georgia_sara93's review

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challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

5.0

Aileen Moreton-Robison is a Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka People and I read this book  on the land of the Kaurna Peoples Moreton-Robison had this book published initially in 2000. My copy is the 20th anniversary edition. And I don’t think things have changed. From academic views to social views. In Australia as a white woman I would say non Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples do poorly at providing any forms of equity or equality to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Moreton-Robinson breaks down different ways in which white feminism has not provided support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia. Moreton-Robison provides strong arguments for differences that still occur today. This book has been life changing for me and is to me and my personal learning still very much a 101 stand point. 

e_milyking's review

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

Very important and informative book challenging classical feminist theory and white feminism. Such an important analysis and insight on indigenous perspectives and experiences that everyone should read. Reads very academically so need to take the time to properly read and understand the concept. 

jenna_beyer's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

4.5

beth_sterling_abela's review

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3.0

Really great knowledge and should be essential reading. Would have given 4 stars, however the academic language makes this an inaccessible read for many.

kathawtin's review

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challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

jessh's review

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challenging informative

4.25

not_alicen's review

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informative

3.5

daddycat96's review

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informative slow-paced

4.0

This is a really interesting book but it is incredibly hard to read. I felt like I was back in uni. I would recommend other people read it though just don’t do what I did and finish it in 2 days, spread it out so you can actually absorb the information.

jasgrace's review

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5.0

A must read for all, especially female identifying, people living in Australia

jaclyn_sixminutesforme's review

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5.0

In this seminal text, now being re-published twenty years after its initial publication, Distinguished Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson presents an analysis of the historically-uninterrogated position of white identity in Australian feminism, and its effects on Indigenous women. She forwards the proposition that when white Australian feminist conversations talk about race, whiteness as a racial identity is not examined. She looks specifically at the way "difference," and the politics of difference, and the "Other," operate in this specific realm of feminism: "As long as whiteness remains invisible in analyses 'race' is the prison reserved for the 'Other.'" That said, it is not a book "about how white women perceive their whiteness" and instead "reveals how whiteness as ideology and practice confers privilege and dominance in power relations between white feminists and Indigenous women."
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Moreton-Robinson examines an extensive range of feminist literature, and from a methodological perspective looks at the self-presentation and representation of the two subject positions, "middle-class white woman" and "Indigenous woman." In addition to an examination of the existing commentary, chapter five of the book also contains commentary and conversations from a number of interviews Moreton-Robinson undertook with white feminists in Australia actively engaged in what they self-identified as antiracist practice. The text examines how whiteness dominates from a position of power and privilege as an invisible norm and unchallenged practice, how "white middle-class women's privilege is tied to colonization and the dispossession of Indigenous people." Through her examination of the "subject position middle-class white woman," Moreton-Robinson challenges the entrenched and assumed position from which white Australian feminists write, leaving their own racial position and the privileges inherent in that uninterrogated.
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I found this a deeply thought-provoking read, and one I hope many readers will pick up both in Australia and internationally. The discussions about assumptions and privileges in perspective, and the commentary around white feminist discourse more generally, is certainly applicable beyond the specifically Australian experience that the text covers. For further reading, I'd highly recommend [b:White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color|53260224|White Tears/Brown Scars How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color|Ruby Hamad|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595820808l/53260224._SX50_.jpg|71770367], and also (one on my TBR) [b:They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South|40887375|They Were Her Property White Women as Slave Owners in the American South|Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545143299l/40887375._SX50_.jpg|63723558].
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Many thanks to UQP for a review copy.