- Title
- Flourishing in country: An examination of well-being in Australian YA fiction
- Creator
- Britten, Adrielle; Collins-Gearing, Brooke
- Relation
- Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures Vol. 12, Issue 2, p. 15-39
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/JEU.2020.0018
- Publisher
- University of Winnipeg, Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Culture
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- This article is the result of a collaboration between two academics—one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous—to investigate the representation of Indigeneity in two contemporary YA novels. Melissa Lucashenko's killing Darcy is narrated by multiple Indigenous and non-Indigenous characters, whereas Clare Atkins's Nona and Me is told from the perspective of a white character and explores her relationship with an Indigenous community. Cultural identity forms a significant part of well-being, and this article investigates versions of sufficient well-being. It explores how the novels represent flourishing subjects—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—in the context of Australia as it struggles to come to terms with its colonial past and demonstrates how cognitive mapping replaces damaging colonial assumptions about Indigenous Peoples with a model of overcoming.
- Subject
- anti-colonialism; Indigenous Australians; schemas and scripts; well-being; YA fiction
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1438095
- Identifier
- uon:40538
- Identifier
- ISSN:1920-2601
- Language
- eng
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