The Ninth Life Of A Diamond Miner: A Memoir

by Grace Tame

Grace Tame has nev­er walked on mid­dle ground. From a young age, her life was defined by uncer­tain­ty — by trau­ma and strength, sad­ness and hope, ter­ri­ble lows and won­drous highs. As a teenag­er she found the courage to speak up after expe­ri­enc­ing awful and ongo­ing child sex­u­al abuse. This fight to find her voice would not be her last. In 2021 Grace stepped square­ly into the pub­lic eye as the Aus­tralian of the Year, and was the cat­a­lyst for a tidal wave of con­ver­sa­tion and action. Aus­tralians from all walks of life were inspired and moved by her fire and pas­sion. Here she was using her voice, and encour­ag­ing oth­ers to use theirs too. The Ninth Life of a Dia­mond Min­er is Grace’s sto­ry, in Grace’s words, on Grace’s terms. Like Grace, it is sharply intel­li­gent, deeply felt and often blis­ter­ing­ly fun­ny. And, as with all her work, it offers a con­struc­tive and opti­mistic vision for a bet­ter future for all of us.

Published by Pan Macmillan Australiain 2022

ISBN: 9781760988050

I rated this 5 stars out of 5

I don’t know how to describe this book, or my expe­ri­ence of read­ing it. Grace is very fun­ny, even whilst reliv­ing and retelling the most hor­rif­ic tale of her abuse at the hands of a cold-blood­ed mon­ster. I can’t believe this remark­able woman had the courage and grit to not only sur­vive what she went through, nut then put all this down in writ­ing (of course reliv­ing it along the way), include her art and her pho­tos of fam­i­ly and her­self, and then pub­lish it to the world. She quite lit­er­al­ly bares her entire soul, and she does it most­ly to edu­cate peo­ple on how groom­ing works, how child abuse affects sur­vivors, hop­ing she can pre­vent even one more child going through her pain. This is so inspir­ing in and of itself, and then you read her expe­ri­ences and you’re inspired again, and again, and again.

Some parts are hard to get into. Many parts are very hard to read with­out grip­ping the book so tight you’ll bend the spine in half. But I found it immense­ly edu­ca­tion­al, enter­tain­ing, fun­ny and trag­ic and authen­tic. I sin­cere­ly believe that every sin­gle male in this coun­try needs to read this book. The women too, of course, but espe­cial­ly us fel­las. I’ll be lend­ing my copy to my son and I hope you read it too and then do the same for the blokes in your life.

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