Cirrus@Austlit

'Roselyn X, a young Black prostitute, has terminal cancer and a very small child. She is angry at fate, racism, sexism, and her loss of home and culture. Roselyn Y, masquerading as Roselyn X relays her feelings and pleas in a series of 22 cantos in a collection of poetry. Roselyn’s story is not all dark, it offers light and hope. Her story should never have happened; nothing has changed for Aboriginal Australians; little has changed for women and issues of sexism — or racism; and Black Deaths in Custody still generations on; let alone drug issues over that 50 year landscape of all of the poetry in this book. Black lives around the world rate a lesser value than the deaths of White people, why? Thought provoking, humorous, enlightening, and a pleasure to read.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'I'm an old fella and have gotten used to being called 'Aboriginal'. I accept Indigenous too; I don't argue, since the two - Aboriginal and Indigenous - are very close synonyms. Any fine distinction between the words is lost on most whitefellas anyway. I have seen myself in different ways at various points in my life, given the different situations I found myself in -  but always, somehow, still Aboriginal.'  (Introduction)