Snake Cradle

Snake Dreaming: Autobiography of a Black Woman #1

by Roberta B. Sykes

. 1997, very slight fading to pages

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, Unfinished, Indigenous, Australia

1000 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes (b. 1943) is an Australian poet and author. Although she is the daughter of a white Australian mother and an African-American father, she has always identified as, and until recently was accepted as, an indigenous Australian. She has been a life-long campaigner for indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women's rights.Awards and nominations

1982: Patricia Weickert Black Writers Award
1994: Australian Human Rights Medal
1997: Age Book of the Year for Snake Cradle
1998: National Biography Award for Snake Cradle
1998: Nita B. Kibble Literary Award for Snake Cradle

Bibliography

Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (Cammeray: The Saturday Centre, 1979)
Mum Shirl: An Autobiography (with Colleen Shirley Perry) (Melbourne, 1981)
Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989) ISBN 0-7022-2173-2
Eclipse. (Queensland, Australia: Univ of Queensland Press, 1996) ISBN 0-7022-2848-6
Incentive, Achievement and Community (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1986)
Black Majority (Hawthorn, Australia: Hudson, 1989) ISBN 0-949873-25-X
Murawina: Australian Women of High Achievement (Sydney: Doubleday, 1993) ISBN 0-86824-436-8
Snake Cradle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
Snake Dancing (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
Snake Circle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000) ISBN 1-86508-335-6

External links

http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cms/china... for an analysis of the controversy about her identity.

Reviews

[zara may · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book should be recommended/required reading for all Australians. It describes the experiences of a Black Woman both in terms of the racism she experienced socially and systematically and in terms of her experiences as a rape victim. This book candidly illustrates how racist the country we call 'Australia' truly is, and the way that whiteness and blackness can interact both on a domestic scale (with her white mother believing that her daughters are white despite their obvious blackness) and more broadly in society (with her expulsion from high school at fourteen purely due to her race, her difficulty finding work, and her regular yet unsolicited run-ins with police). I find the implied expressions of Aboriginality in Bobbi Sykes' writing quite odd given that she is not actually Aboriginal (at least, according to Wikipedia), even given her significant involvement in the Indigenous community and the great impact she had in the Indigenous Land Rights movement. Regardless of this peculiarity, Sykes' is an important and inspirational character in the history of our nation, and her story is an important one to read.

[Erin O'connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The worst part about this book is how angry and sad it made me feel when faced with the unjust experiences Roberta has gone through. I'm about to follow her strength and transparency in Snake Dancing now. Everyone should read this.

[Kim Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself unable to put this book down. I found it disturbing but very enlightening about the level of racism inflicted on the author.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content warning: Racism, sexual abuse.

What an incredible woman to have been able to put her experiences into words. Would encourage people to read this book.

[Kt · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

This review is for the Snake Dreaming Triology as a whole, rather than for the individual books Snake Cradle, Snake Dancing and Snake Circle that make up the trilogy.

Born in the 1940s to a black father she never knew and a white mother, Roberta Sykes did not have an easy life. Growing up in poverty in Townsville, Queensland; she was a sick child who was bullied, exposed to domestic violence and her mother’s narcissism, and gang raped at seventeen. She was also a person who never gave up, relying on her totem the Snake for strength and courage.

Growing into adulthood, she searched to establish her paternity whilst dealing with the challenges of becoming a young mother as a result of being raped, only to end up in two toxic relationships. Working hard to better herself and forge a life her two children, Sykes became involved in Aboriginal health and activism at a time when much of Australia was against her, including many of her so called friends and family. Not content with being the first Secretary at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra; Sykes would go on to gain both a Masters and PhD from Harvard University in the 1980s, making her the first black Australian to have gained a PhD worldwide and only the fourteenth Australian to earn one from Harvard.

What an interesting read the autobiographical Snake Dreaming trilogy was. Sykes’ determination to leave the world a better place than she found it leapt off the page in all three books as she shares a no holds barred account of her first forty years. The fact that she was able to accomplish so much given her terrible and traumatic childhood is nothing short of remarkable; especially in a time when Aboriginal people were subjected to significant racism and the ‘protection’ of the Government.

I did struggle a little with the way all three books were written though, as reading them was like reading someone’s diary. They all contained a lot of information that didn’t add to the narrative in my opinion, and on occasion took away from it. Instead, I wished for a lot less of the day to day stuff and more about what happened once she obtained the PhD she worked so hard for and how she ultimately told her son Russell about his conception as a result of being gang raped given the lengths she went to hide it from him as he grew up.

An eye opening read from one of Australia’s most well known Aboriginal activists; the Snake Dreaming trilogy is an inspiring read about a very resilient woman that everyone should read.

The Snake Dreaming Trilogy is my twentieth read in #ktbookbingo, category ‘A Trilogy.’ To play along with my book bingo and to see what else I’m reading, go to #ktbookbingo or @kt_elder on Instagram.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gripping. When I found out it was volume one of three, I thought it might be a bit padded, but I was so interested. Sykes narrates her childhood with tremendous recall and the details of her 1950’s small-town Queensland childhood were fascinating to me.

The stuff she had to put up with as a female of color, her complex relationship with her mother, her various jobs, and how she comes out of all this trauma… I immediately want to know the rest of her story. How did she get to America? How did she become a Black rights activist in Australia?

None of my US libraries have the next books, I’ll have to buy them somehow.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book broke me. It's incredible, but not for the faint hearted. I finished it with immense admiration for the author and what she survived- but I barely survived reading it.

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took us a while (my great aunt gave me this book 11 years ago, and I didn't pick it up until January), but we got there in the end! Someone get me the second and third book STAT.