Alexis Gayle DB 1

                     Bahadur is writing about the history of her great grandmother Sujaria and her unrecognized truth, bravery, strength, and struggle in her voyage from Calcutta, while overseeing society’s portrayed image of indentured women. In the official historical record, it labeled Sujaria as a 27 year old coolie departing from Calcutta. The record included the names of her father, her native village, and possible home life occurrences, such as  physical body marks and trauma in her personal life. The official  historical record is from actual historians and people that were not there firsthand as everything occurred. In the actual record, it is said that her great grandmother’s testimony was missing. In other words, the real side of the story was not in the record, which makes it seem that the truth was being covered up about what women went through at that time. What was not regarded was who she truly was and not what everyone on the outside perceived her to be. Bahadur decided to follow up with more history by using other data from existing archives, paper trails, statistical reports, diaries, transcripts, confidential dossiers. Some unofficial sources that Bahadur utilized to her benefit were folk songs, oral histories, colonial era  postcards, photographs, and traditional tattoos. If I were to construct an archive of my own family history, I would use newsletters, family records, biographies, and local histories. The things I would look for mainly are the names of my ancestors, where they were born and where they grew up. Also I would look to see their history in terms of migrating to somewhere else or any hidden information. 

                    In the oral history I studied, I watched the interview with Isabel Cuenca. Isabel lived in Houston, Texas a year after migrating to America with her parents at 15 years old. It seemed at that time, she was not prepared for the big change in her lifestyle, culture, and her biggest fear was not fitting in the right way with everyone else around her. Even through her time in America, she revisited her roots and experienced racism and noticed culture shocks. She has spent her life as a painter. In art, she experiences common stereotypes toward Filipino work, like all Filipinos dress a certain way to create art or they only sculpt with pottery. As an artist, she got an opportunity after graduate school to go back to her birth place in the Philippines. This oral history confirms the ideas that I already have on Asian Americans because I know what it is like to be stereotyped as an African American, so in many ways they are similar. I was surprised by the comfortability between the interviewer and Isabel. She did not seem too nervous. She did not sound like she was answering questions from a script. If anything more was added to this, it could have been how she felt about her ancestors migrating or if they had any experience with stereotypes in art.