2025/06/06 by Karima ASSASLA & Salim KERBOUA
#FOS: Languages and literature
paper · doi:10.48734/akofena.n016.vol.3.08.2025
Abstract : This article examines the representation and celebration of the educated Aboriginal Australian female through the protagonist of Jeanine Leane’s short story collection Purple Threads (2011). The character of Sunshine, a mixed-origin Aboriginal girl, made her way through a racist and oppressive colonial educational system and was offered a place at the university. Using postcolonial theory and the Aboriginal feminist approach, this paper demonstrates the powerful role of female family members, some of whom were illiterate but cultivated, and others educated but who dropped the colonial white school, in Sunshine’s outstanding educational success. It also probes how Leane, through the character of Sunshine, reflects on her own experience and position in colonial and postcolonial “black and white” Australia. Keywords: Aboriginal Australian women; British colonialism; education; Aboriginality; Aboriginal Australian feminism