AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Less than fifteen years ago, on 23rd May 1984, a few months after her fiftieth birthday, a black woman who had always told her nine children she would write a book some day, sat down to do so. She had left school at the age of fifteen, unable to imagine a future for a black teacher of either white or black children. Instead,she trained as a clothing machinist in Sydney, and through hard necessity later acquired the bush skills of 'fencing, burning off,lopping and ring-barking, and pegging roo skins'...' (extract)
Notes
-
Epigraph: I heard my totem bird call out, kitchee! kitchee! kitchee! kee, tellin me this meant to be, you were born to tell these stories. Whiteman didn't believe that bird talkem to me, he tellem me good news and bad, he warn when trouble tell of death, I always heed his call. For him messenger bird of my Bunjulung people! That bird, kitchee, kitchee, kitchee, kee! Willy wagtail that bird be!
- Ruby Langford Ginibi, 'Banjulung Totem'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 7 Apr 2014 11:14:18
74-86
http://www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/jeasa4suvendriniperera15.pdf
'You Were Born to Tell These Stories' : The Edu-ma-cations of Doctor Ruby
Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia
Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia
Subjects:
- Don't Take Your Love to Town 1988 single work autobiography
- Real Deadly 1992 selected work poetry prose extract
- My Bundjalung People 1994 single work autobiography
Export this record
