awareness
from wellesley student to activist: Alum Jen '99 came back today to talk about her work to promote awareness and education about the mixed race community through her organization Swirl. After attending the lecture, I find I take it for granted that I grew up in a place where mixed race people were more common and there was no hostilty about it. Granted, there was still confusion and stereotyping about it, but things have changed a lot since 2000. Interesting observation that people say different things based on what race they think you are. Interesting also that mixed race people can take advantage of white privileges. So much artificial values we put into how we look (ethnically). Definitely still many issues to work out (still people down in the south who don't support interracial marriage, laws that made that illegal were only removed in 1967), many issues that force people to choose and prioritize (divides within just one ethnic group and having to choose among ethnic/minority groups is more difficult). I liked Jen's answer that we have to find ways to find common ground for those goals and move towards those goals in baby steps. Should keep that in mind.
new year baby: attended asian american film festival's screening of documentary "New Year Baby" about a woman who travels back to Cambodia to find out about her family's history in the Khmer Rouge. I cried. There was so much that was lost, so much pain, and yet a whole country acts like nothing happened, they deal with their pain by keeping it a secret. New generations have lost that history, they don't even believe their parents when they are told it happened (how is that even possible?). The woman who made the documentary started a non-profit called Khmer Legacies to record people interviewing their elders/parents about their stories as a way to keep the history and to heal the pain. 25 years of keeping secrets, guilt, losses. I cried when the daughter got the buddhist monks to perform the newborn ceremony for her and her father that they didn't get to do because she was born in a refuge camp and I cried when the family got the parents a real wedding cake because they never had a proper wedding. So much that people give up for and lost. And still no one has been tried for the genocide.
new year baby: attended asian american film festival's screening of documentary "New Year Baby" about a woman who travels back to Cambodia to find out about her family's history in the Khmer Rouge. I cried. There was so much that was lost, so much pain, and yet a whole country acts like nothing happened, they deal with their pain by keeping it a secret. New generations have lost that history, they don't even believe their parents when they are told it happened (how is that even possible?). The woman who made the documentary started a non-profit called Khmer Legacies to record people interviewing their elders/parents about their stories as a way to keep the history and to heal the pain. 25 years of keeping secrets, guilt, losses. I cried when the daughter got the buddhist monks to perform the newborn ceremony for her and her father that they didn't get to do because she was born in a refuge camp and I cried when the family got the parents a real wedding cake because they never had a proper wedding. So much that people give up for and lost. And still no one has been tried for the genocide.