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Showing posts from January, 2017

Honoring our Grandmothers

Have you ever been in a space where people speak movingly about the faith of their grandmothers? I always think, “oh, that’s interesting you have Christian grandmothers who talk about their faith.” My two paternal grandmothers were secular Jews. I saw convictions, not religious practice. My maternal grandmother was Presbyterian, but she certainly didn’t talk about it with me. I saw her actions more than anything else. Yuriko Nishita , my maternal grandmother and my last living grandparent, lived among us from January 31, 1926 to November 29th, 2016. I do not have all the facts about my grandmother, and I may have gotten some of the details wrong. What I do possess is my experience of her. She loved me and made sure I knew it, and she was salty. Whoever came up with the stereotype that Asian American women are meek and quiet probably never met anyone in my family. Over half of the women have (or had) sharp tongues. In 2010, I told her I had gotten a new job in Atlanta after ye