This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
B. Wongar | |
---|---|
Born | Sreten Božić 1932 (age 91–92) |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | Serbia, Australia |
B. Wongar (born 1932 as Sreten Božić [1] ) is a Serbian-Australian writer. [2] For most of his literary career, the concern of his writing has been, almost exclusively, the condition of Aboriginal people in Australia. [3] His 1978 short story collection, The Track to Bralgu, was released to critical acclaim by the foreign press, who were led to believe by publisher Little Brown that Wongar was of Aboriginal ethnicity. [4] The revelation that Wongar was a Serbian immigrant, as well as inconsistencies in his life story, have led to controversy and allegations of literary hoax and cultural appropriation. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Božić grew up in the village of Gornja Trešnjevica, near Aranđelovac, Serbia, then Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the mid-1950s, he started his writing career by writing poetry which he published in the Mlada kultura and the Novi vesnik literary journals. He was a member of the "Đuro Salaj" workers-writers group in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. At the same time he worked as a journalist in Serbia. Yugoslav communists found his writing politically incorrect and banned him from journalism for life.[ citation needed ] In 1958 he moved to Paris, France, where he lived in a Red Cross refugee camp. There he met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who helped him to publish his literary works in Les Temps Modernes. [10]
Božić arrived in Australia in 1960. In his search for a job (as a construction worker or miner), he bought a camel in order to cross the Tanami Desert. He got lost and was close to death when he was saved by a tribal man. Božić lived with tribal Aboriginal people for ten years.[ citation needed ] The name B(anumbir) Wongar, which means morning star and messenger from the spirit world, was said to be given to him by his tribal wife Dumala and her relatives. However, he later stated in an interview that "B." is in recognition of his Serbian name. [11]
From Dumala he learned about Aboriginal poetry and their traditional way of life in the bush. This way he was introduced to the Aboriginal culture that had been suppressed and delegitimized by British colonial power for centuries. His book The Track to Bralgu is a collection of stories based on traditional Aboriginal stories belonging to the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, NT, Australia. The book was translated into French as Le Chemin du Bralgu, from the original manuscript and published in Les Temps Modernes (1977), a magazine which was edited by Sartre and de Beauvoir. When the book appeared in the English edition a year later, it heralded a new genre of creative writing[ citation needed ] and brought international fame to the author. [12] In Australia, however, Wongar was criticised for his portrayal of Aboriginal people, and there was a campaign to discredit his work as fake.[ citation needed ]
He was not allowed to stay any longer in the Northern part of Australia and had to move to Melbourne. His wife Dumala and the children were to follow but they died from drinking water from a poisoned well, as claimed later in Dingoes Den, his autobiography (at the end of Chapter 12).
While he was in the Northern part of Australia, Wongar worked on his Totem and Ore photographic collection, also known under the title Boomerang and Atom. The collection contained several thousand black-and-white photographs portraying the impact of uranium mining and the British nuclear testing on tribal Aborigines. In 1974, Wongar was asked to send some of the Totem and Ore photographs for an exhibition in the Parliament House Library in Canberra. The exhibition was shut down two days after the official opening. [13]
Wongar settled on his bush property Dingo Den in Gippsland, south of Melbourne where, helped by photographic images from his Totem and Ore collection, he wrote his "Nuclear Trilogy", comprising the novels, Walg, Karan, and Gabo Djara. [14] The trilogy was first published in Germany, translated from the original manuscript by Annemarie and Heinrich Böll. The English language edition first appeared in 1988. It was launched at the Aboriginal Research Centre, Monash University, where Wongar at the time was serving as writer-in-residence. While he was at work, police raided Wongar's home at Dingo Den and took some of his work, including the sole copy of the manuscript of his new novel Raki.[ citation needed ] In 1990, the Australian author Thomas Shapcott spoke about the case at the opening of the Adelaide Arts Festival. He circulated a petition asking the state authorities to see that the confiscated manuscript Raki be returned to Wongar. About 200 writers at the festival signed the petition. [15] It took Wongar about 5 years to write Raki again. [16] This was followed by his new book Didjeridu Charmer, which will complete his nuclear series, thus making the series a quintet. [17]
For not knowing any English when he arrived to Australia, when he begin writing in the early 1970s, his written English followed no standards. [11] [ vague ]
Wongar's books have been translated into 13 languages with over one million copies sold (as of 2006).[ citation needed ] His books are the most widely known literary representation of Australian Aboriginal culture. [2]
Reception of Wongar's work has oscillated between praise, sceptical inquiry and moral condemnation. Within Australia there is a widespread obsession with Wongar's biographical credentials to the extent that it eclipses any review of the fictional texts as part of Australian writing.[ citation needed ] There are a variety of Wongar's moral indictments ranging from being a white who usurped Aboriginal culture to the claim saying that all artists are charlatans, who con the public. [18] Susan Hosking[ who? ] claimed that Wongar did not speak as an Aboriginal person but pretended to be one. Aboriginal writers were finding their own voice and, she claims, there was a strong resistance against such a European writer, because it was seen as a cultural imperialism. Australian critic Maggie Nolan responded that a reductive demand for an authentic Aboriginality functions as cultural imperialism.[ vague ] Far from being labelled as a cultural imperialist, Wongar shall be congratulated for subtly manipulating expectations of authenticity in his work.[ vague ] Wongar questions the systematic closure of Aboriginality as an imperial construct, its pretensions to its authenticity, autonomy, and purity. [19] [ vague ]
Wongar has received criticism to the point of being labelled a fake, literary hoax and accused of cultural appropriation. [5] [6] [7] Australian novelist and playwright Thomas Keneally has said, "Time might prove him to be a highly significant Australian writer, but his deception has soured his reception in the English-speaking world." [4] Much of this centres around his identify, as there are many discrepancies regarding the identify of Wongar in the forewords of his books. In his book, The Track to Bralgu, the foreword states that Wongar is part Aboriginal, while in his book The Sinners, the foreword states that Wongar is in fact a mixed race American Vietnam veteran. [9]
Comparing the German translation of the Walg by Annemarie Böll (Der Schoß [20] ) to its English version published by Brazier in 1990, T. Caiter [21] wrote that the English edition was censored. The English edition was substantially and carefully purged of colonialist pornography and pseudo-Aboriginal mythology. In his autobiography, Dingoes Den, Wongar wrote that the German translation remains the only complete text and unabridged version.
