Young Adult Fiction

Alaska by Sue Saliba & Clara in Washington by Penny Tangey

Item: Alaska
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Author: Stephen Mansfield

by Stephen Mansfield •

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337

Alaska by Sue Saliba

Penguin, $19.95 pb, 185 pp, 9780143206118

Clara in Washington

by Penny Tangey

University of Queensland Press, $19.95 pb, 253 pp, 9780702238871

Young Adult Fiction

Alaska by Sue Saliba & Clara in Washington by Penny Tangey

by Stephen Mansfield •

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337

Since the publication of Frank Moorhouse’s The Americans, Baby (1972), Australian literature has maintained a tense awareness of its powerful neighbour’s cultural sway over younger generations. Even the ‘Oz as’ Young Adult titles (think of Tim Winton’s Lockie Leonard series) concede, by studious omission, the impact of American cultural hegemony on the teenage imagination in Australia.

Stephen Mansfield

Stephen Mansfield is the author of a Young Adult novel, Have You Seen Byron Lichen? (2002). He also holds a PhD on representations of patrimony in contemporary Australian autobiography.