Don't Take Your Love To Town

In 'Don't Take Your Love To Town' Langford writes: 'we saw a big sign saying BUNDJALUNG NATIONAL PARK and I told him he was now in my territory'.

This is Ruby Langford's (Ginibi) first book and autobiography.

First published in 1988, Ruby worked for over 2 years with her editor Susan Hampton to write her story to share with the world.

'Don't Take Your Love To Town' paints a picture of what it was like growing up in Australia from the 1930s onwards, in a society divided between black and white, in both rural and urban areas.

Beginning life on a mission in NSW, Ruby grew up surrounded by the love of her father, sisters and extended family which helped her develop her deadly sense of humour in the face of the many hardships and heartbreaks she experienced in her life.

She has observed and lived the changes wrought on Aboriginal communities, the poverty and tragedies that found their way to her doorstep and yet she managed to find a way to keep smiling while bringing up her 9 children mostly on her own.

Ruby Langford has lived a life rich in both sadness and joy; she has a very easy style of writing for the reader to find themselves drawn into the pages within minutes and, peppered with her wit, her story captures and holds the reader within its grasp until the end.

Paperback.

269 pages.

20cm x 13cm.

Written by Ruby Langford Ginibi.

Adult non-fiction; memoir/ autobiography.

Published by University of Queensland Press.

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.

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