Young and Free

This new book by Joanne Faulkner is a welcome attempt to map the longstanding obsession with childhood and a colonial past that still discomforts many, and to unravel the links between the two … It is well-written and engaging and will be read with interest by those working across broad studies of children and childhood. It will also be of interest to postcolonial scholars who will welcome its consideration of a settler-colonial nation’s uneasy attempts to come to terms with its origins. * Journal of Australian Studies *
[Young and Free] provides an important resource for children’s literary and cultural studies scholars in its sustained account of how the modern concept of childhood colludes with colonialism to displace Indigenous peoples and how this displacement in turn continues to support white settler identity. * Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures *
In this important, expansive and generous book, Joanne Faulkner unsettles persistent themes in Australian discourses of childhood, home and nation, showing the continuing reach of the colonial imaginary in their contemporary idealisations. In particular this book makes a vital contribution to studies of ‘white’ fantasies of origin and their material—and often violent—effects. -- Alison Ravenscroft, author of The Postcolonial Eye