AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 1453762101106589125.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon Haunted by the Past single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 1999... 1999 Haunted by the Past
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

'The story of Ginibi's son Nobby, who has been in and out of prisons since he was an adolescent - most famously, he was involved with an escape from Long Bay in 1974. With the bias of motherlove, Ruby Langford Ginibi tracks the system's failed attempts to brutalize her son and other young black men.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: I dedicate this book to my son Nobby and to every mother's son or daughter who has fallen foul of the Westminster system of justice that came with the first squatters and settlers in 1788. Those laws are not our Koori laws - our laws were the first laws of this land. Since we Kooris are invaded people, we have always had to conform to other people's laws, rules and standards - we were never allowed to be ourselves as Aboriginal people.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • St Leonards, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 1999 .
      image of person or book cover 1453762101106589125.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 182p.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 9781864487589

Works about this Work

White Law of the Biopolitical Suvendrini Perera , Joseph Pugliese , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 87-100)
'Drawing on Ruby Langford Ginibi's writings on the law throughout the 1990s we discuss how law, as an apparatus of biopolitical governmentality, frames, positions and inscribes the very sites, institutions and bodies essential to the reproduction of Australia as a racialised nation-state. The paper builds on the collective work we have done for over a decade in documenting how whiteness enmeshes with law in securing and reproducing colonial and racist forms of biopower, and its effects on the embodied subjects who are its targets: the scandal of the Tampa; the horrors of refugee suicide and self-harm in immigration prisons; the Cronulla race riots; the continuing attempts to extinguish Indigenous sovereignty; the fomenting of Islamophobia and the normalising of racial profiling; the violence of the Northern Territory Intervention; and escalating Aboriginal deaths in and out of custody. Our paper focuses on a number of current crises that evidence only too clearly the violences unleashed and licensed by white laws of the biopolitical.' (Authors abstract)
Meeting Ruby Susan Ballyn , 2012 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 67-73)
'This is a personal memoir of my meeting and subsequent correspondence with Ruby Langford Ginibi.' (Author's abstract, 67)
Ruby Langford Ginibi´s Influence on a Spanish Student of Australian Studies Caty Ribas , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 60-66)
'Dr Ruby Langford Ginibi influenced me, personally and academically speaking, with her text Haunted by the Past, her direct style of writing and her personal approach to life and hardship. This text pays tribute to her by explaining how reading Haunted by the Past turned out to be a central text in my life.' (Author's abstract, 60)
Tribute to Ruby Langford Ginibi Derek Mortimer , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 42-46)
Black and White : In Search of an ‘Apt’ Response to Indigenous Writing Robin Freeman , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010;
'The good editor,' suggests Thomas McCormack in his Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, 'reads, and ... responds aptly' to the writer's work, 'where "aptly" means "as the ideal appropriate reader would".' McCormack develops an argument that encompasses the dual ideas of sensibility and craft as essential characteristics of the fiction editor. But at an historical juncture that has seen increasing interest in the publication of Indigenous writing, and when Indigenous writers themselves may envisage a multiplicity of readers (writing, for instance, for family and community, and to educate a wider white audience), who is the 'ideal appropriate reader' for the literary works of the current generation of Australian Indigenous writers? And what should the work of this 'good editor' be when engaging with the text of an Indigenous writer? This paper examines such questions using the work of Margaret McDonell and Jennifer Jones, among others, to explore ways in which non-Indigenous editors may apply aspects of McCormack's 'apt response' to the editing of Indigenous texts.' (Author's abstract)
Coming Soon 1998 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 22 November 1998; (p. 21)

— Review of Haunted by the Past Ruby Langford Ginibi , 1999 single work autobiography
Pride that Chips Away at Predjudice Carmel Bird , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 4 September 1999; (p. 9)

— Review of Haunted by the Past Ruby Langford Ginibi , 1999 single work autobiography
Writing from Behind Bars Philip Morrissey , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February-March no. 218 2000; (p. 20)

— Review of Haunted by the Past Ruby Langford Ginibi , 1999 single work autobiography
The Getting of Wisdom Ian Henderson , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 60 no. 1 2000; (p. 224-229)

— Review of Haunted by the Past Ruby Langford Ginibi , 1999 single work autobiography
A Letter to Ruby Elizabeth Guy , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 60 no. 1 2000; (p. 229-232)

— Review of Haunted by the Past Ruby Langford Ginibi , 1999 single work autobiography
Institutional Structures and Individual Agency : Writing with, about, and to Aboriginal Authors Penny Van Toorn , 2001 single work essay
— Appears in: Compr(om)ising Post/colonialism(s) : Challenging Narratives and Practices 2001; (p. 55-63)
Drawing on her own experience, van Toorn in this paper considers the ways in which colonial power relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are reproduced inadvertently through the institutionalised routines of academic life, and in archival institutions and the publishing industry.
'The Killing Times Are Still with Us' : Readings of Truth in Ginibi's Haunted by the Past Alisoun Neville , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Race and Class , July-September vol. 44 no. 1 2002; (p. 124-129)
y separately published work icon Cross Talk : Collaborative Indigenous Life Writing in Australia and Canada Michael Jacklin , 2004 Z1351079 2004 single work thesis This thesis provides a comparative analysis of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts produced in Australia and Canada. Drawing on the large body of Indigenous life writing texts produced in both countries, the critical and theoretical literature surrounding these texts, and twenty-nine interviews conducted during the course of research with participants in Aboriginal and First Nations collaborative life writing, the author argues that literary criticism needs to take into account the co-operative basis of textual production as well as the constraining factors that shape the outcome of collaborative texts. Further, he argues for the importance of non-Indigenous critics acknowledging the centrality of Indigenous protocols in both the production and reception of collaborative Indigenous life writing. The thesis is based upon the premise that readers and producers of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts can and should talk to each other and that each group can benefit from such cross talk.
Black and White : In Search of an ‘Apt’ Response to Indigenous Writing Robin Freeman , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010;
'The good editor,' suggests Thomas McCormack in his Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, 'reads, and ... responds aptly' to the writer's work, 'where "aptly" means "as the ideal appropriate reader would".' McCormack develops an argument that encompasses the dual ideas of sensibility and craft as essential characteristics of the fiction editor. But at an historical juncture that has seen increasing interest in the publication of Indigenous writing, and when Indigenous writers themselves may envisage a multiplicity of readers (writing, for instance, for family and community, and to educate a wider white audience), who is the 'ideal appropriate reader' for the literary works of the current generation of Australian Indigenous writers? And what should the work of this 'good editor' be when engaging with the text of an Indigenous writer? This paper examines such questions using the work of Margaret McDonell and Jennifer Jones, among others, to explore ways in which non-Indigenous editors may apply aspects of McCormack's 'apt response' to the editing of Indigenous texts.' (Author's abstract)
Tribute to Ruby Langford Ginibi Derek Mortimer , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 42-46)
Last amended 5 May 2016 13:53:50
X