Published in 1990, Writing from the Fringe was one of the earliest substantial attempts to describe modern Aboriginal literature as its own intellectual and aesthetic tradition, rather than a minor annex to white Australian writing.

Mudrooroo moves across fiction, poetry, theatre, oral narrative, music and autobiography, discussing writers including Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Lionel Fogarty, Kevin Gilbert, Archie Weller, Ruby Langford Ginibi and Sally Morgan. His central question is not simply what Aboriginal writers produce, but who their work is expected to address: their own communities, the invading culture, or an unstable readership divided between both.

The book is also now an unusually complicated historical object. Mudrooroo became a major authority on Aboriginal literature, yet his own claim to Aboriginal ancestry was publicly disputed from 1996 onwards. That controversy gives particular pressure to a study concerned with authenticity, community authority, assimilation and who may define Aboriginal writing. The analysis remains influential, but it can no longer be read innocently; the critic who positioned himself at the fringe eventually became part of the argument over who gets to speak from it.

First edition, Hyland House paperback, 1990. Good condition with light cover wear.