CryBaby by Mabel Gibson
“My dad says when I was born, I resembled a porcelain doll. A tiny, pale, fragile newborn named Mabel Ivy. My grandmother has always called me Mabel Ivory, an acknowledgement of my pale origins. My dad says I cried all the time, and to stop me crying, they would put me in the car and drive around until I was back to being a peaceful sleeping doll.”
CryBaby (2025, Night Parrot Press) is the debut collection of micro memoir from Yamatji author Mabel Gibson. Charting her childhood years through to her early twenties, Gibson offers 56 perfectly formed snippets detailing her evolving sense of self and place in the world. From youthful naivety to girlhood crushes, family love, first loves and first heartbreaks as well as her challenges with depression, suicide ideation and the complexities of mental health as a young woman and First Nations person.
Gibson draws us into her world during her early years, reminiscing about living around Perth and Albany, moving between the places and spaces she shares with her siblings. In the earlier sections, there’s a strong sense of youthful innocence being cracked open. In ‘Night Shift’, Gibson shares her mother's anxiety when her father leaves to work night shifts at the city police station, making the children all sleep in the same room with her, locking the door and pushing a mattress against it. A small detail reshapes young Mabel’s perspective of her father’s work:
“I don’t understand why my mum is scared. But, she, unlike me, knows what my dad is doing all night… One morning, my dad walks in with a fresh burn on his forehead. I hear him tell mum that someone on the street put out a cigarette on his face. And then I understand why my mum is scared.”
Family and the power of these bonds are the breathing vein of much of Gibson’s writing here. The love she feels for her family, and the pain she feels when they are absent from her life, is palpable on the page, never more poignantly so than in ‘The Day He Died’:
“The world has stopped, the colours are dull, and I am expected to keep going. My uncle is everywhere, haunting me in my teenage bedroom. Grief is a bad tattoo you get when things are blurry, a permanent reminder of my mother screaming.”
When Gibson begins to struggle with her mental health in her teens, it is these family bonds that rescue her, especially her relationship with her younger sister, Ruby:
“At fifteen. I was suicidal. The psychiatrist asked me, what is one reason for you to stay alive? I said Ruby.
I’m seventeen. The doctor asks me, what is one reason to keep yourself alive? I say Ruby.
When I’m twenty-one. The psychologist will ask me, how have you stopped yourself from dying? I will say Ruby.”
Gibson shares the ups and downs of her recovery, the support from her family, and the micro-moments that make a life worth living: driving in her car, the feeling of rain, the colour purple. This journey is not a complete one, and Gibson doesn’t shy away from the challenge of holding onto these moments. Despite these challenges, Gibson also seems to have a knowing sense of wisdom that things can – and will – change.
This is apparent whether reflecting on herself or the emerging relationships that have escaped her:
“One day, you’ll sit down on the bus across from me or maybe the train. And then I’ll go home. Do the same things I always do, write in my journal, cut up an apple, cuddle the cat. Nothing new and nothing old. Nothing reignited in me.”
In her introduction, Gibson candidly shares being conflicted about writing her story as a First Nations writer and how she often felt like the stories she had to tell weren’t the ones that people wanted from her:
“I now realise that no matter what subject I write about, it does not take away from the fact that it is First Nations writing. My Aboriginal identity is woven through everything I do, and it underpins all my thoughts and observations.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment to open the book with and what follows is a journey many will see fragments of themselves in. Whether it’s her girlish love of One Direction, the ache of fitting in, the depths of heartbreak or the joys of authentic love.
While Gibson’s experience as a First Nations person growing up in Western Australia is absolutely unique to her, there are also shared threads between her hopes, dreams, and anxieties that took me right back to my own emotionally-charged youth.
For me, there’s nothing more powerful in writing, especially memoir, than showing the reader the ways in which we are different – and the same.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
