Kgshak remembers her mum
Originally from South Sudan, writer and author Kgshak Akec resettled to Australia as a young girl.
Her first novel, Hopeless Kingdom, was shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award. Inspired by her own journey, it tells the story of a South Sudanese family searching for acceptance in their new home in Geelong.
But while Kgshak is embracing the written word, in her South Sudanese culture, storytelling is an oral tradition. There is traditionally no written form of her Dinka mother tongue, which is one of more than 60 languages spoken in her homeland.
‘So much of who we are is spoken down from one generation to another’
‘The language that I grew up hearing is not traditionally a written language. It’s an oral language,’ Kgshak said.
‘So a lot of our histories, stories, our song, is heard by us from our elders.’
Kgshak’s story forms part of the Library’s Hear Their Voices Again appeal, which aims to preserve and make accessible more than 20,000 oral histories and recordings of conversations with Victorians – conversations about their lives, their families, their work and the moments that shaped our state.
Many precious voices in the collection will soon be gone. The analogue media used to capture recordings from past decades – such as cassettes, reel-to-reel and VHS tapes – is deteriorating. Without urgent preservation, they will soon become unplayable.
To find out more, or to donate to help preserve more memories in the collection and make them accessible, head to Hear Their Voices Again.
