Talking with Ruby Langford Ginibi
1994; Springer International Publishing; Volume: 20; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0311-4198
Autores Tópico(s)Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
ResumoRuby Langford Ginibi will soon publish her third My Bundjalung People, the story of her journey back to her country in Northern New South Wales. Ginibi researched a large proportion of the material for the book while writing Don't Take Your Love to Town (1988) and Real Deadly (1992). She also has completed the manuscript of Haunted Past: Nobby's Story, telling of her son's experiences with the New South Wales prison system. Ginibi's work has the overriding objective of telling her people's our side of the fence, and takes the form of lectures, speeches and poetry, as well as her true stories in prose. She will launch My Bundjalung People at the Warana Writers' Festival in Brisbane in September. Ginibi talks here with Janine Little. I first would like to ask you where you started writing, or what made you want to sit down and write your story. Oh, when I was in high school, for the only two years of high school that I did in Casino; an old teacher, old Tiger McGee used to get us to write compositions, you see. I had a lively imagination even then and so I'd get carried away with what I had and he'd say, Ruby, two or three pages would have done for a composition, don't do a whole book, because I'd have 12 or 13 pages goin, getting carried away, on the go . . . (laughs) I did say I'd write a but I had a family of kids to rear first, and they come first, naturally. Now that they've all gone their own way in life, all grown, it's time for me to pick up pen, and I haven't stopped since. I first picked up a pen on the 23rd of May, 1984, to start Don't Take Your Love to Town. Was it hard for you, because a lot of Don't Take Your Love to Town is about your family and the struggles . . . it took me four and a half years plus one near nervous breakdown from writing up all the hurt and the death. I was writing about the death of my kids, and I was recovering from major surgery on my stomach. They pulled the guts out of me literally, you might say, but I was real stressed out, that's how I come to be here at Allawah Hostel. At the time I used to live in Henderson Road, Alexandria, and it got so bad I had to go and see someone to talk to, a psychologist, but I was telling him what was wrong with me. I knew what was wrong with me. He said, Look, it's only just stress that you're suffering. It will get better, in time it will, you really know what's wrong with you. I was sitting down and crying and telling him while I was crying that I was suffering, mourning for my kids all over because of writing this and he said, Well, it will get better, it's only just stress. When I got to this hostel here, I had nothing not like you see today. This is my seventh year here and ah, jeez you can accumulate some stuff, aye?(*) Yes! (Laughs) Like my bag . . . (Laughs) Yeah, yeah, anyhow I'd go out to the table at mealtimes and I'd eat real quick before anybody come, because at the time I was suffering blood sugar levels. I don't know it was blood sugar levels, I thought it was just the stress that was making me silly. I've never been affected by stress in my life, but by god it can knock you for a loop, you know. And I'd eat my meal real quick and I'd fly back in here to my room and I was too frightened to sit amongst them, so I'd eat before anyone else came to the table and running in, and they must have thought I was goin mad, but it wasn't that, it was just that I thought that every time they looked at me, they could see how much I was hurting. So back in the room I'd run to hide my hurt. All I had was a little tranny and I used to lay listening to 2CH music, real soothing music, but later on I got better with it and now they can't shut me up, you know, don't have to hide in my room anymore, out goin and runnin. So, Real Deadly was that you had done for Don't Take Your Love to Town and had in your collection, or did you write them separately, or . …
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