Louis Nowra, Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal Men’s Violence against Women and Children, North Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2007. Book Review]

In Bad Dreaming, the white playwright Louis Nowra focuses on sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. Nowra endorses the Aboriginal elder Mick Dodson’s argument that this abuse is “everyone’s problem” and writes that he hopes his book will help keep this subject “before the public” for the purposes of discussion and debate (8). Nowra’s text is impassioned and undoubtedly well-intentioned. Unfortunately, though, it is also imbued with a distinctly Anglocentric attitude towards the issue it explores.