My Life as An Enslaved Person

As a law in North Carolina, a mother’s status as an enslaved person is passed on to her children. My mother died when I was six years old and shortly thereafter, I was sent to my late mother’s mistress to become the companion of a young daughter who was my age. The mistress taught me to read and spell but her untimely death had me bequeathed to a cruel master who never failed to remind me that I was his property and had the right to rule me body and soul. To slaveholders, a slave being a property cannot have any properties and slavery according to Senator Brown of Mississippi is “a great moral, social, and political blessing to both master and the slave (Jacobs, 1861)”   

To stop my master from making me his concubine, I entered into a relationship with a white man who showed me some kindness. I had two children from the relationship but my master continued to harass me and never failing to remind me that my children and I were his property. I learned from another kindly slave that my master planned on sending me to the plantation for my children to be broken in as slaves. My primary concern is for me and my children to be free. However, to slaves who were supposed to be illiterate and unable to think for themselves, the promise of freedom, even if given in writing, is not legally binding.

When I escaped, a friend hid me in her mistress’ home, not far from my master’s home. I was very careful not to endanger the people who were helping me on my escape. My master never had any suspicion that I never left town. During one of my master’s absences to hunt for me in New York, my children were auctioned and bought in behalf of their father, a white man.  My children were later entrusted to my grandmother who just became a free woman, having been bought at an auction by an elderly lady who manumitted her as soon as her sale was finalized.

I transferred from one hiding place to another until I got to my grandmother’s home. I hid in her attic for seven years watching my children grow until my uncle could make arrangements for me to be transported to the North.  While I was in New York, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Concerned that I would be kidnapped and transported back to North Carolina, my employer hid me when she learned that my master’s heirs were in town looking for me. She later persuaded and paid $300 to the heirs of my master for my freedom.

 

  

Bibliography

Jacobs, Harriet A. 1813-1897 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Kindle Edition.  Grapevine India. Originally Published by Lydia Maria Child, 1861

National Historical Publication & Records Commission. The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, Last Reviewed on June 2, 2019, Available at https://www.archives.gov Accessed on 11 March 2023

Scott Corbett, P., Volker, J. et al. Troubled Times: The Tumultuous 1850s U.S. History, OpenStax, Rice University, Houston Texas, 2017

(This post was an assignment submitted to my US History class at EGCC.)

La Leyenda de Lupino Azul

En Texas, se llaman gorros azules. Estas flores tambien se llaman el conejo, trébol de búfalo, Lupinus texensis, y porsupesto, lupino azul. Cada primavera, estas flores silvestres vienen a visitar.. Este año, tambien llegaron las lluvias. Ellas son la flor del estado de Texas. Ellas son como mi amigas. En este momento, ellas estan visitando. Al igual que el pasado año, están en un prado cerca de mi casa.

Durante la civilizacion Mesoamericana, alli vivia una niña Coalhuiteca.La tribu Coalhuiteca vivia en el valle del Rio Grande, no lejos del rio. La gente dela tribu Coalhuiteca vivia como cazadoras y recolectoras. 

Hay años que no llueve en el valle del Rio Grande.Cuando no hay lluvia, sique la sequia. Durante la sequia, la gente tiene poco para cazar y recolectar porque los animales no tienen nada para comer y mueren. El sacerdote de tribu reza al Gran Espiritu por lluvia. La hambruna provocada por sequia ha matado a mucha gente. Mucha gente murió a causa de la sequia.

El Gran Espiritu le dijo al chamán que estaba enojado porque la gente se habia vuelto tan egoista. La chamán queria que el Gran Espiritu no se enojara. Asi que decidió pedirle a la gente que hiciera ofrendas quemadas.Nadie queria quemar nada porque la gente era muy egoista. Pero una chica lo hizo.

La niña tiene una muñeca con un vestido azul a la que llama muñeca guerrera. En medio de la noche, cuando nadie miraba, la niña fue a la fogata y ofrecio su muñeca al Gran Espiritu. 
No mucho después de que llegó la lluvia y en l parte superior del valle del Rio Grande, flores vestidas como muñecas guerreras cubrian los prados.

