From Of Another Fashion: ‘We found this when we were going through my grandma’s photos (after she passed away on April 29, 2012 at the age of 98). It’s taken in Los Angeles. I forgot about this photo but it’s one of my favorites. It was taken in the 1930s and the dress was likely made by my grandma, like a lot of her clothes. Submitted by Cheryl Motoyama (Santa Ana, California).’
Louisa Elizabeth Nichols was 32 years old when, on 24 July 1901, she took her husband’s revolver, walked outside her family’s home at Tarlo, near Goulburn, and shot herself in the head. Watching was her 11-year-old daughter, Lily, together with her other six children: Ruby (10), Ronald (9), Hilton (6), Elsie (4), Louisa (2) and baby Edith…. On hearing the shots, Charlie Ah Chong got out of bed, finding his wife dead and the children crying. When the neighbours arrived ten minutes later, there was nothing to be done.
Black and Asian women’s lives can only be interpreted in relation to the history of colonialism and slavery. There were significant differences in white stereotypes of black and Asian women that evolved in the colonial era but both contrasted adversely to ‘superior’ white women (Bush 2004). Asian women were stereotyped as docile and passive and oppressed by patriarchy, particularly Moslem women. The perceived seclusion of the veil, purdah and the forbidden sexuality of the harem, common themes in western orientalist discourse, strengthened the stereotype of passivity. This contrasts with the multiple identities attributed historically to women of African origin in the Americas during the era of slavery- ‘Sable Venus’ and sexual temptress; rebellious ‘she devil’ and as, the African American writer Zora Neale Hurston, observed, the ‘mule ah de world’ (Bush, 2000).
My brother just found this old article from The Toronto Star. My dad is the guy in the front row with his head down. He was one of the first “boat people” who landed in Canada.
Vietnamese religious procession in Versailles, 1975. Photo Credit: Archdiocese of New Orleans
The name “Versailles” refers to “Versailles Arms Apartment,” the New Orleans East public housing project where a tight-knit group of Vietnamese refugees was first resettled in 1975. The refugees have fled their homes twice already in their life time—first from North to South Vietnam to escape communist persecution in 1957, and then to New Orleans from the war in 1975.
