Issue Details: First known date: 1998... 1998 'You Were Born to Tell These Stories' : The Edu-ma-cations of Doctor Ruby
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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'

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Last amended 7 Apr 2014 11:14:18
14-30 'You Were Born to Tell These Stories' : The Edu-ma-cations of Doctor Rubysmall AustLit logo Meridian
74-86 http://www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/jeasa4suvendriniperera15.pdf 'You Were Born to Tell These Stories' : The Edu-ma-cations of Doctor Rubysmall AustLit logo Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia
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