Category: Discussion Board 1

She has written history about the women in India who were not treated fairly and their existence was not acknowledged. More than that she wrote about her great-grandmother. I think it is missing a lot of information in there. For example, she mentioned that she had to work hard to find the important information needed but she couldn’t do it either. Because of the information she has, it’s not official. She searched from various sources like “ I looked for clues in visual traces and the oral tradition: folk songs, oral histories, photographs and colonial-era postcards, even a traditional tattoo on the forearms of elderly Indo-Caribbean women. Perhaps most daringly, I turned to the self and wrote about my own journeys: to India,…” 

From Bahadurs research I learned that not only women from Asia were having a rough time, Indentured women were forced to sign this contract that would make them work without pay. A limit I would say that Bahadur faced was when her great-grandmother left without mentioning where she was going, so she had nothing to really look into and didn’t really know if her great-grandmother was part the women who were working without pay. Another limit I would say is when Bahadur found those diaries on that ship that had confidential documents on supervisors who slept with the Indian women. This would be a limit because as we know our true his tends to be swept under the rug or not enough is being told, so its difficult to pin point our history/background or in Bahadurs case her background.

John Long great-great-grandson of Anon was being interviewed, he was born in 1947 right after the war and is a native of Canton-Toishan-China and came to the U.S in 1954 and grew up in the inner-city of L.A south central L.A. He moved to the U.S because the communist revolution and the communist purge, so they had to escape. John became a citizen through his father who had already moved to the U.S and was already a citizen, then he started working in the real estate industry and then started his career at Kaufman & Broad finance department. John’s oral history confirms what i knew about Asian-Americans. I knew that some Asian-Americans come to the U.S for a better life and better jobs due to life threatening events that happens back home, but I feel like it’s only Asians, there are people from the Caribbean that leave their country because its rough and some go through life threatening experiences. So it’s a first-person confirmation.

From the article about Bahadur’s grandmother, it is clear that as a woman of South Asian descent back then it was not easy traveling to a new country by herself. Not only did she have to deal with racist and sexist situations, but she left her abusive husband behind while being four months pregnant. The term “Coolie” has been mentioned several times in the article and it is a derogatory statement referred to people of Asian descent especially south Asians at the time because they were more commonly migrating, partly because of the aftermath of British colonialism. If I were to construct data of my own family history I would ask my parents about their parents and continue from there because I don’t know much about my ancestors.

In the oral history of Asian Americans, the South Asian oral history project by the University of Washington emphasizes the importance and history of South Asian Americans who have migrated to the United States in hopes of a better life. One narrator named Zakir Parpia speaks about how he was born in Bombay, India and he left the country at twenty seven years old and got married. He then quit his job because it was not doing well in the market, so he started his own building company called, “Himalaya Homes”. He was part of an association called Spokane and was elected to become the president in 1982. The different stories of South Asians are interesting because it tells the life of someone who struggled to succeed and provide a better life for themselves and their families. Although they did not go in depth with their histories, it gives a perspective of how immigrants continue to work to shape a brighter future throughout the years.

                     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.