Bahadur begins her story with the lack of narrative of her great-grandmother Sujaria’s life from immigrating to British Guiana, from Calcutta. While searching through archives of her life prior to immigrating and post immigration, Bahadur discovered written documents from both captains and surgeons aboard. Although written documents existed, she found them to have biases in them. She found information ranging from uprisings, to those who slept with the indentured women. These perspectives are from the eyes of those who aided in the transportation, slept with the women. She notes it lacked expressing their feelings and everyday thoughts. She goes on to express her frustration with her grandmothers story (and many other indentured women who traveled through the passage) and finds missing gaps in her journey specifically from her perspective. Instead, these perspectives are held by ships surgeons, captains, planters, overseers, immigration agents, and
magistrates. All white men in power whose perspectives were through the misogynist, racist, people such as the plantation and government officials. If any narrative was depicted, it was through a bigoted bias gaze. Since she was unable to fill in those gaps, Bahadur has to seek out unofficial resources by traveling back to the village her grandma was from. She sought out folk songs, photo cards from that era, and even turned to herself and her own experiences as an immigrant. as well as her professional life. Through her quest to learn more I was able to learn about the Indo-Caribbean community and its origins, as well as the amount of discrimination and trauma, and forced unpaid labor many Indian women suffered during their journey and subsequent arrival. If I were to construct my own family archive I would turn to official records, jewelry, school records, as well as existing extended family whose life experiences overlapped with one another. Oral interviews of existing family friends would also help in the archive. For more solid resources, I would even travel to their countries of origin to find extended family to interview as well.
The person I watched was Vicki Tong Young who is a former teacher from Lake Forest,CA. She goes on to express her admiration and love for a family heirloom that has been in her family for over 140 years. That heirloom was gifted to her great-grandfather by a railroad official (his name is inscribed on the gold watch). This introduces a family legacy (I use legacy to describe heritage here) in reference to her great-grandfather Mok Chuck who, at 17, left his hometown of Yin Ping to North America. Mok Chuck was one of the earliest railroad pioneers. Listening to this interview made me sad for a variety of reasons. I was already aware of the common narrative that Asian-American families recounted the sacrifices their grandparents or great-grandparents made when immigrating to the western sphere of North America as well as the unspeakable discrimination. What I was not aware of and this surprised me, was the violence and extent of the sacrifices they made. In particular, when Young started to describe the exclusion laws and how many of the wives were not allowed come over. In particular, how Chuck didn’t see his wife for 15 years and not even being there for the birth of his son. The sacrifices the wives made, especially his wife who lost her first born son and was unable to see her husband for a few years and then to only spend a few years with him until his death in his 50s. I wouldn’t say this is missing, but I would have wanted more elaboration on the experiences of the wives in depth. Although the audience was made aware she was without her husband for so long, I wonder what kind of emotional and psychological toll that also took on the wives. Especially those whose husbands were unable to return due to the exclusion acts/ if they weren’t merchants. Being taught the plight of other peoples immigration from their own countries but excluding others such as those from Asia, seeking a better life really bothered me in school. I would like to know more about the wives and the daughters to understand their experience as well pre the exclusion act and how that affected the disproportionate ratio of men (who traveled to North America) and women (who stayed in their village) during their separation.
