Dr. Ruby Langford Ginibi was born at Box Ridge Mission, Coraki, on the north coast of New South Wales in 1934. A proud Bundjalung woman, she grew up in Bonalbo and attended high school in Casino. When she turned fifteen, she moved to Sydney where she qualified as a clothing machinist. Married at an early age, she had nine children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For many years, she lived and camped in the bush around Coonabarabran, working at fencing, lopping and ring-barking trees and pegging kangaroo skins. At other times, she lived in Sydney and was employed in clothing factories.
Ginibi made her literary debut at fifty-four, when her first book Don't Take Your Love To Town was released in 1988, Australia's Bicentennial Year. This book, which revealed the struggles and trials faced by Aboriginal women, won her a Human Rights Award.
Her second book, Real Deadly, was published in 1992 and her third, My Bundjalung People (1994), is an account of her return to the mission in Coraki to locate and reconnect with her extended family. Her fourth book, Haunted By the Past ,was published in 1999 and recounts the story of her son Nobby's incarceration.
Ginibi was not only an author, but also a lecturer and historian in Aboriginal history, culture, and politics at various universities and colleges. Recognised as a spokesperson, educator and recorder of Koori culture, she has travelled and lectured at home and abroad.
Ginibi received an inaugural History Fellowship from the Ministry of Arts in 1990, an inaugural Honorary Fellowship from the Australian National Museum in 1995, and an inaugural Doctorate of Letters (Honors Causia) from La Trobe University in 1998.
Her tribal name 'Ginibi' (black swan) was given to her in 1990 by her aunt, Eileen Morgan, a tribal elder of Box Ridge Mission.
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Don't Take Your Love to Town
Ringwood
:
Penguin
,
1988
Z496435
1988
single work
autobiography
(taught in 10 units)
