Reimagining Herstories

or Cutting, Pasting and Gluing The Stories Of Your Female Ancestors

Nov 15, 2022

**From the series “Sisters Of Two Waters” by Andrea Chung**

Imagine changing the herstories of your matriarchal lineage by using the technique of collage: cutting bits and pieces from the stories from their real lives and instead juxtaposing onto them written images that define the inner landscape of their desires, dreams, and adorations?

It’s thanks to our featured artist of November Andrea Chung that this idea for an article started swirling in my head. And even though Andrea and I come from different parts of the world, with different herstories and burdens to carry, we are both interested in our family stories and those of our ancestors, especially the women.

While I was contemplating if this was a good idea for an article, as I didn’t want to take away from the importance of the story of colonialism in the Caribbean found in Andrea’s work that directly affected her life and those of her ancestors but not mine, my grandmother entered my mind space and would just not leave me alone. She is the rowdiest of all my ancestors as every time I put down my guard she takes over the muses and ends up on the page. She seems to have a lot that she wants to share through me, be it about love or her plum jam.

Here she is again prompting me to stop talking and start cutting, gluing and pasting a new spin on her life. But before I do the verbal collage, let’s return for a moment a few years back in time.

Grandma

A color photo of my grandmother with a smile framed with red lipstick and my grandfather from their 50th wedding anniversary stands in the bookshelf next to my bed. Together, they have been through two wars, illnesses, losing their firstborn son shortly after WWII due to a gun standing freely in the house. Despite the hardship, the day of their anniversary was everything that they enjoyed. Sitting at the nice restaurant in their beloved town Karlovac, next to the river Korana, eating comfort food and their glasses full with gemist (spritzer); family from afar and close by gathered together.

50 years earlier, my grandmother, a young partisan nurse in WWII married my grandfather, a political commissaire, in the midst of war. On the day of their wedding she found out that grandpa was 14 years older than her. While she nursed soldiers, he ran from village to village escaping the Nazis as there was a price on his head. No one had time for trivialities like age, etc. It’s amazing that they even survived and had descendants. They stayed together through thick and thin conveying the message of a perfect marriage. However, that got shattered in my mind when shortly after my grandfather’s death, a new dining room table and chairs came into the living room.

In the last few years of my grandmother’s life, watching telenovelas on TV, fact and fiction would interlace into a reality. Suddenly verbal jabs towards my good natured grandfather started coming out:

she mentioned that her brothers didn’t like my grandfather when they met him as he took a coat, if I remember correctly, from a dead partisan. They thought it was disrespectful. You see, even though the crew of ancestors that I met propagated socialism and communism early on, they came from a mother who was highly religious, something I only found our recently. But in the Catholic tradition, being good and kind, and respecting your neighbours even if they are dead is crucial and taught down the ancestral line.
My grandmother loved to sing. At the original dining room table, before the new one arrived, we were often 13 family members eating lunches and diners together. Each 3 course meal would end with a song started by grandpa on one side of the table and grandma on the other. A nap and walk to the river always followed. But grandma had dreams of becoming a singer that were cut short because my grandpa didn’t want her to work.
Always perfectly dressed, grandma always with heels and lipstick, her hair teased upwards, grandpa with his three piece suit and fedora hat bought in Vienna, they would walk down the cobbled streets of Karlovac, sit for a coffee in one of the cafes and enjoy their afternoons living the life of the petite bourgeoise. Idilic? Maybe. When grandpa died, I told my grandma that she should call her friends and go out for a coffee, only to realize that it was a no no for her. What would the rest of the town say if they saw her sitting in a cafe without her husband? She was always a strong women, seemed in control, so I was flabbergasted when I realized how small her world actually was.

Once grandpa died, she was free to buy the table and chairs of her dreams. Shh, now she comes to me to say that it has been enough of sharing her life for this moment. It’s time to show her as who she really was.

COLLAGE OF GRANDMA

I would cut out an image of her from a photo when she was young, wearing a white national folklore shirt, with her deep hazelnut eyes hiding behind her plump cheeks. I would surround her with the flora and fauna from the forests near the village where she grew up: hazelnut leaves and nuts, wild strawberries, porcini mushrooms and an animal spirit, a stork to protect her. I would put her in a long sparkly dress, and glue a microphone in front of her. Red lipstick, high heels as always. On the bottom of the page, I would add cabaret like tables and chairs with an audience. I imagine her as Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, a nun who just couldn’t stay a nun anymore as music moved through her body. Swinging her hips, with birds following her, her statuesque body would start to relax, her hands that cooked meal after meal to soften. I would add a beautiful tiara on her head, and name her a queen for a day.

Now the matriarchal lineage started to shake!

