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lyrics
Recently....I was “welcomed” to the stage with,
“Well-- .....I won’t bother trying to pronounce the surname, and I’ll probably mess up the first name too.”
Does this happen to you?
This was my grand invitation
An eradication of my family story.
Australia...you got...this….thing
“Hi, my name is Emily, and yours?”
“Olenka”
“O-olenka? That’s...interesting, where’s that from?”
Exhausted by the cost of the question
I’m expected to hand out my oral, historical memory
Knowing the person across from me
Has no etiquette of reciprocity
No well of matrilineal genealogy to respond to me
The cultural poverty is apparent, you see
When a westerner knows not whose descendants to be
The orphans of their own fable dine with their demons, silently
The consequence is of great, great cost to me
My name is Оленка Наталя Торошенко
For the sake of the english tongue, I simplify it to
Olenka Toroshenko
It doesn’t sound right, but it’s not worth the fight
I don’t want to be a Hungry Ghost
So I’m not seekin’ no apology,
These words are callin’ me
They’ve befallen me
The consequence the blatant poverty
Trauma befallen yee
A nation built upon the backs of the penal colony
You followin’ me?
Diaspora born memory free
Lost, strugglin’ just trying to be
No time to bury their family as they leave their home country
Crossin’, survin’ the treacherous seas
Pray to the G-ds left behind not to be taken by disease
Mercy upon us as we arrive on Australian shores, please
Culture, language, ancestry left behind
The orphans of their own fable dine at empty table
Future bereft of cultural cradle to nurse descendants
Honour a lineage with reverence
Signed dotted line, forever more that yours and my introduction begin with
“O-Olenka? That’s interesting”....
It is the name handed down to me
By a long line of Ukraine, famine-surviving immigrant families
5 generations of grandmothers standing behind me, endowing me with
моя мова, моя чудова здоров'я
[direct translation: my native language, my wonderful health]
My name is my inheritance
And I don’t want to be a Hungry Ghost
So my name is
Оленка Наталя Торошенко
credits
released February 21, 2022
Written & Performed by: Olenka Toroshenko
Choral Music: Rozhanytsia
Recorded by Allara Briggs Pattison on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people
Produced & Mixed by Allara Briggs Pattison on the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung and Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nations at her home studio & at Harmonic Whale
Production & Mixing Support : Daniel J Marquez of Harmonic Whale
Master: Juan Carlos Almao
Artwork: Larissa Poho
A big thank you Allara's Aunty, Karen Briggs, for allowing her home to become our studio.
Acknowledgements to The Orphan Wisdom School for helping me gain my bearings in this mad world.
Olenka is a writer, poet, speaker, dancer, clown and producer who takes pleasure in actualizing her zest for life and
exploration through the power of the spoken word. Her motivation to live in, love and create a saner and more connected world inspires the words she casts into existence....more
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