Writing never arrives naked

From the Publisher: This enthralling new history of Aboriginal writing challenges conventional beliefs about how and when Indigenous authorship began. Within a short time of settlement, written texts were being exchanged as curiosities, and integrated into Indigenous graphic traditions and social life. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal people used writing in community newspapers, in letters to colonial governors, in individualized and subversive translations of the Bible, and in political documents such as the Coranderrk petitions for Aboriginal rights. This writing involved a complex interplay of oral and literate traditions, which was attuned both to the strictures of traditional culture and the socio-political environment of the time. Writing Never Arrives Naked deals with real stories of how Indigenous Australians used writing and reading to negotiate a changing world, to challenge their oppressors, and to preserve country and kin. The book extends and deepens knowledge of Indigenous cultural and political history, while casting new light on present-day Indigenous literature and literacies.