ABSTRACT
A frequently used metaphor in Australian national discourse is that of one or other ‘shameful’ or ‘dark’ chapter in its colonial past. Alongside the notion of shame and guilt comes the idea of repressed and silenced memory, either through deliberate institutionalised forgetting or through the impossibility of fully articulating traumatic pasts. It is often in literary texts that such ‘unfinished business’ is articulated and represented in what has been called a ‘creative sharing’ in a process of ‘reconciliation as method’. This chapter considers two novels by Australian women writers that engage with this notion of historical amnesia. Christine Piper’s After Darkness (2014), shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Franklin literary award, and Cory Taylor’s My Beautiful Enemy (2013) both focus on the topic of World War II Australian civilian internment camps, a chapter in Australian history that has been largely forgotten or deliberately repressed in the national imaginary. Both novels thematise the notion of shame and their authors comment on the importance of facing up to a shameful past in order to heal not just individuals but also the nation itself.
