(no subject)
Aug. 3rd, 2012 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeDoing some better. I could still use an actual weekend's worth of rest, and the house situation doesn't bear talking about, but fortunately I'm getting a weekend this weekend. So there's that.
But I also just heard a small story from my aunt that I'm putting here for posterity: it started because my uncle found a record called Songs of the Lincoln Brigade (from the Lincoln Brigade?) that he passed along because they had listened to it when they were children, which she now thought must have been somewhat of an edgy thing to do under Franco.
(I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't know this by now, but my mother's family, who raised me and who I'm closest to, lived for a time when my mother was very very young in Franco's Spain. And then moved to Chile either just as Pinochet was coming to power or just after he did, I forget which. So, yeah. That happened.)
And then my aunt told me a story about how grandpa had been on the phone with someone, she thought it was another American, saying some not very complimentary things about Franco, and the person listening in on the phones said 'If you can't say anything nice about Spain, shut up.' and cut the connection. So that happened as well. For any of you who have lived under tightly regulated regimes that won't be that surprising, but it's something I want to remember. Or rather, something concrete I want to remember about my family's time in Franco's Spain.
(And come to think of it, is that even the proper term for an American woman born and raised in this country, or would Americans not call it Franco's Spain? Sometimes I wonder just how... not how American I am, but ... everyone I read on LJ and DW talks about normative experiences in relation to gender, sex, sexuality, body size, body shape, and even language sometimes. No one in my social circle at least talks about things like that. The little verbal quirks that feel not-right or not-normal-American.)
But I also just heard a small story from my aunt that I'm putting here for posterity: it started because my uncle found a record called Songs of the Lincoln Brigade (from the Lincoln Brigade?) that he passed along because they had listened to it when they were children, which she now thought must have been somewhat of an edgy thing to do under Franco.
(I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't know this by now, but my mother's family, who raised me and who I'm closest to, lived for a time when my mother was very very young in Franco's Spain. And then moved to Chile either just as Pinochet was coming to power or just after he did, I forget which. So, yeah. That happened.)
And then my aunt told me a story about how grandpa had been on the phone with someone, she thought it was another American, saying some not very complimentary things about Franco, and the person listening in on the phones said 'If you can't say anything nice about Spain, shut up.' and cut the connection. So that happened as well. For any of you who have lived under tightly regulated regimes that won't be that surprising, but it's something I want to remember. Or rather, something concrete I want to remember about my family's time in Franco's Spain.
(And come to think of it, is that even the proper term for an American woman born and raised in this country, or would Americans not call it Franco's Spain? Sometimes I wonder just how... not how American I am, but ... everyone I read on LJ and DW talks about normative experiences in relation to gender, sex, sexuality, body size, body shape, and even language sometimes. No one in my social circle at least talks about things like that. The little verbal quirks that feel not-right or not-normal-American.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-03 04:48 pm (UTC)You are you. Do you want to be an American? Citizen of the World? Either works!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-03 07:59 pm (UTC)For clarity, we actually don't have that experience, but the last three decades of our politics have not been good, and if that was on the general radar as a thing, it would have been appropriated by now.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-06 01:19 pm (UTC)No, we don't have that experience. Thankfully. And I don't have that experience either, but I think I get a lot of my phrasing about things like that down from my parents and grandparents, which normally I don't think would be an issue. It's just every now and again something pings on my radar and makes me think, or makes me aware that I don't talk about some things the way most of my peers do. Or my aunt tells a story that reminds me of our family history.
Oh! That was the other thing that I have now partially remembered. I was talking with someone on twitter a couple weeks ago and they mentioned being excited about something that I think Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing, something to do with film icons. And I didn't get what the importance of it was until they pointed out that it was a big part of their childhood. Except they're only a year or two older than me, and it made me feel very... not really un-American, which carries negative connotations, but not-American, as in not a normative example of a citizen of this country. Weird feeling.