'Too Afraid to Cry is a memoir that, in bare blunt prose and piercingly lyrical verse, gives witness to the human cost of policies that created the Stolen Generations of Indigenous people in Australia.
'It is a narrative of good and evil, terror and happiness, despair and courage. It is the story of a people profoundly wronged, told through the frank eyes of a child, and the troubled mind of that child as an adult, whose life was irretrievably changed by being tricked away from her family and adopted into a German Lutheran family.
'What makes this book sing is not only Ali Cobby-Eckermann’s strong and unique narrative voice and her ability to cut to the essence of things in her poetry, but also the astounding courage with which she leads the reader through the complex account of a life in free-fall and a journey to wholeness through reconnection with her birth family and its ageless culture and wisdom.
'This is a brave book, written by a woman who has faced her demons, transformed her suffering into a work of art, and found her true sitting place in the world.' (Publisher's blurb)
Author's note:
This is a poetic memoir
a story of healing
not burdened by blame
Dedication:
for the adopted children
Christopher, James, and Karen,
and especially Jonnie
Author's note:
My family and Aboriginal persons
are advised that this story
contains the names of people
who have passed away
Epigraph:
You look at me and do not see
And you shame me
And I shame myself
Because I am not nowhere
I am everywhere in my belonging
I am still here
Samia Goudie 'I Am Here' 2011
Bundjalung/Munaldjali
'In Too Afraid to Cry: Memoir of a Stolen Childhood (Norton, Mar. 2018), Ali Cobby Eckermann, one of the Stolen Generation--the Aboriginal children taken from their birth mothers to be raised in white families--describes in heartbreaking detail the unjust, racist treatment of her people by the Australian government. The book, written in both prose and poetry, came to be only after Eckermann's decades-long search for her Aboriginal family resulted in a transformative reunion with the mother she didn't know and numerous other relatives she didn't know existed. [...]I was out there with family and community members who were saying, 'Ali, you've got to write about this and stick up for us.'' (Publication summary)
'When Ali Cobby Eckermann met her biological mother for the first time at age 34, she did not think her life could be enlarged further, she said. Four years later, in 2001, Ms. Cobby Eckermann was reunited with her son, then 18, who had been taken from her at birth.' (Introduction)
'When Ali Cobby Eckermann met her biological mother for the first time at age 34, she did not think her life could be enlarged further, she said. Four years later, in 2001, Ms. Cobby Eckermann was reunited with her son, then 18, who had been taken from her at birth.' (Introduction)
'In Too Afraid to Cry: Memoir of a Stolen Childhood (Norton, Mar. 2018), Ali Cobby Eckermann, one of the Stolen Generation--the Aboriginal children taken from their birth mothers to be raised in white families--describes in heartbreaking detail the unjust, racist treatment of her people by the Australian government. The book, written in both prose and poetry, came to be only after Eckermann's decades-long search for her Aboriginal family resulted in a transformative reunion with the mother she didn't know and numerous other relatives she didn't know existed. [...]I was out there with family and community members who were saying, 'Ali, you've got to write about this and stick up for us.'' (Publication summary)
