grandma
Chan Soo Look is my wife’s grandmother. Born in
Zhongshan, China in 1903, she came from poor parents who sold her into
concubinage when she was 18 years old. As a concubine, she enjoyed a
life of privilege as the fourth wife of a well-to-do businessman. That
privileged life lasted until the Communists came into power in 1949. In
1970, at the age of 67, Chan Soo was brought to the United States by
her eldest daughter. I met her in 1988, and she became family when I
married her granddaughter in 1991. I call her “Pawh-Pawh,” Cantonese
for “grandmother.”
During family visits I would notice her
surroundings
and her personal objects that make up the household. My experience in
her home has been akin to the idea of what some scholars call
“auto-topography”: how the material objects with which people surround
themselves articulate something of their lives and personalities.
Pawh-Pawh’s belongings –mementos, clothing worn
soft, a battered mop, chipped teacups - suggest the value of the old,
the used, and the imperfect. Entering her world betrays a dramatic
contrast to the values of contemporary society, which insists on the
young, the new, and the perfect. I do not presume to translate her
experiences, but I can take the viewer into her home and allow her
possessions to reveal fragmented parts of her story. They, too, will
preserve the mystery of her life, so that we might ponder what this
98-year-old immigrant woman contemplates as she sits at her altar with
her offerings of fruit, flowers, and incense. For me, she is not only a
grandmother, but also a figure of continuity, the living origin of a
family story.
Epilogue: Pawh-Pawh passed away in December of
2001 at the age of ninety-nine, and left behind five generations.
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