Colouring the Black and White Australian Past in Sally Morgan's "My Place".

Abstract

Since its publication in 1987, the impact of Sally Morgan’s My Place has been undeniable. It has been read by a wide audience in Australia and other countries in the world and it has been the source of literary criticism and controversy. It is presented as an autobiographical novel which focuses on the narrator’s quest for her Aboriginal roots in the dominant white patriarchal Australian society. In this paper I intend to demonstrate how Sally Morgan’s My Place becomes a crucial “counter-memory” of the Australian past which recovers those long silenced non-white voices, while denouncing the injustices and cruelty inflicted upon Aborigines. In so doing, Morgan not only attempts to bring to the fore that repressed past but also to create of a new space of reconciliation in hybridity.