"My Family's Slave" - The Atlantic

Long, but holy crap!

[quote]
Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.[/quote]

Um…wow. That’s a complex story.

I guess I’m glad it seems that Lola got a few happy years at the end of her life.

Incredibly powerful and moving. My eyes are still tear-filled.

I resemble this remark.

Oh, shit. There’s an epilogue of sorts.

Extremely moving story. Thanks for linking that, @Telefrog.

Oh no! How awful to discover a new voice with a unique perspective, only to find out that it’s been tragically silenced. 57 is too damn young.

What bothers me most about this

  1. The parents treated her like shit for her whole life.
  2. They didn’t even give her a fucking bed to sleep in!

That’s horrible. I feel bad for the kids who just grew up with this weirdness thrust upon them. These parents were terrible people.

Yeah there are definitely layers to how the parents were bad people. Her teeth literally rotting out of her head, just wtf?

Oh Jesus I forgot about that nasty bit of awful. Pretend I had an item 3 there.

You can’t move for abused maids in Malaysia and Singapore, and that pales into insignificance with the outright slavery facing these Filipinos Indonesians etc if they work in the Middle East. This might seem unusual to those upset it’s happening in America, but it’s normalised misery throughout the world.

That was a very moving article. Thanks for linking it @Telefrog.

Interesting. Someone dug up the obituary that was printed for “Lola” when she died in 2011.

[quote]
It was an odd relationship from the beginning. Miss Pulido served as mother, sister and protector, sometimes standing in for Asuncion when the colonel punished her for misbehaving, said Tizon.

Miss Pulido took care of Asuncion as the girl became a medical doctor in the United States and a mother of five.

“She cared for, protected, chaperoned and served my mother for 56 years, until my mother died of leukemia in 1999,” Tizon wrote in an email. “Lola never left my mother’s side. She was as devoted as any human being could be to another human being.”[/quote]

[quote]
She talked often about returning to her village, Tizon said, but always found a reason to stay here.

She found joy in nickel slots and gardening, and collected flower seeds by the hundreds in baggies she stashed around her room. Miss Pulido could have had anything she wanted, Tizon said, but she seemed determined to leave with as little as she was born with, keeping all her worldly possessions in four cardboard boxes stashed in her closet.

“Growing up with Lola taught me that not calling attention to yourself was a perfectly fine and honorable way to live,” Tizon wrote. “She was never angst-ridden and never felt entitled to anything, including happiness. I think that’s one reason she was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever known.”[/quote]

I need to talk to my father, but it’s quite possible he knew Alex Tizon. Unfortunately, he’s overseas right now. But, yeah, this story hit me hard.

So Lola in tagalog means Grandmother, which is what my mother in law likes to be called.

Powerful story, especially given how many similarities I see between the two. The story Lola is a pathological case, mine is just a pale echo.

There are some really insightful comments and reactions linked to this tweet.

Beautifully written story.

Lots of bullshit apologism driven by tribalism and face saving.

After Tom Holland documentary on ISIS and the Yazidi genocide and enslavement i spent yesterday arguing with the devout who were arguing that slavery under Islam is great, and slaves are treated well and westerners don’t understand that non western slavery is a good thing and their rejection of slavery is Islamophobic.

Slavery is a abhorrence. Anyone else defending it needs to pilloried and ostracised. Any cultural belief that defends it needs to be obliterated, be it Confederacy fans, Filipinos or Salafists.

The author of the Seattle Time obituary piece from 2011 has a new take:

[quote]
In retrospect, the obituary reads as a whitewash for a fundamental truth known only to Tizon and his family: Ms. Pulido was a slave.

Even typing those words makes me sick, as does knowing, as I do now, that I wrote about slavery as a love story.[/quote]

[quote]
Obituaries depend on the fundamental honesty of the people who survive to tell the story. Tizon lied to me, and through me, to our readers, depriving Ms. Pulido of the truth of her life, and the rest of us an important piece of our history. And for that I am truly sorry.[/quote]

Did anyone else find it surprising that Lola wasn’t sexually abused by the patriarch of this family?