The Inconvenient Child, a New Book, Reveals the Shocking Truth of a Secret Australian Child's Struggle to Survive and Find Her American Family
An unacceptable liaison, a secret birth, a mother's silence, and her black child's journey to discover the truth. In 1948 Sydney Australia, pretty, blond Grace discovered she was pregnant to an African American merchant marine who had sailed back to America. The White Australia Policy was in place and society's judgment mattered; so what did Grace do with this secret, Inconvenient Child?
Sydney, AUS (PRWEB) June 16, 2009 -- The Inconvenient Child, a compelling new book, reveals the shocking true story of a secret Australian child's struggle to survive childhood and find her African American family, after a search spanning two continents and 48 years.
Sharyn Killens is better known as Sharyn Crystal, a successful Australian singer and entertainer. But her life wasn't always glamorous and her childhood was at times, a living hell. The Inconvenient Child is the true account of her extraordinary journey to success and her quest to discover her identity.
"This is not your usual celebrity biography. It is a gritty, honest and confronting account of an abandoned Australian black child's struggle to survive in a white society and find her African American father on the other side of the world," says Lindsay Lewis, Author.
The story begins when the baby Sharyn, is rescued from squalid foster care by visiting champion African American boxer Freddie Dawson and taken to live in a party house in Sydney's red light district of Kings Cross. But her absent, elegant mother then abandoned her in a convent-orphanage at age five, where she suffered abuse at the hands of a cruel nun for seven years.
At fifteen, after clashes over her father's undisclosed identity, the troubled teenager was arrested, back in Kings Cross. Sharyn had committed no crime. She was a runaway - a disillusioned black kid who was begging her white Australian mother for love and for the identity of her African American father. But the Courts deemed her 'uncontrollable' and in 1964, she was sentenced to notorious juvenile detention centers of Parramatta Girls Home then Hay Girls Institution, where she was stripped of her dignity and programmed into submission.
Sharyn's first hand account of this shameful treatment has prompted outraged readers to send emails and messages of support and indignation.
Her solace was her love of music but how could she realize her dream of becoming a singer if by twenty-four, she was still caught up in the Kings Cross lifestyle as an exotic dancer?
But the story is not all heartbreak and misery.
Through courage and perseverance, Sharyn achieved that dream as Sharyn Crystal but her problematical relationship with her aloof mother was exacerbated by the other secret her mother kept and would not reveal; the identity of Sharyn's African American father.
When that secret was finally revealed, determined to find him, Sharyn set out in search of her roots; a quest taking her eight more years and a journey across the world, first to New York, then Los Angeles and eventually to America's Deep South.
Readers say they are applauding, as the outcome is revealed of this Inconvenient Child's search to find the loving family and belonging she has yearned for.
About the book:
The true story of a secret abandoned Australian child's struggle to survive childhood and find her African American father.
The Inconvenient Child
By Sharyn Killens and Lindsay Lewis
Miracle Publishing, Australia
Pub Date: May, 2009
ISNB: 978-0-646-48782-3
About the author:
Lindsay Lewis began her career in a major record company in Sydney before running her own businesses. In 1992, after many years working in key Australian advertising agencies, she moved into publicity then began her own successful textile design and manufacturing company. Lindsay also spent many years as a professional singer and entertainer.
Sharyn and Lindsay have been close friends for twenty years and The Inconvenient Child is the result of their close collaboration.
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