First edition | |
| Author | Melissa Lucashenko |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Published | 1997 (University of Queensland Press) |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 245 |
| ISBN | 978-0-702-22935-0 |
| OCLC | 1088063432 |
Steam Pigs is the 1997 debut novel by Melissa Lucashenko. It concerns Sue Wilson, a young Murri woman, who explores her Indigenous identity while living in Brisbane.
A review in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education wrote that "Steam Pigs takes us into the world of today's "untermensch" ...", and that it "..is a woman's book set in a very particular place and at a very particular time; but it confronts themes that are eternal and universal.". A Lesbians on the Loose review called it "...as unsentimental as it is empathetic.".
Steam Pigs has also been reviewed by the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Social Alternatives, Australian Literary Studies, Queensland Review, and Ilha do Desterro.
An excerpt appears in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.
Although Lucashenko presents the treatment of Indigenous Australians by non-Indigenous Australians in a rather negative manner, she also candidly addresses problems within the Indigenous community, ... In Steam Pigs, Lucashenko explicitly depicts suburbia as co-occupying Indigenous land; she is the first Australian novelist to do so and thus her novel is radical on that count alone.