From Peru by Christina Tesoro

Posted on October 14, 2007
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The reason that I chose to write about my family rather than Kara Walker’s exhibit is because I feel there are only so many ways to say that one atrocity or another was awful. There are only so many ways to excoriate humanity for its inherent cruelty, and by now there are fewer and fewer opportunities to be shocked by that cruelty. Did Walker’s art make an impression? Of course it did. The simplicity of her images, the scope of emotion (disgust, anger, horror) that silhouettes could rouse was something I had never really considered, and Walker’s creative and self-questioning responses to her critics were probably what I loved most about the exhibit. But for some reason or another, it was not enough for me to want to write about it.

The thing I find about writing with regard to ethnic conflict is the feeling that you have to have a “right” to it. What can I possibly say about ethnic conflict within my family? My mother came to Peru when she was nine; my grandmother, a few years earlier. Of course there were struggles: to learn the language, to assimilate. But my family was never persecuted. There was never any violence – there was never anything more than ignorance, really. I’ve never suffered outright discrimination for being half-Peruvian, so what right do I have to this essay?

On the other hand, part of me feels that not only do I have a right to this essay, but perhaps I have a responsibility. It is a responsibility more to myself than anything else, because my delusions of grandeur are not so large that I think this essay will extend to the far-reaches of the globe. But in writing this essay, I have had to ask questions that I never though of asking – to my mother, about her childhood and my grandmother - and in that way, I think, this effects me.

Racism and ignorance come in small scales as well as large, and perhaps is more dangerous on the smaller scale where it can be too easily overlooked. When my mother was in third grade, her teacher wanted to introduce her to the rest of the class and make her feel at home. In an effort to break the ice, she decided to give the class a lesson about Peru. She showed photographs of the poorest parts of Peru, where people live in huts and walk barefooted, parts that existed in Peru then and still exist today. My mother was from Lima, the capital of Peru and a city that, right now, is not so very different from New York. She couldn’t yet express that and so had to endure the taunting of her classmates (“You lived in a hut!”) Even though this was not her teacher’s intention, it is an example of racism and ignorance. It was a small and unconscious, but nonetheless, it was.

My grandmother was the first person on my mother’s side to come to the United States. She came with no money, and a meager education. She worked as a housekeeper for a rich family and because she didn’t speak the language, she was often forced to do things that were dangerous, and clearly not in her job description (check the oven when it’s full of dangerous cleaning fluids, swim with the baby even though my grandmother never learned how to swim). My grandmother could not tell her employers no and expect to keep her job, and she needed the money to bring the rest of her family over. Her employers clearly took advantage of a woman who couldn’t defend herself, and that too is another form of racism.

But how does this all effect me? In truth, I don’t honestly know how to answer that question. I am half-Peruvian, and barely fluent in Spanish. This alone made it hard for me to ever relate to my grandparents. I hardly know my mother’s side of the family. My mother never spoke to me in Spanish because there was no reason to – she married a third generation Italian-American from Brooklyn who spoke English in which my mother was, by then, fluent. Her accent is that of a native New Yorker, and she cooks Italian food far more frequently that Peruvian food. I was insulted when my mother told me about her third grade teacher, and I was angry that my grandmother was so frequently taken advantage of. But I do not relate, and I’m glad I don’t. I went to a vastly multicultural high school, and my friends come of at least a dozen different countries around the world. I can’t say that I’m outraged, because I’m not. I’m indignant, and I’m proud of my mother and my grandmother - I love them all the more for enduring the ignorance of arrogance of others. Do I have a right to this essay? Maybe. Maybe not. But it did give me a chance to ask questions that I have a responsibility to ask. I never asked my mother “What did you go through as an immigrant?” because to me, she has never been an immigrant, and neither have my grandparents. Their stories, though small and personal, are important because through them my ignorance, at least, can be countered.

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