Keywords: Young Adult Fiction
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 04 January 2024
Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 28 July 2023
How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Peter Craven
- 14 June 2023
Ian McEwan's Lessons marked a sharp twist in a five-decade literary career, and presents an opportunity to reflect on his expansive body of work. The one-time literary rogue and Booker laureate now stands as the unquestioned doyen of modern English fiction, his audacious work perpetually navigating undercurrents of unease.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins
- 05 September 2022
2 Comments
Philosopher George Santayana sagely pronounced, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Yet that repetition is part of being human. We are creatures of habit and don’t necessarily notice or learn from our thoughts and deeds. Nor do we necessarily want to be made aware of that lack of learning.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 28 February 2022
7 Comments
For anybody surprised about those ‘marquee tent’ moments, as an ABC journalist crudely termed them, the Olympics is as much about torment as it is about achievement. The torment is very much reserved for the athlete, the achievement reserved for officialdom and media and spectator consumption.
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RELIGION
- Najma Sambul
- 26 November 2020
8 Comments
Aden was a first and a trailblazer for a group of people who before her were long ignored in the mainstream fashion industry. She has many regrets and admits she made mistakes, but for a fresh-faced teenager who was given this huge responsibility, she says, she did good. I say different, she did bloody brilliant.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Jennifer Zeven
- 22 May 2020
13 Comments
I spent the first six or seven years of my life spellbound by my mum’s stories of her childhood in Far North Queensland. Herstory came from warm, outback and subtropical places. She and her sisters wrote on slates at school, played in custard apple trees, kept their own bees.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Neve Mahoney
- 21 March 2019
11 Comments
Rowling still wants it both ways — the kudos for representation that she never explicitly included, with the benefit of no actual risk. Back then, having an openly gay character would have been taking a stand. But now, in 2019, a straight author winking at queerness is just not good enough.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Neve Mahoney
- 30 January 2018
6 Comments
In literature, young adult fiction and romance are frequently looked down upon. It's no coincidence that such books iare often written by and for women and girls. Even women's literary fiction can't escape the blowback of 'Goldfinching', whereby a previously acclaimed book that has become popular with women is taken down a peg.
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AUSTRALIA
- Neve Mahoney
- 25 November 2016
9 Comments
In a utopian world, free of racism and bigotry, there would be no problem with writers having complete artistic freedom. It becomes a problem when, for example, a white author takes the experiences of a Ugandan woman and writes a novel that becomes an acclaimed bestseller, while writers of colour struggle to get published and have their own stories told. This is white privilege at its finest. Morally, should the privileged be able to profit from the experiences and oppression of another culture?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Anthony Morris
- 18 September 2014
In The Maze Runner, a group of teenage boys find themselves dumped in the middle of a giant maze. Lacking the freedom to do what they like, faced with rules and laws that seem arbitrary while struggling with deep changes on a physical level, teenagers’ personal problems have proven to be ripe material for dystopian novels and films.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 12 June 2014
1 Comment
Augustus and Hazel meet in a support group for cancer sufferers. During the course of their ensuing romance they both prove to be pragmatic about their own mortality. They share frank discussions about God and the afterlife, and gain little comfort from them. It's an inherently sad story, but to parallel the individual horror of their cancer with the experiences of Anne Frank during the Holocaust is a step to far.
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