Reviews of Writing Never Arrives Naked: Early Aboriginal cultures of writing in Australia

Alan Atkinson, Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 9, 2007
This is a finely argued, wide-ranging and really intriguing book. Penny van Toorn looks at a variety of Aboriginal uses of European forms of writing, mainly in the colonial period. She focuses especially on individuals engaged in the writing process and on the precise intent of various parties as they put pen to paper.

Maryrose Casey, ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2007
This book is an important contribution to debates around the dominant narrative that Marshall McLuhan expressed in the 1960s, that the ‘phonetic alphabet, alone, is the technology that has been the means of creating’ contemporary society (Van Toorn 2006:224).

Kay Shelton, Sharp News, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2008
The provocative title of Penny van Toorn's Writing Never Arrives Naked: Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia piques my reader's attention yet it refers to how writing becomes enveloped in a multilayered, often politically and socially charged, context… Van Toorn closes with such questions and others that could form the impetus for future discussion amongst scholars.