"While I could re-create a lot about my grandmother’s life through research—using oral interviews as well as business permits, census records, genealogical searches, photographs, and restaurant reviews—getting at her interior life was more difficult. One approach that helped was to look at her possessions. While she didn’t leave a diary or letters, I do have her dishes given to me by my mother. They’re from the Franciscan Ceramics plant in Atwater, hand-painted with apples and leaves around the edges. In the book, I write, “Those dishes say a lot about my reserved grandmother. She wanted elegant tableware, and she got it for herself, piece by piece. I like to imagine her setting her place and enjoying the sheen and the color of those dishes, not just as a sign of aspiration, but also as a way of embracing the place where she lived and asserting her Belonging.”
I read this section over the summer when I did a book event at Boyle Heights Bar. The audience was composed of community members who don’t usually attend readings but were curious about this history. Many were in their 60s and 70s, Latinx, retired teachers, water and power employees, restaurant workers. Before we got started, they shared with me that they didn’t know a lot about Latinx history. And why should they have? They certainly were not taught it in their textbooks. So I read to encourage them to tell their stories. You don’t have to write a book to do that. I asked them, Do your partners, children, grandchildren, neighbors, coworkers, and fellow churchgoers know your story? Hands started to shoot up around the room. One woman remembered learning to sew at the age of seven on her grandmother’s Singer sewing machine with the push pedal. She made a dress for her mother that she has now inherited and still wears. Another woman recalled that both her mother and her husband’s mother collected Blue Chip Stamps, and each could buy one piece of dishware every week, which they viewed as a sign of their fortitude, a way of making a place in their new homeland. A third woman, Shirley, from Burma (Myanmar), sat proudly with her chin in the air as Dan, her husband of 50 years, described the dishes from her homeland, such as curries, that she still made for her extended family and friends. That was yet another way to keep place, memory, and history alive."
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