Ruby langford ginibi biography books

This entry is from Obituaries Australia. National Library of Australia, Ruby Langford Ginibi, born like so many of her race in humble circumstances, became locked in a cycle of poverty, racial violence and family disruption. She was to see two of her children killed and another incarcerated nearly half his life. But she did what many might have done, and committed her life's experiences to writing.

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The books she produced, in particular the first, Don't Take Your Love to Town, gave the world an insight into her life. The book was, according to its preface, ''a true life story of an Aboriginal woman's struggle to raise a family of nine children in a society divided between black and white culture in Australia''. It won the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission human rights award for literature for and was followed by other literary works, including Real Deadly, and My Bundjalung People , revisiting scenes from her youth which took her on a 20,kilometre odyssey to her tribal heartlands.

Her tribal name Ginibi ''Black Swan'' was given to her in by an aunt who was an elder of her Bundjalung people. When she was six years old, Ginibi's mother left the family and Ginibi was not to see her again until years later when she met her by chance in a Sydney street. As a child, she and her two sisters, Rita and Gwen, were taken by her father to live with relatives at Bonalbo.

Her friend, Stuart Hansman, said the father ''did not want to see the big black car turn up with people to take them away''.

Image of Don't Take Your Love to Town.

Later, Ginibi moved to Casino, where she went to high school for two years. At the age of 15, Ginibi moved to Sydney where she qualified as a machinist. At 16, she began the first of what were to be four tumultuous relationships.