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel Schindler's Ark, the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, which won the Booker Prize in 1982. The book would later be adapted into Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, and Indigenous languages. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both geographically and historically, representing Canada's diversity in culture and region.
The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his colleague Baldwin Spencer and thereafter popularised by A. P. Elkin, who, however, later revised his views.
A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved around the subject. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Ana Castillo is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is most known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist and for her intervention in Chicana feminism known as Xicanisma.
Archie Weller is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and screen plays.
Rosie Scott was a novelist, poet, playwright, short-story writer, non-fiction writer, editor and lecturer, with dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship.
The Secret River is a 2005 historical novel by Kate Grenville about an early 19th-century Englishman transported to Australia for theft. The story explores what might have happened when Europeans colonised land already inhabited by Aboriginal people. The book has been compared to Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and to Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang for its style and historical theme.
Totem and Ore is a collection of 5 000 photographs taken by B Wongar in the 1960s and early 1970s. The photographs were taken in northern and central Australia. The collection is about tragedy of Australian Aborigines - the people who lived through dual tragedy, the mining of uranium and the subsequent British nuclear testing in that area. To deflect any criticism of the testing Australian government enacted Australian Atomic Energy Act forbidding publishing any kind of information about it. The penalty for violating the Act was imprisonment up to 20 years. The uranium mining and nuclear testing destroyed Australian Aborigines natural habitat and decimated their population in northern and central Australia.
Alan Gould is a contemporary Australian novelist, essayist and poet.
Anita Marianne Heiss is an Aboriginal Australian author, poet, cultural activist and social commentator. She is an advocate for Indigenous Australian literature and literacy, through her writing for adults and children and her membership of boards and committees.
Bring Larks and Heroes is a 1967 novel by Australian author Thomas Keneally which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1967.
Croatian literature refers to literary works attributed to the medieval and modern culture of the Croats, Croatia, and Croatian. Besides the modern language whose shape and orthography was standardized in the late 19th century, it also covers the oldest works produced within the modern borders of Croatia, written in Church Slavonic and Medieval Latin, as well as vernacular works written in Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects.
Eugene B. Redmond is an American poet, and academic. His poetry is closely connected to the Black Arts Movement and the city of East St. Louis, Illinois.
Tony Birch is an Aboriginal Australian author, academic and activist. He regularly appears on ABC local radio and Radio National shows and at writers’ festivals. He was head of the honours programme for creative writing at the University of Melbourne before becoming the first recipient of the Dr Bruce McGuinness Indigenous Research Fellowship at Victoria University in Melbourne in June 2015.
Ato Quayson is a Ghanaian literary critic and Professor of English at Stanford University where he acts as the current chair of the department. He is also the chair of the newly established Department of African and African American Studies. He was formerly a Professor of English at New York University (NYU), and before that was University Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. His writings on African literature, postcolonial studies, disability studies, urban studies and in literary theory have been widely published. He is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) and the Royal Society of Canada (2013), and in 2019 was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was Chief Examiner in English of the International Baccalaureate (2005–07), and has been a member of the Diaspora and Migrations Project Committee of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK, and the European Research Council award grants panel on culture and cultural production (2011–2017). He is a former President of the African Studies Association.
Ali Cobby Eckermann is an Australian poet of Aboriginal Australian ancestry. She is a Yankunytjatjara woman born on Kaurna land in South Australia.
Kerry Reed-Gilbert was an Australian poet, author, collector, editor, educator, a champion of Indigenous writers and an Aboriginal rights activist. She was a Wiradjuri woman.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). abc.net.au