We're Still Talking About "My Family's Slave"

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

This week, we join the global conversation on The Atlantic's essay "My Family's Slave," in which Alex Tizon writes about Eudocia Tomas Pulido, who was his family's katulong, or domestic servant, for 56 years. Why did Eudocia's story hit such a raw nerve in the U.S. and the Philippines? Shereen and Gene talk to Vicente Rafael, a professor who has studied and written about the practice in his native Philippines. We also hear from Lydia Catina Amaya, a Filipina who was a katulong in the Philippines and the United States. And we talk to Melissa Tizon, the author's widow. Eudocia Tomas Pulido lived in their home for the last 12 years of her life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a heads up for our listeners, this episode deals with themes of violence and human trafficking.
0:04.8	She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift,
0:09.0	and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us.
0:13.0	No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived.
0:17.2	This is Code Switch, I'm Jean Demby.
0:19.2	And I'm Shrine Marie-Soul Maragie.
0:21.5	The Atlantic published a personal essay that hit a nerve.
0:25.6	Here in the US, the Philippines, all over the world, really.
0:29.0	And your listening to it now is called My Family's Slave.
0:33.4	Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed.
0:37.8	She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents,
0:42.1	and took care of my four siblings and me.
0:45.0	My parents never paid her and they scolded her constantly.
0:48.4	She wasn't kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been.
0:52.3	The essay was written by Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
0:56.3	He passed away unexpectedly this March, and right now you're listening
0:59.9	to someone else reading his words.
1:01.9	The essay is about his relationship to this woman he called Lola,
1:06.4	the Tagalog word for a grandmother, but they weren't related.
1:10.4	Admitting the truth would have meant exposing us all.
1:13.6	We spent our first decade in the country learning the ways of the new land
1:17.4	and trying to fit in.
	...

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