For Sarah

Sally,
I want you to know that I am so proud of you. It is not easy growing up in Monticello as a mixed race woman certainly not with the relationship you have with Master Jefferson. I know you hold a lot of restatement in your heart, but I beg you, please forgive me!
Growing up during my time as a mixed race woman caused anxiety as I was brought into a strange world with even stranger people. I did not fit in with the whites or black slaves, and I struggled to figure out who I truly was. But I did not want the same for you, Sally, my baby girl. I wanted you to have a better life than I had. Look at all the great opportunities you’ve been afforded. A trip to Paris where black people are free! A chance to live and make a life for yourself. You’ve experienced exploration and education, an opportunity you would never have had if it weren’t for me.

All I wanted was for you to be happy. I wanted you to live a life unlike any other. And if you want to be a good mother, you would do the same for your children.You’d have kids with Mater Jefferson, so they could have a prosperous life. Everything I did was for our family So please, do not be angry with me.
Love,

Mom

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Respone to Sadhana Week 6

Sadhana, In your response to Wilkerson you note the connection between "the act of leaving and the act of creating newness." You discuss the way that migration and creating a new beginning can become. in and of themselves, acts of resistance. I am similarly fascinated with Wilkerson's preoccupation with these themes. For me, the most provocative argument in the book is Wilkerson's framing of the Great Migration in relation to the "classic" narratives of European immigration and pursuit of the American Dream. As she puts it in the final paragraph of the epilogue, "By their actions, they did not dream the American Dream, the willed it into being by a definition of their own choosing. They did not ask to be accepted but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps few others recognized but that they had always been deep within their hearts." Wilkerson's narratives intentionally resonate with European immigrants' American Dream stories. Why...
Read more

Week 10 Response

As Professor Hobbs named this class "Racial Identity in the American Imagination , " I want to explore the reasons why the word imagination was used. This class could have, in fact, been called "Racial Identity in America." Was imagination used to underscore the fact that race is a construct? Does thinking of racial identity through the lens of imagination color our reading of texts or understandings of the history of race in America? For instance, I think The Hemingses of Monticello would be interesting to think through in terms of imagination in individual actors in comparison to American Racial Imagination as a whole.
Read more

Quarter Review BlogPost

The thing that I am most struck by going back and rereading my blog posts is how much I have learned throughout this quarter both in class and by doing the readings.  It is sometimes hard for me, in the thick of it, to realize how much it is!  I'm always caught up in the day to day of working, seeing friends, eating, but this class has truly been extraordinary.  The amount and scope of reading (and watching and of course, discussing) we have done is incredible.  I think back to the first day of class, I didn't anticipate how much this class would change me, but it has.  I think I still have a lot of questions.  There are many untied ends. Can someone be transracial and was Rachel Dolezal treated unfairly?  How can we understand the era of our nation's founding today?  How can we write history about it, when there are so many narratives that are virtually impossible to tell with the sources we still have?  How should we treat the Founding Fa...
Read more