Melissa Lucashenko

Melissa Lucashenko (born 1967) is an Indigenous Australian writer.

Quotes

• It is like having double vision. We see the world that white people see but we are also seeing a mythic landscape at the same time and an historic landscape. White people see Rotary parks and headlands, we see sacred sites.
  • On how the indigenous view the world differently in “The interview: Melissa Lucashenko” in The Sydney Morning Herald (2013 Mar 9)

• I am not writing to make people feel warm and comfortable. When my readers enter the world of my book I want them to feel like they can find a place to belong in my story. But it is not their story, and the language is familiar but it is not their language. It is a novel about belonging and it is a novel about difference, too.'
  • On how readers might approach her writings in “The interview: Melissa Lucashenko” in The Sydney Morning Herald (2013 Mar 9)

• Aboriginal lore is vast and it is inclusive. Bitterness comes from loss of culture and loss of lore. And we have lost those things to some degree. But if you actually understand the old culture then you understand that we are all in it together.
  • On aboriginal lore in “The interview: Melissa Lucashenko” in The Sydney Morning Herald (2013 Mar 9)

• This bloody bullshit about the forgotten white working class – if there’s any forgotten people in Australia, if there’s any battlers in Australia, it’s brown and black people.
  • On who she views as the true forgotten people in Australia in “Miles Franklin 2019 winner Melissa Lucashenko: 'We need a revolution'” in The Guardian (2019 Jul 30)