Abstract
In this essay, I use a close reading of Anita Heiss’s five chick lit novels to argue that racial
identity profoundly affects the relationship between the chick lit novel and advice manual
genre. In Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, Caroline Smith
contends that the chick lit novel critiques and satirizes regimes of female control through
its engagement with the domestic advice manual. This relationship, however, does not
always work in the way Smith assumes because the protagonist is not always white: she
may be Latina, Chinese, South-East Asian, or, as Anita Heiss shows, Aboriginal Australian:
Heiss’s fiction serves as an advice manual, designed to expose readers to the correct
norms and behaviors for interacting with Australia’s First Peoples.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 334-353 |
Journal | Contemporary Women's Writing |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |