Australian literature has long been ‘hijacked by activists’. This has made it richer. Let’s not go backwards

‘The earliest iteration of the multicultural NSW award … was a visionary response to the field’s lack of diversity and a shift towards the hope of moving past it.’ Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Last week the State Library of New South Wales announced the shortlists of the 2024 Premier’s Literary awards. The announcement came with arguably a little less fanfare than usual. Even the promotional shot of the shortlisted titles seemed to sag with reticence: this announcement, scheduled for April but delivered in May, was marred by a broader campaign targeting the Muslim Palestinian Egyptian Australian academic and multi-award-winning author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah as an unfit judge of the multicultural NSW category.

In the weeks leading up to the announcement, the Liberal senator Dave Sharma called on the premier to replace Abdel-Fattah as chair of the judging panel, arguing that the multicultural NSW award had been “hijacked by activists and provocateurs”.

It’s an interesting comment, given the history of literature in Australia and its use as a marker of inclusion and exclusion, particularly for the culturally and racially marginalised. Much of the literature published in the early days of this colony was grounded in what Prof Clare Bradford calls a “discourse of savagery” that reinforced the stereotypes of First Nations people as uncivilised; or in explorer stories that valorised white men as heroes “by virtue of their racial superiority”, despite the fact that any exploring they did relied on Indigenous knowledge of country and its food and water sources. Until Indigenous people were granted citizenship in 1967, the literary depiction of this country’s first storytellers reinforced the public sentiment that made their subjugation possible.

And despite Asian immigration to the colony well before federation, the overt racial discrimination that was part of Australia’s settler-colonial legacy trickled down into literature well into the 20th century, with the ethnic “other” typically absent from Australian storytelling well into the 1950s.

That all changed with Nino Culotta’s 1957 title They’re a Weird Mob, one of the first Australian books to centre an Italian immigrant in its story. It was so successful that it sold “the best part of a million copies” and was distributed free to new migrants as they reached Australian soil. This is unsurprising, given that its story contained a not-so-coded message promoting the merits of assimilation and encouraging migrants to abandon their languages and traditions in favour of a more white-conformist identity. That Nino Culotta never existed, and that the book was written under the pseudonym by an Anglo-Australian man named John O’Grady, tells us a lot about the way that literature was used as a vehicle for racism, further marginalising the migrant communities who dared to retain elements of their identities.

The earliest iteration of the multicultural NSW award therefore, was a visionary response to the field’s lack of diversity and a shift towards the hope of moving past it. This is what it stands for today – celebrating writing that makes a “significant contribution to an aspect of migration experience or multiculturalism”. (Abdel-Fattah’s book Eleven words for Love, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke, was shortlisted last year.)

Those sensationalising the shortlisting of authors on grounds they are “activists” should do better to educate themselves on the history of writing in this area and the necessity of a prize like this. As a former chair of the judging panel of this prize I can also say that these critics fail to recognise the labour, accountability and scrutiny involved in judging literary prizes. Dismissing them as merely activists diminishes their work and the achievements that underpin their appointment.

And if that still doesn’t cut the mustard for Sharma and others, it’s worth pointing out that many of the authors weren’t waiting around unnoticed for someone “on-side” to elevate their work. At least four of them – Peter Polites, Sara Saleh, André Dao and Omar Sakr – are multi-award winners whose work is widely recognised in their respective genres. Saleh was the first poet in Australian history to win both the Judith Wright and Peter Porter poetry prizes, while Sakr has previously received the Prime Minister’s Literary award.

One could argue then that Australian literature has a long history of being hijacked by activists, and that Sharma’s qualms might have less to do with activism per se but rather what the alleged activists are fighting for. Seeking to dismiss a judge for being passionate about a cause pertaining to the safety and liberation of her people and assuming that somehow makes her unable to do her job without the objectivity it demands reeks of a desperation to silence a critical voice.

But it also insinuates that all the shortlisted authors are somehow unworthy of this much-coveted achievement in Australian publishing, when everyone across all the categories deserves to have their moment. Let’s not allow ourselves to be taken back to a much darker chapter of the Australian story.

• Sarah Ayoub is a journalist, academic and author of books for young adults and children