Hi folks,

Time for another Aussies Rule post!

One of the things that annoys me about Anglo Australians is that a large number of them seem to have this tacitly ingrained understanding that only white people are born in this country. If you are a person of colour (or have a non-Anglo name) you must have been born overseas. (Unless you are Aboriginal of course, in which case cue a whole different swathe of white misunderstandings and prejudices.) On reflection, I should probably have made this prompt about non Anglo authors rather than authors of colour. Hind sight is awesome!

If you google search “Australian authors” your result will give you a line of mostly white faces, with some Aboriginal representation (well known award winners) and the odd person such as Michelle de Krester who took out the Miles Franklin this year. Here are some more wonderful authors to add to your lists:

• Alice Pung

• Gabrielle Wang

• Benjamin Law

• Michelle Law

• Maxine Beneba Clarke

• Omar Sakr

• Randa Abdel- Fattah

• Omar Musa
• Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Christos Tsiolkas and Peter Polites should also be on this list if I’m looking at it from a non-Anglo point of view.

Benjamin Law and Maxine Beneba Clark are particular favourites of mine (and are worth a follow on twitter) and I was pretty happy when I saw this post from Benjamin Law on twitter a couple of weeks ago.

I wish them every success!

Who have I missed? Let me know your favourite Aussie author of colour or non-Anglo author who isn’t on this list.

While I was researching this list I found this really interesting article about diversity in Australian publishing. (Spoiler alert – it’s terrible). I was talking to a member of my team at work about resistance reading, and she was a little shocked that something as passive as reading could be thought of as an act of resistance. I would again encourage you to your local book stores and libraries and ask for diverse books if they do not stock them. We need diverse stories and diverse representation

Read your Resistance, people!

Cheers,

[Note: I’ve posted previously about Aussies of colour who have come here as immigrants or refugees – I just want to note that I don’t think these people are any less Aussie than those of us who are born here.]