A new genre of Chick-Lit

A New Genre of Chick-Lit 

Herald Review  November 16, 2014

Dr Anita Heiss was the first to introduce Koori chick- lit in Australia. She will be visiting next month to talk about her work. 

LISA ANN MONTEIRO 

Australian Aboriginal author and activist Dr Anita Heiss engineers social change through her writing.She writes to bring communities together.

The indigenous population in Australia hardly found representation in mainstream literature. Heiss, a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales decided this needed to change. It was time to begin putting her people on the Australian identity radar.

Chick lit - often dismissed by literary critics- she finds, is the most accessible literary style that allows her to engage with an audience that is not otherwise engaging with indigenous Australians.

She doesn’t believe history can only be learnt from non- fiction books and text books.

The protagonists in her books are young indigenous urban women who juggle romance and careers. Her books Not Meeting Mr Right, Avoiding Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming have all the elements of a chick lit book but with something more- an Aboriginal’s perspective.

Heiss writes about relationships that connect women and also touches on issues and politics that are important to her. Her novels discuss black deaths in police custody the stolen generations, the Northern Territory Emergency Response intervention, indigenous intellectual property and copyright, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture around the country and issues of identity.

They also have references to indigenous artists, film makers and writers. In Manhattan Dreaming, Lauren a Wiradjuri woman is a curator at the National Aboriginal Gallery ( fictitious) in Canberra.

She is passionate about indigenous art and smitten with Adam, the star forward for the Canberra Cockatoos. He is quite the player and when she applies for her dream job at the Smithsonian, her dream comes true. She is then torn between Man and Manhattan and has to make a decision.

Heiss says she uses chick lit as a tool to reach women who may never have met, worked with or thought about.

“ We talk a lot about what makes us different in Australia - to the point of instilling a fear of difference in each other.

I like to talk about what makes us the same as human beings – particularly the emotions we experience; love, fear of rejection, sympathy, empathy and so on.

If we consider what makes us the same in terms of being women, then it's much easier to talk about what makes us different and then we can start to really get to know each other, to engage on a meaningful level and even find a sense of peace in an otherwise chaotic world,” she told Herald Review.

Heiss was the first Aboriginal student to graduate with a PhD in Communications and Media from the University of Western Sydney. She is also among the first women of colour to write into commercial women’s fiction in the country.

Heiss’ mother was born on Erambie Mission Cowra in Wiradjuri country while her father was Austrian from Salzburg. She says her grandmother was among the stolen generations of indigenous Australians taken away from their families and placed with a foster family, part of a government policy to try to assimilate Aboriginal children into white families. She also wrote Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney, 1937, a fictional diary of a young aboriginal girl from the stolen generation.

In 2009 Heiss along with eight other Aboriginal people took columnist and political commentator Andrew Bolt to court for two articles ‘ It’s so hip to be black’ and ‘ White fellas in the black’ published in the Herald and Weekly Times. His column implied that lightskinned people identified as Aboriginal only for personal gain. His articles Heiss said discredited her professionally and insulted and humiliated many others.

Bolt mentioned Heiss made a decision to be Aboriginal…’ which ‘ was lucky, given how its helped her career’ also stating that she won jobs reserved for Aborigines. In 2011 the Federal Court ruled that Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act. Bolt outside the court described the verdict as ‘ a terrible day for free speech in this country’. At the time Heiss was penning the book ‘ Am I Black enough for you?’ She was 43 and people said she was too young to write a memoir. She felt the story of her identity wasn’t something that was going to change as she got older. The need for it to be told had proved more necessary in recent years.

The book just like her novels is a statement that “regardless of where we live we are strong in our identity, and it is one of the few things that can never be taken from us- unlike governments taking away our children, our rights, land and most recently the rights to manage our own incomes in the Northern Territory.” “ Through my book I wanted to demonstrate that we as Aboriginal people have our own forms of self- identification and self- representation. My book offers alternate realities of being Aboriginal today- in all it’s positive, successful, loving glory,” Heiss says.

Heiss along with Cathy Craigie who has worked extensively in Aboriginal arts and media, Ellen van Neerven writer and editor, Dr Jared Thomas, an arts development officer and Nicole Watson, an author and former lawyer and columnist, all from Australia will be participating in the Goa Arts and Literary Festival next month. Review Bureau 

http://epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=9287&boxid=184833171&uid=&dat=11/16/2014