Judith Wright and Emily Carr: Gendered Colonial Modernity

Description

Knitting together two fascinating but entirely distinct lives, this ingeniously structured braided biography tells the story of the lives and work of two women, each a cultural icon in her own country yet lesser known in the other's. Australian poet Judith Wright and Canadian painter Emily Carr broke new ground for female artists in the British colonies and influenced the political and social debates about environment and indigenous rights that have shaped Australia and Canada in the 21st century. In telling their story/ies, this book charts the battle for recognition of their modernist art and vision, pointing out significant moments of similarity in their lives and work. Although separated by thousands of miles, their experience of colonial modernity was startlingly analogous, as white settler women bent on forging artistic careers in a male-dominated world and sphere rigged against them. Through all this, though, their cultural importance endures; two remarkable women whose poetry and painting still speak to us today of their passionate belief in the transformative power of art.

Anne Collett is Associate Professor of English Literatures at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She has published widely on postcolonial poetry with particular focus on women's writing from Australia, Canada and the Caribbean across the 19th to 21st centuries. Most recently, Collett has published in the area of environmental humanities. She edited Kunapipi: journal of postcolonial writing & culture from 1999-2012 (see https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/). Dorothy Jones is a Senior Honorary Fellow of English Literatures at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She studied at the universities of Otago in New Zealand, Adelaide in Australia, and Oxford in the UK, and has published widely in the area of postcolonial literature with special emphasis on women writers.

This is a fascinating book about two colonial modernist women - an artist/author and a poet - both of whom are long overdue fresh critical assessment. Collett and Jones present a compelling narrative of the way in which the creative endeavours of these two pioneering women influenced the path of artistic modernism in the colonies. The volume is steeped in meticulous scholarship yet written with a deceptively light touch which makes it a pleasure to read. -- Gerri Kimber, Visiting Professor, University of Northampton, UK.