At the Horizon School for Gifted Children it was announced that there would be an art contest. All the students would make something. A picture, perhaps, or a sculpture from clay. I opted for the clay. I liked the feel of the soft material in my hands, squeezing it with my fingers. It reminded me Read More
Category: Columns
Patrick Earl Ryan on Seeing Yourself Not Only as a Victim, but as a Perpetrator of Harm and Hurt, Too
Do you have a favorite ancestor? What is his/her/their story?
My great-great-grandmother, Maria Cortez, who was from indigenous Chilean and colonial Spanish blood, born in the 1820s somewhere near Valparaiso, Chile, which at that time was an international port of colonial trade, like New Orleans, to where she immigrated in the 1850s. I’ve yet to find her trail into North America and Louisiana from South America. She could’ve buggied through Mexican Texas or sailed up the Mississippi Delta. She settled in Saint Bernard Parish, just to the east of New Orleans, in a community of Filipino fishermen out in the sticks. She married one or possibly two Filipino men and mothered five children, one of whom was my great-grandmother, Lucy Victoriana. My dad always described his Nan Lucy as an “Indian” with long, thick, black hair who would chase her husband down the street with a battle ax whenever they got into fights.