'When does Nobby's story begin? With his birth in 1955? Or further back, with my struggle as an Aboriginal woman raising nine children mostly on my own? Maybe Nobby's story starts even earlier than that, in the 1880s when my family went to live on Box Ridge Mission after their traditional lands were taken over by the first squatters up in the north of New South Wales. Thinking about it, I'd say that Nobby's story has its roots way back. It's part of a bigger historical picture and a longer story of hardships passed down from one generation to another. This story continues today.'
'Haunted By The Past' is the story of Ruby Langford Ginibi's son, Nobby, who has been in and out of prisons since he was an adolescent. Most famously he was involved with an escape from Long Bay in 1974. Nobby has had to deal with the death of three of his siblings as well as the deaths in custody of many of his black friends. This book is their story as well as his. With the bias of motherlove, Ginibi tracks the system's failed attempts to brutalise her son, and its war against him and many other young black men and women.
