Why the Best History Lesson is Hiding in Your Own Family Tree

I believe that if you want to understand how deeply discrimination was rooted in our society, it is often better to look at your own family history than to read about it in books. Recently, I discovered a lot about the systemic inequalities that once existed right in my mother’s childhood household.

​From her youth until as recently as 2019, my mother's family employed domestic helpers. During her childhood, women from the neighborhood would come over to do the household chores while my grandmother socialized. However, these women did not receive a regular salary; instead, they were compensated with food or occasional small payments. A few months ago, my mother mentioned that one of their regular helpers used to take the leftover rice, boil it again to stretch it, and take it home to feed herself and her children at night. Reflecting on this, my mother quietly confessed, "I don’t know why we hesitated to just offer her the fresh, good food we had in our house."

​There was another telling custom as well. In the traditional three-hole firewood stove used for cooking at the time, an earthen pot was always left sitting on the flame. Every day, the leftovers of that day's fish curry would be poured into this single pot and boiled repeatedly. Once the pot was full, they would inform a local, impoverished family to come and collect it. To my mother’s family, this was simply a charitable way of clearing out leftovers—but to the family receiving it, that intensely recycled curry was what extinguished the literal fire of hunger in their stomachs.

​While the woman who re-boiled the rice lived through that quiet exclusion, there were a few other local women doing chores who unintentionally ended up eating alongside my mother’s family members from time to time. Perhaps there was an unspoken excuse made, or perhaps she simply refused to sit away from everyone else. But after working for just a few days, she disappeared entirely, unable or unwilling to maintain that fragile compromise.

Uncovering these stories reminds us that the history of social division isn't distant—it lived under the very roofs that sheltered our parents. My mother’s modern-day regret shows how much our collective consciousness has evolved, yet it serves as a stark reminder of how easily privilege can blind us to the indignity of others. Acknowledging these uncomfortable family truths is the first step toward ensuring we never repeat them