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| 7 Aug. 2000 |
Dreaming of Equality: 'Snake Circle', by Roberta Sykes
Donna Lee Brien
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Roberta Sykes.
Snake Circle.
Allen & Unwin, 2000.
RRP: $A24.95. |
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Reading Snake Circle, the third and final part of Roberta Sykes’s
remarkable memoir Snake Dreaming: Autobiography of a Black Woman,
will stop you doing anything else until you finish the book. This
gripping story demands to be consumed in one sitting, but Sykes's tale
stays with you long after the final page has been read. |
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The first volume, Snake Cradle, which deals with growing up in
Townsville in the 1940s, won the prestigious Age Book of the Year and
Nitta Kibble awards, recognising the power of this moving story. As the
daughter of a white mother and an unknown black father, Sykes relates a
disturbing story of one coloured girl’s experience of racism. This
prejudice and discrimination climaxed in the harrowing tragedy of her
rape, an event which lead to the birth of her son when she was 17. In the
second instalment, Snake Dancing, Sykes describes how, while still
struggling to overcome the effect of the brutal assault, her quest for
justice led to her politicisation. As Australia's first Aboriginal
columnist on the Nation Review and as the First Secretary of the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Parliament House in Canberra, Sykes
gained a prominent public profile, but in Snake Dancing she
also reveals a more personal perspective on these events that made
headline news around the world — her loneliness and fear. |
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