Great-grandma

My great-grandma walked on her knees around a church for god to forgive her children for renouncing religion. Maybe that’s why only last year I heard this story about her and that she was a devout Catholic. I found the image of her on her knees disturbing as I once experienced a similar scene in the cathedral in Zagreb as a young woman, also on her knees, walked to the altar that was more than a hundred meters away. All I wanted to do was lift the woman up and hug her, tell her that she is whole the way that she was.

Great grandmother was born near sighted, almost blind. Her own mother treated her as an unworthy member of the family, often giving her the last bits of food and she would never get cake when it was served. I only heard about this story at the beginning of this year, it teared me up. She was teased and bullied by her peers because of her bad sight. She ended up marrying a much older man who came back to Croatia from the United States where he gambled away all his money.

Collage of Great- grandma

I would happily cut out the black scarf that covered her hair, and give her a modern haircut. I would put the nicest pair of glasses on her round face to soften her gaze and adorn her with pearls around her neck. I would glue her on a piece of paper that reminded of the patterns and colors seen though a kaleidoscope. A radio would stand on a small table so that she could listen to music. And I would bring in an image of a man, a dancer that would sweep her of her feet and teach her the real religion of love. Add a few chocolate pieces, strawberries and cream, and a glass of champagne to moisten her lips. Great-grandma is ready for a party and a dance with Fred Astaire.

My mother remembers her as a good natured women, always singing at the table with her hands folded on top of each other resting on her lap. “Being good” seems to be the highest compliment one could receive among this bunch.

Mother

Despite all the mentioned adversity, mother also comes from a lineage of women warriors fighting small fights within their own environments. Mom broke the curse of the women that came before her by graduating from college and she ended up being a CFO of a large company, but she also had to cook and clean, and take care of the children. One can say that father was not a hands on family man. Always beautiful, dressed up, she had her share of trials and tribulations. I often think of her as mother courage.

Mother loved books and she used to make plays for the whole neighbourhood to see. However, as she was about to enrol into university, grandpa was diagnosed with throat cancer and her destiny changed. Since they were not sure if he would survive the surgery, as the oldest, my mother had to choose to study economy in order to take care of the family in case grandpa died. All the literature dreams buried the same moment, or if you would ask my aunt, she would say that my mother planted that seed in me a decade later.

COLLAGE OF MOTHER

A proud beautiful women, Andrea Chang’s peacock feathers from the above photo would look perfectly on my mother. I would put her in a garden with a small hut meant to be a writing studio. There, she would sit with a view of her garden, the one she tends during writing breaks. The garden would be full of daisies, roses, and violets with a few apple and plum trees. Little chipmunks running wildly. I would dress her in soft white linen clothes and would let her red hair fall all the way down to her lower back. A bit of Katherine Hepburn’s style. She wouldn’t have pain in her bones that ail her daily, so she would move her body across the garden in meditation. On the window of the little hut, a few books that she has written lean against the window, and an Oscar statue. Why not?

So where does that leave me?

**Crowning II (2014), from the series Midwives by Andrea Chung**

Daughter, Grand daughter, Great-grand daughter

The most spoiled of the bunch, my mother didn’t want to burden me with house chores or too much responsibility. And yet, the struggles of the women that came before me were always present silently. For years, I just ran … ran away from relationships, thoughts of motherhood, female roles. I partied and partied instead, and imagined myself free. I ended up doing a Masters in dramatic writing. But I didn’t know how to take space, didn’t know how to fight to be seen, I didn’t want to be seen. I became a wife and a mother, and for years it was hard to be creative. But all their songs didn´t leave me in peace. They wouldn’t let me give up, they were pushing me down the hallway and onto a stage, so here I am writing …

…. not to change history.

Being born in a country where history fills the public spaces of everyday life and is changed for the gains of individual president and government people, I stopped being interested in history.

I rewrite the stories of these women because I want to send my ten year old son into the future with stories of ancestors who were beautifully dressed, who peacocked down the street, were in touch with nature and its cycles. Women who would sing and write and grow gardens, women who would not be afraid to take space, who were a little wild. Women who turned their desires into reality and stood their ground, with kindness still as one of their favourite traits.

Now that the collages are finished and the women from my matriarchal lineage reunited, maybe I will make an altar where I will keep them all together as a reminder that there is no going back, that their stories belong to them, but also to be grateful as they paved the way for me and my son to keep on dreaming … keep on singing.

Vex, from the series Sisters Of Two Waters by Andrea Chung

you will become a graveyard
of all women that you once were
before you raise one morning
embraced by your own skin

you will swallow a thousand
different names
before you taste the meaning
held within your own

- Pavana Reddy

Tarantula: Authors and Art

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