The Murri Book Club & the politics of reading for Indigenous Australians

For members of the Murri Book Club, books and reading are linked to the ongoing history of assimilation that, even now, presumes a divide between Indigenous oral story-telling and non-Indigenous literacy.
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Although the 2018 Closing the Gap report on Indigenous disadvantage highlighted the importance of literacy for Indigenous Australians, progress remains slow. But, while reading is widely considered an unmitigated good and a marker of prestige, it is not a simple issue for some Indigenous Australians.

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Maggie Nolan
About the Author
Maggie Nolan is a Senior lecturer in Humanities, Australian Catholic University. Her current research explores cultures of reading, in particular, the ways people read in book clubs. She is very interested in book clubs as a civic space. Nolan has also done research on literary hoaxes and on representations of race and ethnicity in Australian cultural production.