Roselyn X

By William Russell

Roselyn X, a young Black prostitute, has terminal cancer and a very small child. She is angry at fate, racism, sexism, and her loss of home and culture. Roselyn Y, masquerading as Roselyn X relays her feelings and pleas in a series of 22 cantos in a collection of poetry.

Roselyn’s story is not all dark, it offers light and hope. Her story should never have happened; nothing has changed for Aboriginal Australians; little has changed for women and issues of sexism — or racism; and Black Deaths in Custody still generations on; let alone drug issues over that 50 year landscape of all of the poetry in this book. Black lives around the world rate a lesser value than the deaths of White people, why?

Thought provoking, humorous, enlightening, and a pleasure to read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716690532

Book preview

Prologue

ROSELYN X was commenced in 1972 and stumbled forth in fits and bursts for about 10 months; but, the vast majority of the work was redrafted during 1993, 1995 and 1996. The original intention had been to publish the work under the pseudonym of Roselyn X, however, the passage of time altered its destiny. I have always been sensitive to the voice of the poem coming from a female point of view and I felt that to publish it under a female name would be a deception amounting to a lie. Writers have, from time to time, written under pseudonyms of the other sex — and for various reasons — but I felt it may devalue the overall spirit and substance of the poem. The inspirations and the stories were drawn from the lives of one Aboriginal girl (and a White girl) caught up in prostitution in the 1970s and 1988 — I knew both women, and both ended their lives on the street.

PART I

_________

RED

Red is the colour

of my Blood;

of the earth,

of which I am a part;

of the sun as it rises, or sets,

of which I am a part;

of the blood

of the animals,

of which I am a part;

of the flowers, like the waratah,

of the twining pea,

of which I am a part;

of the blood of the tree

of which I am a part.

For all things are a part of me,

and I am a part of them.

THIS AUSTRALIA

When they came to us, they said we were primitive savages

And that they wanted to save us: to bring us as little children

To the saviour Jesus. We had to give up our heathen ways

And eat from the body of Christ: to become cannibals of Christ. We had to discover the terrible shame of our bodies and cover Them up with clothing to mitigate the temptations of the flesh

That seemed to consume our white superiors (our older brothers And sisters, who would never come to accept us as equal kin).

They gave us whisky and syphilis and sin and called all this Progress and the new world we should strive for. And then

They deserted us, turned their backs complaining that we

Were not trying hard enough to become true Australians,

In this Australia — their country. The country they stole from us.

STEALING GENERATIONS

The