Tag: gender

Beyond tropes: Why Eve Langley’s legacy must be understood through a trans inclusive lens

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Sam Elkin The sad tale of Eve Langley, author of the 1942 picaresque classic The Pea Pickers, has transfixed readers for generations. The Pea Pickers, a fictionalised autobiography, tells the story of Steve and Blue, two gender non-conforming sisters who don men’s attire to work as agricultural labourers outside Bairnsdale in Gippsland during the Great Depression. The book, long accepted as an Australian classic (albeit one marred by racism), perhaps captivates readers today less than the sad, complex story of Langley themselves. Soon after the publication of The Pea Pickers, Langley was sent to a mental asylum in Auckland as…

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The secret history of Australia’s unpublished literature

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Nic Low For five of us over the last week, life’s been defined by the chug-and-whir of digital copiers sucking in page after page of reject literature. With the support of the State Library of Victoria’s Storage and Digital Collection Services, a small group of volunteers has been digitising a portion of the archive relating to Australian literary magazines. Edmund La Touche Armstrong, Chief Librarian from 1896-1925 after working his way up from junior assistant, championed a policy of archiving unofficial as well as official culture. His vision meant that from the 1940s until the late 1990s, the SLV stored…

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