by Gennette Cordova
As Filipino American History Month comes to a close, I find myself possessed by a nagging impulse to remind the people of Seattle that this celebratory month came to be thanks to the efforts of a woman in Seattle who is still doing the work of documenting and sharing the history of Filipino Americans to this day.
Continue reading OPINION | Honoring My Family’s Legacy of Sharing History and Heritageby Alex Garland
The history of a place often solidifies as the days tick by, with old documents scanned and archived for online viewing, books written and published about historic people and places, and a growing interest in genealogy and ancestry. Some places, however, seem to wither, becoming forgotten, overgrown, and cast into the murky waters of time’s eternal trickle. Seattle’s Comet Lodge Cemetery near Graham Street on the southeast edge of Beacon Hill is one of those places that has fallen out of memory for many.
Continue reading A Changing of Worlds: The Liminal Space of Comet Lodge Cemeteryby Phil Manzano
Garfield High School will mark the centennial of its founding Saturday, Aug. 27, commemorating a school whose values of diversity and acceptance have shaped generations of students as well as the culture of Seattle and beyond.
Garfield is more than just a high school — it is a pillar of the Central District, one that not only broke down racial barriers throughout its history, but spurred many on to greatness.
Continue reading Garfield High Centennial: Celebrating 100 Years of Shaping the Central District and Beyondby Patheresa Wells
“She stared at her father’s lifeless body, and the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.”
—Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem
There was a poem I started to write about my mother’s death but I could not finish it. I have probably started and stopped as many times as I take a breath in a day. I inhale in the breath of an idea but the exhale, the writing, doesn’t come. Maybe it is because I was there, alone, when she died. It was 2010 when she died during surgery at the age of 48. I was 30, 18 years younger than her. I was the only witness to her death. And like the air that could not make its way out of her after her final exhale, my words are trapped. They are stuck in my throat, that essential highway that brings us air, food, and water. That releases something I have always relied on: my voice.
Continue reading OPINION: The Voice Insideby Amanda Ong
“We were second-class citizens in our own land,” my grandfather used to tell me, perhaps the only time I saw him with a hint of a scowl. Our land then was Hong Kong, where Chinese residents were under British control for 100 years. As the original inhabitants of Hong Kong were Punti, Hakka, Tanka, and Hokkien, the island has always been ethnically Chinese. My grandfather seldom spoke about the marginalization my family experienced during their time in Hong Kong as a British colony and when he did, he was brief. When my mother was a child in the 1960s, our family made the decision to leave Hong Kong to be second-class citizens in another land, hoping for something called “opportunity.”
Continue reading OPINION: Spirit Returns 2.0 — Finding Solidarity at the Duwamish Longhouseby Melia LaCour
“Resistance, Resilience, Remembrance, and Liberation”: poetic words straight from the heart of multiple award winner, community scholar, ethnomuseumologist, and second-generation storyteller Delbert Richardson. His soulful words describe the theme of his upcoming installation, “American History Traveling Museum: The Unspoken Truths,” which will open at the ARTS at King Street Station Gallery on Nov. 16, 2021, and continue through Jan. 15, 2022.
“My work is primarily geared for children and young adults,” Richardson shared. “No professional development, no white teachers. It’s really around identity development and self-actualization for Black kids, right? When we think about slavery and, historically, our story starting from 1619, then that becomes the placeholder of who we are and how we see ourselves and how we allow ourselves to be seen. So, I was determined to challenge that narrative. That’s what my museum does. It challenges that narrative based on my own story.”
Continue reading The Unspoken Truths Museum to Open at ARTS at King Street Station Galleryby Emerald Staff
Emerald staff rounded up local Juneteenth events so you and yours can easily find ways to participate both in person and virtually in celebrations, storytimes, cooking classes, and so much more!
Check back to this post as we continue to add more events that we hear about!
Continue reading Juneteenth 2021 in Seattle: A Guide to Local EventsThe South Seattle Emerald asked our photojournalists to pick some of their favorite 2020 photos shot for Emerald stories. From protests to pandemic responses to celebrations-despite-it-all, the images show not only a difficult year but also one filled with resilience, strength, and solidarity. We are proud to call South Seattle our home and grateful to our talented photographers for helping us capture our community’s special history.
Continue reading PHOTO ESSAY: Best of 2020 — Emerald Photographers Pick Their Favoritesby Anne Liu Kellor
Who cares about gardens and landscape design right now, in a time of widespread grief and despair?
Let me reframe that question.
Who cares about a story of resilience, racism, community, cross-cultural connection, place, and poetry?
We do.
Continue reading Book Review: Spirited Stone, Lessons from Kubota’s Gardenby Matt Remle
“Within these late years, there hath, by God’s visitation, reigned a wonderful plague, the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so as there is not left any that do claim or challenge any kind of interest therein. We, in our judgment, are persuaded and satisfied, that the appointed time is come in which Almighty God, in his great goodness and bounty towards us, and our people, hath thought fit and determined, that those large and goodly territories, deserted as it were by their natural inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our subjects.”
—King James I, The Charter of New-England
The Great Dying
Every Thanksgiving, classrooms across the country learn about a group of religiously persecuted Christian reformers fleeing England in order to worship freely in the New World. These Pilgrims likened themselves to the Israelite exodus from Egypt, a people chosen by God to be guided across the Atlantic to find, conquer and lay claim to their promised land. Upon arrival in what would become Plymouth Colony, the Pilgrims found a “promised land” that did not need to be conquered like that of Canaan, but rather a ghost town littered with untended fields, empty villages and skeletal remains of the original inhabitants. For the Pilgrim colonizers this was proof of God’s divine plan.
Continue reading COVID-19 in Native Communities: Recalling Past Trauma and Present Hope