Adaptado de un cuento de Tomie dePaola, 1983.

Noong Sumabog ang Empanaditas

"Matuto ka sa inyong mga pagkakamali."

Ang tagumpay ay di nakakamit magdamag. Sa mga paligsahan, natututo muna ang mga contestant 

The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett

Borrowed book from Overdrive through my New York Public Library online library card. The setting is some small town in Lousiana called Mallard. Riveting, the book revolves around the story of Desiree and Stella, twins growing up poor and could not wait to escape their home town populated by fair-skinned African Americans who could could pass as Caucasians. 

The Gungo Pea Princess

Fairy tales in the olden times can marry off a prince  living with his parents, who happens to be the king and queen  of course, to a wandering princess. Hans Christian Anderson (HCA), in his time, married off a whiny princess on the account of a pea hidden under a pile of mattresses. My twisted version of the "The Pea and Princess"  is for Christine who brought me a pound of gungo ( pronounced as gung-go) peas  from Jamaica as a token  for trading off my work schedule with her so she make the trip. 

Not all fairy tales I know starts with once upon a time so let me tell you about the gungo peas princess.  Gungo  peas are also known as pigeon peas in the US. It's also called "kardis" in the tongue I was born with, in other words, mother tongue or tongue ina. So let me name my gungo princess Cardice as I am reminded of Candice Anderson Smith who had  since moved to Tennesee to live with her brotbers and sisters  in Jesus at the Straightway Church with Pastor Dowell. 

Princess Kardice  did not know she was a real princess untill she was told so by an older couple who claimed they were real royalties of the  Gungo Kingdom. King and Queen and their adult unmarried  son Prince lived in a huge house they called their castle  in a vast ranch somewhere in the Jamaica. 

As HCA's story goes, Kardice came knocking on the front door of the huge house called castle one stormy night after she got lost in what she thought was a wetland preserve. 

"Poor sweetpea!" Queen exclaimed, feeling sorry for Kardice who looked like shit at the time.

Queen asked his son Prince to find some blankets for Kardice as she led the unexpected guest into the dining room.  After Kardice finished  the cup of noodle soup hastily heated by Queen on the microwave oven, she was led into one of the guestrooms by Queen. Prince went back to his bedroom as soon as he gave a blanket to Kardice to get back to his videogames. 

Queen liked Kardice so much for Prince, and so as the HCA story went, she too got several mattresses and stacked them together putting some  gungo peas in between the mattresses. Queen  expected to find out if Kardice was a real princess if she could not sleep because of those gungo peas

underneath the mattresses. 

In the morning at the breakfast table, Kardice still looked like shit from lack of sleep. She kept stifling a yawn. Prince himself looked tired. Queen was pleased knowing that her search for Prince' would-be bride is over. 

"Who me?" Kardice thought Queen was kidding. 

Prince who had yet to tell Queen he is gay looked pissed. 

The reason why Kardice looked tired was because she stayed up all night playing videogames with two other virtual players in Prince' room. Se had to tell Queen that she had an estranged husband deployed in Afghanistan who happens to be the father of her two beautiful children. Queen was disappointed but had to bid goodbye to Kardice that day as she had  to catch a plane back to New York later in the day so she could go back to her job as a licensed vocational nurse at an assisted living facility in Manhattan the following day. 

She was actually surpised to find the same gungo pea that Olga asked  her to bring back from Jamaica under the mattresses that Queen prepared for her to sleep on. Kardice is familiar with HCA's pea and the princess story find and she finds the the fairy tale corny. 

This twisted modern fairy tale is for Christine, one Carribean queen, in her own right. 

Jewels of Opar

Once upon a time  in Barangay¹ Urayong, there lived two friends named Ampalaya and Talinong.  The families of Ampalaya and Talinong were neighbors and as they grew up, they were always  compared and pitted against each other.  The friendship did not last as Ampalaya became very jealous every time  neighbors complimented Talinong of her  statuesque bearing  and her  pretty tiny pink flowers that mature into sapphire-colored globules.

