Over the last two weeks, I released Part 1 and Part 2 of my story Chow-Chow. Included at the top of this post is a recording of the full story.
Chow-Chow blends fictional events with my own personal memories. While the Yoshida family story was purely fiction (based on facts about Japanese American internment), I didn’t fictionalize Auntie’s story very much at all.
Both aspects—the fictional and the true—were painful to write about.
Executive Order 9066 upturned the lives of many American citizens. It’s an important part of our nation’s history, and we must remember.
Auntie’s life was an important part of my own history. It was hard for me to expose those memories and shine a light on the effect a troubled family member can have on an extended family.
I’ve thought about Auntie—my great-aunt—a lot throughout my life. I’ve tried to imagine what ingredients in her life came together to form her. There were many difficult hurdles she had to surmount. I don’t know all the details of her life. I know she had a mean streak, and something planted it in her. Did any of us deserve to inherit her trauma or suffer her revenge? Did she deserve the things that happened to her to form her personality? No. The answer is no.
These are the kinds of big questions many people are talking about now, and I’ve found it can help to dig into it. I want to leave behind the negative aspects of our family experience and remember the positives of my aunt, the good times we had with her—and there were good times. I want to believe that as the world goes round and round, there might be fewer hurdles for people to surmount, less trauma to endure and certainly less to pass along.
All of us are jars of Chow-Chow lined up on a pantry shelf; each of us is a combination of everything we’ve experienced in life. Some people develop tasty personalities to be relished, and some turn sour. Is it Nature or Nurture? Is it a combination of both?
My family has mostly turned the stories of our troubled aunt into funny anecdotes and emphasized the good memories we have of her. And there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t love to enjoy a piece of her chocolate cake.
RIP Auntie.
Share this post