In short, the author is a Filipino immigrant whose family brought with them a slave in all but name, and she lived essentially all her life as a household slave to a struggling immigrant family. Recommend reading the whole thing.
I wonder how common this is and was in recent decades.
Damn it’s dusty in here today.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thanks Andy.
That was longer than I expected, but well worth the read.
Dusty in here indeed.
Here ia an article claiming slavery is bigger now than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade.
They did a story on this on NPR this morning. They interviewed the editor, since the author passed away, and he said the author had a theory of journalism that said “each person has inside them one epic story.” The reason the editors ran this story, is because they felt this was the author’s epic.
It was pretty epic. Rare to find someone willing to open up the family cupboards like that, but Lola’s story deserved to be told and I’m grateful he did.
Enjoy,
Steven
Good read and one of the saddest things I ever read. I even printed the 32 pages for staff to read. We will use the 32 pages as a scratch pad so no waste.
She was an amazing woman. Thank you for posting. Well worth the time to read this.
Wow. That’s a helluva story and a helluva a nice bit of writing.
And yeah, the story comes with a lot of dust, apparently.
Just finished the story, then saw this thread. Amazing tale, I agree. And crazy how the parents just treated the situation as normal.
That article just made me angry.
I’m still not understanding how one Filipino family has a utusan for decades in the Philippines and then moves to the US and continues to treat their utusan as a slave equals “20th century slavery in America”.
Reading this now…thanks for sharing!
She was their slave, and they lived in America. What’s difficult to understand?
Poignant.
Okay, so this story supports the idea that slavery warps the psychology of the slaveowner along with the slave’s. The author’s mother…OMG. Sounds like a textbook case of what happens when someone chronically objectifies and dehumanizes another person they depend upon but refuses to cop to the evil in their actions.
Tough article to read. Reveals unpleasant things about human nature, the banality of evil, the human ability to justify just about any action given incentive. Uncomfortably, it also makes me wonder if the life she had, tough as it was, was better than the life she would have had in the Philippines. Did she understand what she was giving up when she made her choice, all those years ago? Does it matter?
Do you mean if the family had not brought her to the US, or if she had never been an utusan?
I think in either case, the answer is “she would have had a better life in the Philippines.” For one thing, it’s clear that in the US she was entirely isolated from any meaningful connections with anyone other than the family that owned her. In the Philippines, she would at least have been able to talk to people, and maybe see her family once in a while. A good life may not have been an option for her, and clearly she was loved by the author of the article, but the crime is of such magnitude that I don’t think any of that really mitigates it.
The article is pretty clear that she did not understand, and also that it wasn’t much of a choice. But no, I don’t think it matters.
I mean when she went into the grandfathers service in exchange for a place at his table, instead of marrying the older pig farmer her parents had chosen. On reread the article states that she didn’t know it would be a lifetime commitment.
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The title of the thread is misleading. There is no institution called slavery in America today.
There was one slave for one family.
It’s more like the stories you occasionally hear of a sex pervert who kidnapped a woman and kept her imprisoned in his basement for decades.
And as heartbreaking as the story is–when I read it, I felt not tears, but anger. The author knew from the age of 8 that his family was doing something terrible. When he reached adulthood, he did very little to stop it.
The article is well written, with colorful, emotional language.
But the story it tells is similar to stories of dysfunctional families all over America. Where husbands beat their wives who remain loyal, or where parents abuse children, and the children grow up thinking it’s normal for Dad to rape you.
A sad, terrible story.
But it’s a story of personal pain… not a story about “Slavery in America”