Inconvenient Women Australian radical writers 1900–1970

by Kent, Jacqueline

• ISBN13: 9781742237503
• ISBN10: 1742237509
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781761178245
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-05-01
• Publisher: NewSouth
• More Book Details

Summary

Long before Germaine Greer and Anne Summers, Australia’ s women writers were pouring their intense political beliefs into their work. Mary Gilmore was a trailblazing feminist journalist and labour movement organiser; Katharine Susannah Prichard wrote about the emotional conflicts inherent in European and Indigenous relationships and was a co-founder and lifelong member of the Communist Party; Eleanor Dark explored Australian colonisation and the First Nations peoples it displaced; Dymphna Cusack advocated for social reform and had strong links to labour politics; Ruth Park’ s The Harp in the South inspired the NSW government’ s slum clearance programs; Dorothy Hewett’ s novel Bobbin Up was one of the few western works translated into Russian during the Soviet era, and prominent First Nations poet, activist and educator Oodgeroo Noonuccal campaigned for Indigenous rights, including successful constitutional reform. In Inconvenient Women, acclaimed biographer Jacqueline Kent traces the social and political issues that inspired – and often hampered – these determined women and their desire to change the world.

Author Biography

Jacqueline Kent is a Sydney-based writer of non-fiction and biography, fiction, general articles and literary journalism. Her working background includes radio interviewing, print journalism, radio and TV scriptwriting, editing books, ghostwriting, teaching editing and creative writing, and arts administration. She is the author of the bestselling The Making of Julia Gillard and her most recent book is Vida on women’ s rights campaigner Vida Goldstein.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1: A questionable paradise 1900-1930 Chapter 1: Children of the colony Chapter 2: Goodbye Clancy Chapter 3: ‘ To words I fall at last’ Chapter 4: ‘ The order is changing’ Chapter 5: ‘ Disgusting indecent communistic’ Chapter 6: Pundits and practical poets Chapter 7: The well in the shadow Part 2: The wages of fear 1930-1939 Chapter 8: Now comrades come rally Chapter 9: The best country in the world Chapter 10: In the belly of the beast Chapter 11: Small fish or whale? The saga of Egon Kisch Chapter 12: Viva Españ a! Chapter 13: Some questions of literary merit Chapter 14: Keeping to the left Part 3: Fighting a war at home 1939-1945 Chapter 15: ‘ There are times when one must speak or burst!’ Chapter 16: Ploughing their own furrow Chapter 17: Telling it like it was Chapter 18: Not permitted Part 4: Cold war, hot blood 1945-1960 Chapter 19: Not quite a brave new world Chapter 20: Standoff: Left v Right Chapter 21: ‘ We could have called it Such is Life’ Chapter 22: Endings and beginnings Part 5: The winds of change, perhaps 1960-1970 Chapter 23: A chorus of rebellious voices Chapter 24: A long way from Coonardoo