Trauma, Australia and Gail Joness Fiction (1996-2007)

Australias official Reconciliation project confronted Australians with the continuous violent dispossession suffered by the countrys Indigenous peoples and the pressing need to offer a public apology to them. While trauma became a tool whereby to create paths of empathy and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, it was also a manipulative strategy to deny the countrys shameful history. This book examines Gail Joness literary contribution to such debates. It examines Gail Joness questioning of Australias victimology narratives, and offers an insightful discussion of the transmedia, transnational and multidirectional approach to trauma in the reconciliation-related novels she published during John Howards vexed Liberal Government (1996-2007).