Ampalaya grew  bitter because of many other things: her vines   crawl  on the ground unless there is a trellis or other plants nearby which she can cling on to and her leaves do not look as flawless and young as Talinong's.  She may have  golden-colored  flowers as beautiful as those of Talinong but Ampalaya's flowers  were either a male or a female.  Her bitterness grew while she  watched her male flowers wither and pass on. Unlike Talinong's flowers, Ampalaya's female flowers  need pollinators for them to mature, have seeds, and be able to reproduce. Ampalaya's female flowers are known to bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators  as Flor Amargo, meaning bitter flower,  like the name of the Mexican singer-composer who popularized the  song  "Tiempo"²

In spite of her bitterness, Ampalaya is well loved, popular and known all over the world as either Amargoso, bitter gourd, bitter cucumber, or even vegetable insulin, among many other names. For those who rarely  know Talinong, she is identified  mainly by her scientific name: Talinum paniculatum.  How beautiful and upright Talinong became Jewels of Opar is another unknown and likely forgotten story.

There is no such place as Opar. Opar is a fictitious name in a made-up place where Tarzan was born and raised. Tarzan, which means white ape in the  made-up language of Opar, is the main character in the series of books written by Edgar Rice Borroughs that debuted in 1912. Tarzan was a feral child rescued and raised by an intelligent ape named Kala. Kala lost her infant ape while fleeing  Kerchak, her ape chief during one of his rampages. Kala   came upon the newly-orphaned Tarzan after  Kerchak  killed Tarzan's widowed father  John Clayton. Tarzan's parents were the Viscount and Lady Greystoke of England  who embarked on a trip to Africa but unfortunately captured during a mutiny. Viscount and Lady Greystroke were marooned in  an African jungle that happened to be the territory of great apes led by Kerchak. Tarzan was born in the jungle and his mom, the late Alice Rutherford-Clayton died when Tarzan was exactly one-year old. Kala  who lost her infant ape and was still lactating nursed Tarzan with her breastmilk and pretended that the odd-looking white ape was her son.

"Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar" is the fifth book  by Edgar Rice Borroughs that was published in 1918 about the life and adventures of. Tarzan. The  white ape who was breastfed by Kala,  a very intelligent ape, had by then become a grown man. Tarzan had since gone back to England and claimed his noble birth designation as Earl of Greystroke. He had also married Jane Porter, an American woman who had initially gone to Africa with her father  to study apes. Tarzan hated living England so he went back to Africa with Jane and lived in the large Greystoke  estate in Opar.  The jewels of Opar that Tarzan referred  to as his "pretty pebbles" were recovered alongside  the ashes of a Belgian outlaw who perished after being  trapped inside the jewel room  of Tarzan and Jane's lavished home while trying to steal the jewels for himself. The whole Greystroke estate was torched when  Jane was kidnapped for ransom by a gang led by Achmet Zet, an Arab.

Nobody knew if a Talinong even grew from the site where the jewels of Opar were recovered. I saw  Talinong adorned with its sapphire-colored globules at the courtyard of Brooklyn borrough hall in New York City almost two years ago and we both agreed  we have come a long way from Barangay Urayong. My name is Ampalaya. 

¹Barangay, pronounced as ba-rang-guy, is the smallest administrative and political unit in the Philippines. It's is the equivalent of a village or community.

²Tiempo 

by Flor Amargo

Burroughs, E. R. (1918) Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. A. C. McClurg and Co. New York City

the opposite of child labor at Nomadland

I have had Amazon Prime longer that I have had Facebook. All these years I felt priveleged listening to

Prime Music, watching Prime Video and getting Prime orders delivered within 24 hours with my Amazon Prime membership.  Reading about Amazon's Workampers sonehow reminded me of  rhe swearshops, child labor, and harsh working conditions in developing countries monitored

by the International Labour Organization for compliance to decent and humane working condition  laws for workers' protection. Some love lost however cannot stop me for wanting water filters for the coffee maker, gel pen refills and every day deals I would fancy and having these delivered at my door step within 24 hours.