Writing Belonging at the Millennium

Emily Potter is an associate professor in writing and literature in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University.

• IntroductionChapter One: Anxious BelongingChapter Two: Literary Expectations: Grounding BelongingChapter Three: Getting Lost with Nikki GemmellChapter Four: Redeeming EnvironmentsChapter Five: Desiccated and Infective: Writing in Thea Astley’s DrylandsChapter Six: The Past is All Around: Chloe Hooper’s A Child’s Book of True CrimeChapter Seven: Toxic Imaginaries: Undoing Origins and EndingsAfterword

'To read Potter’s book is—if you have not already—to begin re-cognising an understanding of the way literary texts by non-Indigenous writers absorb, respond to, repeat and/or critically illuminate social discourses that co-construct historical moments. [...] The challenge is: how, during a time of intensifying ecological disaster, are we to avoid reactivating narratives that re-install and re-naturalise non-Indigenous presence while reaffirming Indigenous dispossession? Writing Belonging at the Millennium will not answer this question for you. But it will provide you with a map of some of what’s been done, and to what effect. I urge you to read this book. It’s clear. It’s urgent. Potter’s work is forensic and generous. There are no arrogant or generalist pronouncements here, no striding across the colonial stage.'