Archive

Today, my mom and I looked through the jewelry under the bathroom counter in my grandma's room (what was once the master bedroom). I took some stuff to take back to school, and my mom looked for stuff for the wedding. I initially didn't intend for this to be part of my family archive project, but it ended up being helpful as my mom commented on how "if I was in India, I'd be wearing all of this"-- something to unpack for later when I go through the interviews. I found some cool earrings from the 80s, some nethi chutis for future fits.

Earlier, when my mom was showing me how to massage my grandma's neck, I noticed that my grandma still wears her necklaces and jewelry from India. When we were going through the jewelry, she came over to tell us that unfortunately all our gold is sitting in the bank.

It was also fun finding my old teeth amongst the jewelry, and I'll probably turn it into something.

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I've never really thought much about the showcase before this independent study project. Probably because I haven't put much in it in a while. I asked my mom to talk about things she wanted to talk about, and also asked her some questions about things. As she summed up herself about midway through, it represents mostly travel, her kids, stuff she's gotten from friends, and memories (her explicit connection to memory is also interesting and I'll have to explore that further later).

Something I thought was cute: the 4 cups from the wizarding world of harry potter, and me going "why did you save all four?" and her going 4 cups for the four of us. It represented a moment when my family was a different four, but we're still four now (5 if you count my dog, 6 if you count Stick, 9 if you count my sister's hatchlings). She pointed out a lot of the travel things, and her retirement card, and an HP bank that said Take Charge of Your Life!

We found something that belonged to my dad, and she commented that he would have only kept it if it had some sort of ulterior significance to him.

The cluttercore of it all reminded me of my own wall, and my mantle at school, and my door stickers, and how I construct my archive in similar ways as my mother.

GL

One thing I’ve realized is that I’ve gotten a lot of “content” for my independent study in informal places, just as a nature of being around my mom. We talk about reflective/social things more than I think I realize.

I feel a bit weird writing this down, and also taking notes down after the conversations, because usually when my mom tells me these things, I just take them in and don’t really do anything with them. Because it’s just what we talk about.

Today, she was telling me about her conversation with her friend GL. GL was telling her about how she felt unsafe attending a Trump rally(my mom has a pretty diverse range of friends, both politically and racially) because of the counterprotestors. My mom argued back— “that’s the reality that non-white people have to face in America.” Here, she was referring to the reality of unsafety (but this time, she meant in racial terms).

We went grocery shopping before she could continue with her anecdotes she shared with GL about the many instances of racism she’s faced. As we were walking out thirty minutes later, she resumed (I had forgotten what we were talking about by then, but quickly realized).

In 199X (I don’t remember, but a time before me and my sister), she and a group of other Indian people were stopped by the police going from San Diego to LA– for no apparent reason. This was the first time she realized that profiling was something that could happen to her in America. They checked their passports, which they luckily had on them as International students, and finally let them go.

She also told me about how she would often get stared at in Texas (in restaurants and such), and said that that was one of her reasons for moving out of Texas.

She then started telling me about the Missouri baseball game incident, which I had heard before, but I think she was just reminiscing on racist incidents at that point and was aware of this herself, because she told me that she didn’t tell this story to GL.

I need to go back to the interview to see if she comments about any of this stuff, because I don’t remember, but it’s definitely interesting to think about it now in a more “formal” context.

P.S. Unrelated, but it was cool to see the Bhangra team dancing in the rain today. I’ve been seeing them practice in the middle school blacktop these days.