Explore 10 books by First Nations Australian writers
It should come as no surprise that reading is one of our favourite ways to explore new worlds, experience life in someone else’s shoes and expand our knowledge of history. The library has millions of books, videos and journals in our collection – including hundreds of books by and about First Nations peoples in Australia.
While nonfiction and essays provide valuable historical context and information, novels offer writers a chance to imagine alternative histories and tell stories – both playful and painful – through fiction. Both forms are essential reading for non-Indigenous Australians, and we have recommendations across multiple genres.
Here are 10 books by First Nations Australian writers to get you started.
Summaries taken from publisher websites.
Fiction
1. Praiseworthy
by Alexis Wright
Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.
2. Too much lip
by Melissa Lucaschenko
Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things – her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Old family wounds open as the Salters fight to stop the development of their beloved river. And the unexpected arrival on the scene of a good-looking dugai fella intent on loving her up only adds more trouble – but then trouble is Kerry’s middle name. Gritty and darkly hilarious, Too Much Lip offers redemption and forgiveness where none seems possible.
3. Taboo
by Kim Scott
One may as well begin, ‘Once upon a time…’ Except this is no fairytale.
Kim Scott’s powerfully charged, award-winning novel thrusts a young woman centre-stage in a vicious drama that has been playing in her family for generations – an act of extraordinary violence, and an act of extraordinary reconciliation, separated by two hundred years.
4. Heat and light
by Ellen van Neerven
In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven leads readers on a journey that is highly imaginative and still achingly real. Over three parts, van Neerven takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging. Heat and Light presents an intriguing collection that heralded the arrival of a major new talent in Australian writing.
5. My spare heart
by Jared Thomas
Phoebe’s non-Indigenous mother, a busy event manager, and her father, an Aboriginal man and uni lecturer, have split up and she’s moved to sleepy old Willunga with him and his new health-obsessed girlfriend. It’s only a few kilometres from Phoebe’s friends and the city, but it feels like another world. Her new school is full of hippies, but some of the kids are cool and the local basketball team is tight, and before long Phoebe’s fitting in. But as her mum becomes increasingly unreliable, Phoebe’s grades suffer, her place on the basketball team is under threat and her worries spiral out of control. Phoebe can’t tell her friends and if she tells her dad he’ll get angry, but pretending everything is fine is breaking her heart. How can she help her mum without tearing her family apart?
Nonfiction
6. Finding Eliza: power and colonial storytelling
by Larissa Behrendt
Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories.
Exploring works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, Behrendt looks at the stereotypes embedded in these accounts, including the assumption of cannibalism and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Finding Eliza shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – and how, in Australia, this has contributed to a complex racial divide.
7. Am I black enough for you?
by Anita Heiss
What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate advocate for Aboriginal literacy, rights and representation, was born a member of the Wiradyuri nation of central New South Wales but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school.
In this heartfelt and revealing memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, with large doses of humour, Anita Heiss gives a firsthand account of her experiences as a woman with a Wiradyuri mother and Austrian father. Anita explains the development of her activist consciousness, how she strives to be happy and healthy, and the work she undertakes every day to ensure the world she leaves behind will be more equitable and understanding than it is today.
8. We come with this place
by Debra Dank
We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people.
9. Growing up Aboriginal in Australia
by Anita Heiss
What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question.
Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart – sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.
10. After the rain: 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial
editors: Tony Albert and Sally Brand
Colouring the Rainbow uncovers the often hidden world of Queer and Trans Blak Australia and tells it like it is. Twenty-two First Nations people reveal their inner reflections and outlooks on family and culture, identity and respect, homophobia, transphobia, racism and decolonisation, activism, art, performance and more, through life stories and essays. The contributors to this ground-breaking book not only record the continuing relevance of traditional culture and practices, they also explain the emergence of homonormativity within the context of contemporary settler colonialism.
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