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Mudrooroo

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Born: August 20 1938

Died: 1919 01 20192019

Born Colin Johnson in 1938, Mudrooroo grew up in institutions without his parents, before becoming a petty criminal and spending time in Fremantle Prison.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Mudrooroo spent time living in India, the United States, and the UK, during which time he published his early novels, including "Wild Cat Falling", a political novel drawing on his own experiences as a former convict without a sense of purpose.

On returning to Australia in the late 1970s, Mudrooroo began a full-time career as a writer, lecturer, and literary advocate, publishing several volumes examining the loneliness and isolation of Australian life, with a focus on Indigenous Australian existence. By the 1990s, he added speculative fiction and young adult fiction to his repertoire. He was recognised as one of the most well-known Indigenous writers in the country, at a time when Indigenous literature was finally gaining recognition in the country.

In 1996, however, journalists revealed that Mudrooroo had no Indigenous ancestry. His background was English and African-American, and his family did not view themselves as Aboriginal. In the resulting furore, Mudrooroo argued that he had been treated as Aboriginal due to his dark skin, and had in many ways lived an Aboriginal life. The scandal divided observers: some felt that Mudrooroo's contribution to Aboriginal writing, and his identification with Australia's First Peoples, gave him some claims of kinship. Many others felt that he had used stories that were not his, and actively lied, at a time when Aboriginal authenticity and identity were already under attack from white nationalists and cultural conservatives.

Although he published some final volumes through to the year 2000, Mudrooroo's reputation was sullied and he subsequently left Australia for Nepal. His writings have largely vanished from the school curriculum, with the prevailing cultural attitude of the modern era that Indigeneity comes from bloodlines and acceptance by the broader Indigenous community, rather than from self-identification.

In 2011, Mudrooroo returned to Australia with his wife and son, publishing a semi-autobiographical novel "Balga Boy Jackson" in 2017. He died in Brisbane in 2019.

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Mudrooroo

Mudrooroo

Books from Mudrooroo

Wild Cat Falling

Dr Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World

Paperbark: A Collection of Black Australian Writings

Aboriginal Mythology

Us Mob

Wildcat Screaming

Balga Boy Jackson

Long Live Sandawara

Tripping with Jenny

Mudrooroo/Muller Project

Old Fellow Poems

Insight Text Guides: Wild Cat Falling

Doin Wildcat: A Novel Koori Script as Constructed by Mudrooroo

Los sueños del gato salvaje

An Indecent Obsession

The Kwinkan

An Indecent Obsession

The Promised Land

The Undying

Indigenous Literature of Australia: Milli Milli Wangka