Sreten Božić aka B. Wongar
Writer
B. Wongar (born 1932 as Sreten Božić) is a Serbian-Australian writer. For most of his literary career, the concern of his writing has been, almost exclusively, the condition of Aboriginal people in Australia. His 1978 short story collection, The Track to Bralgu, was released to critical acclaim by the foreign press, who were led to believe by publisher Little Brown that Wongar was of Aboriginal ethnicity. The revelation that Wongar was a Serbian immigrant, as well as inconsistencies in his life story, have led to controversy and allegations of literary hoax and cultural appropriation.
Božić grew up in the village of Gornja Trešnjevica, near Aranđelovac, Serbia, then Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the mid-1950s, he started his writing career by writing poetry which he published in the Mlada kultura and the Novi vesnik literary journals. He was a member of the "Đuro Salaj" workers-writers group in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. At the same time, he worked as a journalist in Serbia. Yugoslav communists found his writing politically incorrect and banned him from journalism for life.[citation needed] In 1958 he moved to Paris, France, where he lived in a Red Cross refugee camp. There he met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who helped him to publish his literary works in Les Temps Modernes.
The reception of Wongar's work has oscillated between praise, skeptical inquiry, and moral condemnation. Within Australia, there is a widespread obsession with Wongar's biographical credentials to the extent that it eclipses any review of the fictional texts as part of Australian writing.[citation needed] There are a variety of Wongar's moral indictments ranging from being a white who usurped Aboriginal culture to the claim saying that all artists are charlatans, who con the public. Susan Hosking claimed that Wongar did not speak as an Aboriginal person but pretended to be one. Aboriginal writers were finding their own voice and, she claims, there was a strong resistance against such a European writer, because it was seen as cultural imperialism. Australian critic Maggie Nolan responded that a reductive demand for authentic Aboriginality functions as cultural imperialism. Far from being labeled as a cultural imperialist, Wongar shall be congratulated for subtly manipulating expectations of authenticity in his work. B. Wongar questions the systematic closure of Aboriginality as an imperial construct, its pretensions to its authenticity, autonomy, and purity.
B. Wongar has received criticism to the point of being labeled a fake, literary hoax and accused of cultural appropriation. Australian novelist and playwright Thomas Keneally has said, "Time might prove him to be a highly significant Australian writer, but his deception has soured his reception in the English-speaking world." Much of this centers around his identify, as there are many discrepancies regarding the identity of Wongar in the forewords of his books. In his book, The Track to Bralgu, the foreword states that Wongar is part Aboriginal, while in his book The Sinners, the foreword states that Wongar is in fact a mixed-race American Vietnam veteran.
Comparing the German translation of the Walg by Annemarie Böll (Der Schoß) to its English version published by Brazier in 1990, T. Caiter wrote that the English edition was censored. The English edition was substantially and carefully purged of colonialist pornography and pseudo-Aboriginal mythology. In his autobiography, Dingoes Den, Wongar wrote that the German translation remains the only complete text and unabridged version.
Awards and honors
Arvon Foundation Poetry Award. UK, 1980
The American Library Association Award (USA), 1982
Senior Writer's Fellowship, Australian Literature Board, 1985
The P.E.N. International Award (USA) for Nuclear Cycle 1986
Writer-in-residence at the Aboriginal Research Centre at Monash University in the late 1980s
Australia Council Writers’ Emeritus Award, 1997
Honorary Doctorate, University of Kragujevac, Serbia, 2009
Works by B. Wongar
Diddjeridu Charmer, Dingo Books 2015, ISBN 9780977507849
Manhunt, B. Wongar 2008, ISBN 9780977507832
Dingoes Den, ETT Imprint 2006, ISBN 9781875892587
The Last Pack of Dingoes, HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) 1993 ISBN 9780207171475
Gabo Djara: A Novel of Australia, George Baziller 1991, ISBN 9780807612439
Raki: a novel (1997), London: Marion Boyars ISBN 978-0-7145-3031-4
Totem and ore: a photographic collection (2006), Dingo Books, Carnegie, Victoria 2006 ISBN 9780977507801
The New Guinea Diaries (1997) — English translation of "The New Guinea Diaries 1871–1883" by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, Dingo Books, Victoria, Australia ISBN 978-0-9775078-1-8
Walg: A Novel of Australia, George Braziller 1983, ISBN 9780807612415
Karan, Dodd Mead 1985, ISBN 9780396087229
The Trackers: a novel (1975), Outback Press, Collingwood, VIC. ISBN 0-86888-032-9
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