.2, 2011, pp. 811.Google Scholar
Galeano, Eduardo. “In Defense of the Word.” Days and Nights of Love and War. Trans. Ortiz, B.. Pluto Press, 1983, pp. 169–78.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and Sociological Imagination. 2nd ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Gough, Julie. “Transforming Histories: The Visual Disclosure of Contentious Pasts.” Diss., University of Tasmania, 2001. http://eprints.utas.edu.au/2644/.Google Scholar
The Artist as Detective in the Museum Archive: A Creative Response to Repatriation and Its Historic Context.” The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, edited by Fforde, Cressida, McKeown, C. Timothy, and Keeler, Honor. Routledge, 2020, pp. 835–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Joyce. Making Space for Indigenous Feminism. Fernwood Publishing, 2007.Google Scholar
Harkin, Natalie. “The Poetics of (Re)Mapping Archives: Memory in the Blood.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature vol.14 no.3, 2014. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/9909/9798.2014.Google Scholar
Harkin, Natalie. Archival-Poetics. Vagabond Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Harkin, Natalie. “Weaving the Colonial Archive: A Basket to Lighten the Load.” Journal of Australian Studies vol.44 no.2, 2020, pp. 154–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heiss, Anita. Dhuuluu-Yala To Talk Straight: Publishing Indigenous Literature. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Heiss, Anita. “Black Poetics.” Meanjin vol.65 no.1, 2006, pp. 180–91.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. Henry Holt & Co., 1995.Google Scholar
Justice, Daniel Heath. “Global Native Literary Studies Panelist Daniel Justice Presents Words in the World: Literatures, Oratures, and New Meeting Grounds Symposium.” University of Hawaii, 19 July 2013. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/29708.Google Scholar
Justice, Daniel Heath. Why Indigenous Literature Matters. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Louis Owens: Literary Reflections on His Life and Work. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Leane, Jeanine. Gawimarra: Gathering. University of Queensland Press, 2024.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Lucashenko, Melissa. “Writing as a Sovereign Act.” Meanjin Quarterly (Summer 2018). http://meanjin.com.au/essays/writing-as-a-sovereign-act/.Google Scholar
Momaday, Scott. House Made of Dawn. Harper & Row, 1968.Google Scholar
Moraga, Cherrie and Anzaldúa, Gloria E., eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Colour. 4th ed. State University of New York, 2015.Google Scholar
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Talkin’ Up to the White Woman. University of Queensland Press, 2000, p. 16.Google Scholar
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “Relationality: A Key Presupposition of an Indigenous Social Research Paradigm.” Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, edited by O’Brien, J. M. and Andersen, C.. Routledge, 2017, pp. 6977.Google Scholar
Owens, Louis. Mixedblood Messages, Literature, Film, Family, Place. University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Perreault, Jeanne. “Memory Alive: An Inquiry into the Uses of Memory by Marilyn Dumont, Jeanette Armstrong, Louise Halfe and Joy Harjo.” Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture, edited by Suzack, Cheryl, Huhndorf, Shari M., Perreault, Jeanne, and Barman, Jean. UBC, 2010, pp. 199217.Google Scholar
Reed-Gilbert, Kerry. The Strength of Us as Women: Black Women Speak. Ginninderra, 2000.Google Scholar
Scott, Kim. Benang: From the Heart. Fremantle Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Scott, Kim. “Australia’s Continuing Neurosis: Identity, Race and History.” The Alfred Deakin Lectures, 14 May 2001. https://archive.is/CzH2t.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. “Indigenous Resurgence and Co-resistance.” Critical Ethnic Studies vol.2 no.2, 2016, pp. 1934.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake and Brand, Dionne. “Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom.” Literary Review of Canada, 2018. https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2018/06/temporary-spaces-of-joy-and-freedom/.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann. “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies.” Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, edited by Stoler, Ann. Duke University Press, 2006, pp. 2367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suzack, Cheryl, Huhndorf, Shari, Perreault, Jeanne, and Barman, Jean, eds. Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politic, Activism, Culture. University of British Columbia, 2010.Google Scholar
Van Wagenen, Aimee. “An Epistemology of Haunting: A Review Essay.” Critical Sociology vol.30 no.2, 2004, pp. 287–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Alexis. “Politics of Writing.” Southerly vol.62 no.2, 2002, pp. 1920.Google Scholar
Wright, Alexis. “What Happens When You Tell Somebody Else’s Story?Meanjin vol.75 no.4, 2016, pp. 5876.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×