We did, actually, within the word limits, but I’m not sure why you seem to think this is the sole purpose of an anthology. The one in question has many different aims and purposes. Obviously only crazy editors would include writing they didn’t think was ‘good’ by one criterion or another, but any good anthology is always much more than the sum of its parts, and has a carefully created structure and coherence of its own. A good anthology is a well-made quilt, not an untidy pile of glittery, clashing scraps.

(Or, if the girlie metaphor is too PC for you, it’s a machine, not a random boxful of shiny nuts and bolts.)

And PC is passé, is it? Are we to understand that you think it was all just a silly 80s fad like big hair, and it’s now safe — nay, obligatory — to sink back into the good ole white male supremacist ways?

The assertion that the anthology included “too much” work by Aboriginal authors is hysterical, both hysterical “ha-ha” and hysterical “perhaps you need a little lie down.”

The maths is easy:

The total number of works by Aboriginal authors constitute 12.6% of the anthology. Of these, works by Aboriginal authors in less traditional genres—letters, journals, petitions, speeches, etc—constitute 3.4% of the anthology.

While Craven might make the cringe-worthy assertion (given the stench of old-school racism in the concatenation of African American and Aboriginal peoples simply on the basis of skin colour) that to include about 12.6% of “black” writing would invite scorn in America, the fact is that most of the top-shelf American anthologies do exactly that — about 12 - 15% by “blacks”. Oh, and Native Americans are typically represented at around 3%.

A discussion over the picket-fences dividing what may or not be “literary” is all well and good, indeed necessary, but let’s at least begin the discussion with a rational (and perhaps banal) account of quantity. Craven might feel overwhelmed by the amount of Aboriginal writing in the Anthology, and feel compelled to conjure some numero-fancy to help disguise it, however the numbers reveal something other than a truth about the Anthology itself. The fact that his error is repeated “over and over” by others is not only ironic but also sadly telling.

While I’m on a roll, I am still appalled that Peter Rose at ABR refused to publish a short reponse to Craven from Anita Heiss and myself. For the record, here it is in full:

Sent to Peter Rose 8th September 2009:

“In the May 1964 edition of the Australian Book Review, an anonymous reviewer of Kath Walker’s (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) “We Are Going” wrote:

‘This is bad verse … jingles, clichés, laborious rhymes all piled up, plus the incessant, unvarying thud of a single message … This may be useful propagandist writing … It may well be the most powerful social-protest material so far produced in the struggle for aboriginal advancement … But this has nothing to do with poetry. The authentic voice of the song-man [sic] using the English language still remains to be heard.’

Forty five years later, in the September issue of the same magazine, Peter Craven has proclaimed that a publication

‘overflows with Aboriginal writing, much of which has no literary value whatever … every kind of doggerel and naïve bit of memoir writing … The sheer quantity of Aboriginal writing included in this volume—much of it devoid of literary quality or even literary ambition—is an egregious mistake.’

It’s always astonishing to see neo-assimilationist racism in action. We are saddened to see it given room again, and after so many years, in the Australian Book Review.

Peter Minter and Anita Heiss
Editors, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature
Contributing Editors, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature”

The author’s mealy-mouthed defence of the anthology as some sort of agitprop teaching tool is the worst of 80s PC. Would it be too much to ask that an anthology collect what people believe to be the best pieces of writing? Jeezis.