Book Review: An Inconvenient Child
The Inconvenient Child
By Sharyn Killens and Lindsay Lewis
Miracle Publishing
Reviewed by Lezly Herbert
To be pregnant and unmarried in 1948 was seen as somewhat of a disgrace, but to give birth to coloured child at a time when the White Australia Policy was being taught in schools would have been an extremely difficult situation.
We have come a long way since those times, and so has Sharyn Killens, the illegitimate coloured child who was born in 1948 after her blond-haired, blue-eyed mother had an affair with a visiting American sailor.
The Inconvenient Child is Sharyn Killens’ heartbreaking story of abandonment, scandalous mistreatment and unbelievable hardships endured in institutions that professed to care for their charges.
After being cared for by her mother’s friends who were of African American decent, Sharyn was five years of age when her mother left her with the Sisters of Mercy at St Martha’s Home and Orphanage where her childhood was taken away from her.
She was sixteen when she was incarcerated in the Parramatta Girls’ Home for delinquent girls and not quite seventeen when she was sentenced to hard labour and endured the nightmare that was the Hay Institution for Girls.
This compelling autobiography, supplemented with archival research, actually documents first-hand experiences of the barbaric and inhumane treatment suffered by the “lost and forgotten children of Australia’s welfare system”.
One of the things that helped Sharyn survive unimaginable hardships was the solace she found in singing and as an adult she did become a singer and entertainer. Her friend of twenty years, Sydney business woman Lindsay Lewis, has helped her document her painful childhood memories as well as her journey to discover her African American heritage.
This is certainly a side of Australia that has been left out of the history curriculum and I felt privileged to be able to share the powerful journey of this courageous woman.
Flourishnote: You may also like Bankrolling a Baby and All You Need Is Love... and Book Review: Heartless.
