Have you read "My Family's Slave" by Alex Tizon? What are your thoughts about it?

Yes I read it last week. I’m not going to share my thoughts at this time.

I’d thank him. These stories are precious. They have remained hidden too long. Below the story I read there was a video about how we need a slavery museum. I agree its past time for it.

When I was little, my family had a slave too. When I knew her she an elderly cousin who was the oldest girl in her family. She had been raised since childhood to be a slave. Like Lola in the story she was browbeaten and mistreated her whole life to make her submissive. She took care of her siblings and after they left home she took care of her parents until they died. She never married and never had a home of her own. She was a slave. She died about 1967.

This was in southern Utah.

I have no idea what I would say to the author. That story first made me think of American slavery, then I thought of the Nazis, then I thought of households with abusive patriarchs who mistreat their wives both verbally and physically, and what that does to the children and the parents.

I saw a touch of using religion to make the abuse “ok.”

Thank goodness the world moves farther and farther away from this, although it still continues in too many places.

The author tried to make amends as best she could I guess.

It’s interesting to consider the generation of children who grew up with slaves in the family, and if they at a young age never felt it was right, then how they handled it. What do they feel? What do they all have in common? Much like children of alcoholics, or abuse, or children who had a parent who died when they were very young. Each group has some common threads usually.

People who grew up with slaves I would guess feel they can’t speak out or discuss their feelings, because there is so much disapproval regarding the subject.

I thought it was a very powerful piece about some of the more hidden types of oppression that still exist in families and societies. I don’t think the essay says this but the word “lola” is what a grandmother is called in the Philippines. I wish Alex’s parents had treated “Lola” well and had let her go back to visit, but of course, even more importantly, they shouldn’t have owned her to begin with. As in the book “The Help” often children are more mothered by indentured servants or enslaved people than by their own parents.

As the in-law now of a Filipina, I am eager to learn more about their land and culture.

Thank you for sharing this.