My semester project is a generational family collection of stories and poems about the women in my family. I want the themes to focus on women’s issues and immigration. Although I plan to take stories from each of my female family members I also plan to take creative liberties in order to make the stories complete and very personal. I know many of my female family members, especially my mother and my grandmother are not very open about their issues so as a result I will have to insert my own opinions about how they felt and make sure it’s a complete thought.
I plan to make the stories and/or poems in sections depending on time period so it would start off with my great great grandma who was brought over from India, and then my great grandma, my grandma, my mom, and me. I plan to ask my family members about their own personal stories and use the information to write these stories/poems in first person. I was planning on maybe writing a section of each family member and in the end talk about my life and why it has brought me to study media in order to bring women of color and women’s issues into the light, because all my life the women of my family had to suppress it.
I want to make the book mainly for the women in my family and any other immigrants and first generation women who feel like they have to conform to a rigid societal structure. I want to publish the book on a website, I was thinking either Yumpu.com or medium.com. Writing short stories has always been a hobby of mine but I have never actually published anything, it would fit into my portfolio for work because I want to focus more on writing in my future career. I understand this will take time so I plan on writing a chapter or a section each week until the due date and then publish it with a short paper.
For my short paper outlining the deeper messages, I’ve planned to talk about the migration of Indian indentured servants to Trinidad and then Trinidad to America. I also plan to highlight the lives of Caribbean women in those countries and tie in the issues of feminism and violence around women and relate that to my family personally.
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| https://twitter.com/1947Partition/status/907993650835140608 |
Links:
India to Trinidad
Trinidad to USA
Working Women in the Caribbean:
The Value of an Indo-Caribbean Woman’s Life:
- “Since the era of Indian indentureship, the narrative of the jealous Indo-Caribbean husband has been used to justify the brutalities of gender-based violence. In 1881, the Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad declared, “Chastity is almost unknown to the class of woman indentured from India to this colony.” Branding the indentured woman as sexually licentious set the stage for devaluing the life of an Indo-Caribbean woman and justifying the brutality of her murder. The “jealous” husband, the “crimes of passion,” and the proxy language of inevitability continues to perpetuate the mistreatment, abuse and murders of Indo-Caribbean while refusing to name its core: a pernicious cycle of victim blaming with culturally justifiable rape culture at its core.”
- This relates to my great grandmother and I’m going to use the abuse and mistreatment following her several husbands through the decades of her life
Inspirational Article:
http://www.browngirlmagazine.com/2015/12/the-indo-caribbean-experience-now-and-then/
Website to create book:
Hi Tiffany! I love this idea so much and I have so much respect for you, for trying to figure out your family history/story . It can be really hard for individuals who have gone through so much suffering to share their stories. But it is so vital in the discourse of our history. I believe in you and you can do this. I would suggest you look into these two short books “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” by Warsan Shire and “Seam” By Tarifa Faizullah. These are a collection of short poems but there similar to what you want to accomplish. I would also try to find family pictures and use those as a visual element. Good Luck and looking forward to it!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany,
I'm so here for this and looking forward to seeing the final project! I would be sure to paint a clear picture of the differences (time,location,political tensions, expectations and responsibilities) and maybe the different approaches each women in your family took to the same issue to kind of highlight the progression or lack thereof for women. I think noting the similarities and differences in experience will be interesting.
Like Sana mentioned if you can get your hands on pictures of each family member that would really add to the visual presentation of your product.
Best,
Yolanda Mackey
I think this idea is really cool since it shows a progression through generations. A lot of people in this country are immigrants, myself included, so I think it'll relate to a large audience.
ReplyDeleteMaybe to differentiate from time periods add a filter to the image to make it seem like it's aged - or like a different color scheme per location.
Looking forward to it!