Garey Santano DB1

When Bahadur began to research her great-grandmother’s emigration pass  she found that there was great lack of information as to who she was, it was also void of any personal accounts of her journey to the colony and even why she became an indentured servant. The racist and sexist records often kept by captains are also obscured, only mentioning scandals or tragedies. Because of this Bahadur had to employ various methods in order to continue her research. She searched British documents, the logs of captains, she went back to Guiana to look for various cultural clues and visited her great-grandmothers hometown in India. To uncover the whole story, she must track down the official documents as well as other sources of information, all through the eyes of an emigrant child and a journalist.

One thing I learned from Bahadur’s research was that, by piecing together information from local cultural traditions you can get to know an ancestor. This is something I never considered while researching my own grandparents in Trinidad. Her research showed me that I can gain information about them I thought was forever lost to me. I have not been searching in the right places or asking the right questions. The answers to the questions Bahadur ask not only reveals the lives and voices of her great-grandmother but also those of many other indentured women. Some of the types of information I plan to look for now are records from the parliament and I might have an opportunity to speak to one my grandfather’s old friend with whom he traveled to America. If I ever get the chance, I would also like to visit his hometown in Trinidad.

The oral history I studied was about Anthony Hom, an American Chinese from Palo Alto California. He went to high school in San Mateo California and went on to study at the University of California for a year and then spent the rest of his undergraduate at UC Davis. He has some background in architecture but has been working at Stanford university for 18 years. One thing I learned was how American Chinese were treated, I knew that they were mistreated, but I was a little surprised that they were confined to one part of the city. Hom did not talk much about his father, it would have been nice to hear some the stories he heard growing up. One thing I think I am missing is more information on his ancestors who worked on the tracks.  I’m wondering what life was like for them, and how they got to where they were.

Response to Kamala Harris article.

When I read the phrase “model minority” I was reminded how many Americans see people of Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Chinese etc. descent, not only do they often lump them all together as being the same, but they also assigned stereotypes to them, like being really smart and good at math. This is what I understood “model minority” means to certain Americans. It almost sounds like they use Asian Americans to set some standard for what other Americans should look and behave like. Yang perpetuates a stereotype when he wears a math pin and makes jokes about how he knows a lot of doctors because he is Asian. What the author meant by “model minority” was that Asian Americans are portrayed as being more prosperous because they are somehow better than other minorities. The “anti-model minority” is an example of someone who challenges the stereotype, is involved in civil rights movements, and has progressive politics. It is not only due to economic and educational achievements but more that they have been respected and treated better because of the civil rights movement.