My privilege is on the backs of those who suffered who experienced massacres those who fled before the big one – the first genocide of the twentieth century.
My privilege is on the backs of those who worked so hard but couldn’t follow all their dreams. my grandparents never got to see their parents again, or the country that was beloved or went to college; nor did my talented artistic mom still she created art.
My privilege is on the back of an immigrant mother coming to America as a baby from Kharpert, Armenia growing through hardship what is still inside is the trauma of genocide marked in my own DNA repercussions of denial reverberating when injustice is present; is on repeat, a never ending story, and so I always stand and walk in solidarity with all who are discriminated against, beaten in soul and flesh bodies taken from precious life. my privilege came out of love for a new beginning, my parents and all the ancestors yearning for beginnings
Pressing on in the truth that all life matters, a sacred gift reaching towards each breath.
Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD is a dancer, writer and award-winning educator who is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, outside Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She has published widely and her books include Embodied Inquiry: Writing, living and being through the body, as well as two collections of poetry. Celeste creates site-specific performances in the natural world exploring ecology and the arts. Celeste is finishing a collection of poetry connected to her Armenian identity which will be accompanied by a one-woman show. Her mom immigrated to Boston right before the Genocide, and Celeste integrates poetry and dance as a way of excavating identity.
Boston based artist and MFA, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian’s drawings and paintings uniquely reflect the tension and expansiveness of being raised in dual cultures, Armenian and American. As a young child, she watched her mother cultivate the Armenian tradition of dyeing eggs red by boiling them in onion skins. In her work, vignettes of current events, history and social justice emerge from the onionskin dye on paper, stretched canvas or compressed cellulose sponge. Her numerous solo exhibitions in the US include Skins at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, In the Shade of the Peacock, EXPUNGE and Miasma at Galatea Fine Art in Boston. Group exhibitions include the Danforth Museum and Gallery Z. She has exhibited in Armenia twice: New Illuminations (HAYP Pop Up) and Road Maps (Honey Pump Gallery). Reviews of her work appear in ArtScope, Art New England, the Boston Globe, and the Mirror Spectator. Odabashian studies early and medieval Armenian art and architecture at Tufts University with Professor Christina Maranci, with whom she traveled to Aght’amar and Ani in Historic Armenia. Pairing her ancestral past with the present in her art is her means of fulfillment.
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So beautiful. So deep. So insightful. To be able to reflect on what they gave up to bring us to the present. People talk about wanting to connect with their past, with their history, what better way to connect than to see the relationship between past and present with such depth.
This has opened my eyes to look at my own family and history, to ask on whose privilege my own present lies, to look at my past in a new way.
Thank you so much Elahe. I appreciate that it opens you up to your own family and history. Appreciate you reading so thoughtfully and articulating this. Celeste
Wow! What great harmony between rhyme and colour!
Thank you both!
So beautiful. So deep. So insightful. To be able to reflect on what they gave up to bring us to the present. People talk about wanting to connect with their past, with their history, what better way to connect than to see the relationship between past and present with such depth.
This has opened my eyes to look at my own family and history, to ask on whose privilege my own present lies, to look at my past in a new way.
Thank you for publishing this poem.
Thank you so much Elahe. I appreciate that it opens you up to your own family and history. Appreciate you reading so thoughtfully and articulating this. Celeste
Wow! What great harmony between rhyme and colour!
Thank you both!
Thanks so much Antoine! Appreciate your comments. Celeste
Just beautiful!
Thank you so much Sonya. Celeste
So beautiful Celeste, as always your poetry moves and inspires x
Thanks Tamar! Appreciated. Celeste
Thanks Tamar! Appreciate you reading and glad it inspires. Celeste