Talk:John Naish (writer)

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TarnishedPath (talk) 12:29, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

• ... that the novels of John Naish have been used to study the labour practices of post-war sugarcane farms in north Queensland?

• • ALT1: ... that the author and sugarcane cutter John Naish was critical of the sugar industry's role in the oppression of Indigenous Australians? Source: Balanzategui, Bianka Vidonja (2025). "Lost in the Syrup and the Ashes: Reclaiming John Naish, sugar country author and playwright". Australian Journal of Biography and History. 10: 7–34. doi:10.22459/AJBH.10.2025.01. Naish explicitly acknowledged that the sugar industry was complicit in the disruption of Aboriginal traditional ways of life, and wrote with insight, sensitivity and sympathy of the institutionalised and casual racism he observed in rural north Queensland in the 1950s
  • ALT2: ... that the writer John Naish wrote novels and plays about his experiences working as a sugarcane cutter in north Queensland? Source: Balanzategui, Bianka Vidonja (2023b). "Naish, John (Jack) (1923 - 1963), author and playwright". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Mitchell's Causeway

MCE89 (talk) 15:16, 26 April 2026 (UTC).

• The source for ALT0 says on page 34: "Welsh immigrant author and playwright John Naish’s The Cruel Field was particularly valuable because of its authentic depictions of cane cutting work and life in the 1950s and 1960s which could be verified against the author’s own life experiences as the daughter of a DP cane cutter who cut cane in the same years and areas as Naish. ... Writing of The Cruel Field scholar Elizabeth Smyth opines that “Of all the novels connected to the Australian canefields, The Cruel Field provides the deepest insights into farming practices associated with cultivating sugarcane and the strongest experience of canefield labour.”18 Certainly, without such fulsome fictional descriptions as Naish’s the industrial record of sugar cane cutting in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s would be meagre. Today there are few people alive who recall from personal experience the cane cutter life and work. Novels such as Naish’s have “the great merit of recording in detail a way of life and labour which has ceased to exist.”" Cunard (talk) 09:20, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
• Verified that the article is long enough and that there are no plagiarism concerns through the Copyvios tool and spotchecking. Cunard (talk) 09:20, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
  • MCE89 (talk · contribs), I was unable to fully verify ALT0, ALT1, or ALT2.

    ALT0: The Wikipedia article says, "Balanzategui argues that Naish's fiction also serves as an important historical text for understanding the poorly recorded labour practices of cane cutting in the post-war era." The Wikipedia article does not mention northern Queensland. Would add that and also quote where the source says north Queenland?

    ALT1: I could not find where the Wikipedia article says "the sugar industry's role in the oppression of Indigenous Australians". The Wikipedia article says "The historian Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui writes that Naish's writing condemned the dispossession and mistreatment of Indigenous Australians, as well as the treatment of women, in a manner that was uncommon for his era." The Wikipedia article does not make the sugar industry connection.

    ALT2: I did not find where the Wikipedia article explicitly says that he wrote "novels and plays about his experiences working as a sugarcane cutter in north Queensland". The second and third paragraphs of the "Writing" section verify that he wrote novels about his experiences working as a sugarcane cutter in Queensland. But I could not find where the Wikipedia article says he wrote plays about those experiences. Similar to ALT0, we need both the source and the Wikipedia article to say the "north Queensland" part. Cunard (talk) 09:20, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the review @Cunard! Responding to each of these:

• ALT0: The article states that the novel in question is set in North Queensland (The Cruel Fields...describes a 1951 sugarcane harvest season in a fictional town in northern Queensland), but I can see your point and have added the setting explicitly to the relevant sentence about it being used to study canefield labour practices as well. You can find that on p.34 of the source: The tensions and nature of the buttygang in the cane fields of north Queensland are faithfully explored through the Craig gang on the Leonardi farm in 1951.
• ALT1: If you look further down in the section you'll see where this is stated in the article: To Balanzategui, the novel provides an acknowledgement of institutionalised racism and the role that the sugar industry played in the dispossession of Aboriginal communities
• ALT2: I've edited the article to state more explicitly that he also wrote plays about his experiences as a sugarcane cutter (see sentence beginning His novels and plays drew on his experience as a canecutter...). I think the article does already state that his experiences as a cane cutter were in north Queensland (...where he began working as a sugarcane cutter in north Queensland)

MCE89 (talk) 10:40, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

• thank you for the detailed explanation and for editing the article to state that more explicitly, MCE89 (talk · contribs)! For ALT1, I missed that part since the hook says "Indigenous" while the Wikipedia article says "Aboriginal"; "Indigenous" and "Aboriginal" are synonyms so this hook was already supported in the Wikipedia article. I've verified ALT0, ALT1, and ALT2. Cunard (talk) 10:57, 25 May 2026 (UTC)