I had the privilege of being Book Doula – writing mentor and co-editor – to my dear friend Nina Angelo in the creation of her powerful family memoir Don’t Cry, Dance, over the past three years. Launched in September at the Jewish Museum in Sydney, Nina gives Part 1 of this family memoir to her Jewish parents – who’s voices speak out from their perilous journey and survival through WW2 Europe and the Nazi concentration camps, to their migration journey to 1940s Australia with their baby girl Nina – where they held strong in the face of a strange and sometimes hostile world of post-war Australia.
Part 2 traces Nina’s own journey, growing with their loving and courageous legacy, into the dynamic community artist and single mum of twins she still is today; leading herself into and out of her own survival story with countless peaks and valleys, to become the much-valued iconic character of the NSW Central Coast community, where she still lives and from where she works and creates and travels the world. If you’d like to buy Don’t Cry Dance, please follow the link below. I can recommend it highly as a page-turner which a message of hope and forgiveness in today’s world, as Nina and her family rise from the ashes with love and connection, again and again.
Margot Edwards 