Sydney Review of Books

#NEWonSRB: Joan Fleming reviews two books that embrace the discomfort occasioned by reckonings with colonial monuments. While challenges to commemorative art are often characterised as destructive, Fleming highlights the creative aspect of these reframings.buff.ly/OIheCMc

#NEWonSRB: Is there no escaping the oppressive apparatus of the capitalist heteropatriarchy? Reviewing Anna Poletti’s hello, world?, Jenny Hedley traces the characters’ hopeful forays into BDSM – their attempt to deprogram themselves and glitch the machine.buff.ly/Nkulzud

#NEWonSRB: Science fiction has a history of harnessing pop music and psychedelic elements to envision radical alternatives to the status quo. James Macaronas observes that Jordan Prosser’s Big Time taps into this legacy but falls short of going all the way.buff.ly/KyTVvA4

#NEWonSRB: The Näku Dhäruk Petitions were the first native title documents recognised in Australian parliament. Monique Grbec reads Clare Wright’s historical account of the Petitions through the balance and reciprocity in the Yolŋu phrase, ‘bala ga’ lili’.
buff.ly/bwuwFo7

#NEWonSRB: The SRB talks to Nathalie Nguyen about the changing historiography of the Vietnam War, with greater recognition of Vietnamese-language sources and the role of South Vietnam, and the personal stakes of this history for the Vietnamese diaspora.
buff.ly/4ya4BJu