Privilege on my ancestors’ backs

Guardians of Our Inheritance by Marsha Odabashian

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

Celeste Nazeli Snowber
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.
Celeste Nazeli Snowber

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Marsha Nouritza Odabashian
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.
Marsha Nouritza Odabashian

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9 Comments

  1. 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

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