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All of the things that didn’t make it into curriculum are a troubling inheritance- or maybe disinheritance - too often it seems like we are looking for what we weren’t taught and having to relearn what we thought we knew.

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I have several objects related to vestiges of "compulsory" education in my home. This is an aging card from the old card catalog at the Brooklyn Historical Society where I once worked in the education department. I  found it in a pile of discards when the library was going through the process of digitizing its collection (about 20 years ago!). I also have a 5th edition McGuffy's Reader filled with grammar lessons, 19th century poetry and excerpts from literature, meant to be memorized and recited. I am particularly fond of an old school bell that sat atop some teachers desk. It has a satisfying tone. I sometimes think of these inheritances as just mementos of a bygone era in education and no longer relevant to teaching today, and yet i know that's not true. The remnants of these practices in compulsory education still form the logics of doing school today. It often seems easier for teachers to slip into these inherited practices, rather than question them - it's the alternative approaches that require intentional redirects, extra time and appreciation. Jackie

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A Photo of My Mother at a Party in the 1970s

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A Photo of My Mother at a Party in the 1970s

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Preparing a slide show for my mother's funeral, I found this photo. She is sitting cross-legged on the right, wearing a floofy, Seinfeldian-Puffy-Shirt-like blouse and a smartly tailored brown plaid suit. She appears to be at a party, as there are glasses of wine. Based on the clothing and decor, it looks like the early or mid-1970s.

I showed the photo to my father, "Dad! Look what a couple of great looking kids you were in the 1970s."

My father picked up the photo and inspected it. He said, "Nope! That's not me."

To me, it looks a lot like my father in his younger years. The same long skinny legs. The light brown hair and beard.

But we just don't know who this White Guy is. He might've been just a rando she was talking to at this party about, say, cheap cruises to Mexico, bird song, or crab cakes at the Marina. He might've been her date, even, and they're having a moment of strained silence.

It's true that my mother dated a lot of White Guys.

The photo is a troubling inheritance, a stand-in for a relation that my third-generation Japanese American mother would have absolutely loathed me extrapolating from a single photograph: White Guys and Asian Women.

Maybe it was in the aftermath of the Atlanta Spa shootings when the most unbearable, hideous feelings about these specific interracial dynamics crept up within me, the daughter born out of one of these relationships.

I want to say something big here about Orientalism (I'm going to fail). About the wars the U.S. has waged in Asia (I'll fall so short). About sex work (How could I?). About the salvation that we sought in white masculinity, a redemptive desire that was passed down from one generation to the next (I don't want to admit it; I don't want to admit it).

- Cath

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a collective poem by raquel, sandra and jackie

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a collective poem by raquel, sandra and jackie

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who gets to forget
who gets to remember
who needs to forget
who needs to remember
inheritance is the thing that sits there
linkages
impact
bounded together

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TW: cancer, parent loss, grief

My troubling inheritance is a blue seated mermaid statue very similar to the one in the picture above. I chose it as an artifact from my parents' home shortly after my mom passed away in 2018. My mom and I had a very complicated relationship and one summer in 2017 I came home for a weekend and she and my dad sat me down in the backyard where I learned that she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. My eyes filled up with tears and I was told very clearly not to cry, that I didn't deserve to be upset as I had moved out against their wishes. I very vividly remember locking my eyes on this mermaid statue and trying to process what I had just been told without showing any emotion. After she passed away, my dad told me to take what I wanted from the house. While this mermaid statue reminds me of a deeply painful memory, it represents a moment that altered the course of my life forever and I can't get rid of it to this day, despite how it makes me feel to look at it.

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My mother, Agnes, is seated in between her parents, my Grandpa Leonard (who we called Paw Paw) and my Grandmother Katie (who we called Maw Maw). My grandfather was an alcoholic and was physically abusive to his wife. Every Saturday, Paw Paw came home late - drunk - and would beat his wife. On Sunday, the family, traumatized, got dressed and went to church, dressed similar to how they are pictured in this family portait. My mother, very much traumatized, grew up with many mental health issues - to the point that she relinquished her rights as a mother to my father when I was 7 and my brother, John, was 2. I inherited this photo years ago, and though I wish to burn it - cannot seem to bring myself to the courageous stance to do so.

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My troubling inheritance is alcoholism, a family disease, in the language of Alcoholics Anonymous. No one in my family names this inheritance, although it has certainly been passed down. This is not alcoholism as pictured in the media with falling down drunks who lose jobs, homes, and families; the alcoholics I know are functioning citizens and workers, or seem to be. Inheritance is often couched in terms of pride and respect, but such emotions don't apply to alcoholism. Nancy

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Al-Anon's Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions

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Al-Anon's Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions [Al-Anon] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Al-Anon's Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions

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My (too long) name is a troubling inheritance. Names are inherited, and I thought I could escape my given one (Gerth); I didn’t want to inherit this family, and there’s a whole other troubling inheritance around the amnesia and absence of a story around where ‘Gerth’ came from. That meant participating in another troubling inheritance - the patriarchal system of assuming a male partner’s name.  I ended up adopting / keeping both troubling inheritances. This leads to a mess of a name, that computer systems rarely recognize (TC has some awful three-part hyphenation in one of my uni addresses). It’s a too long name, and I’m not used to taking up space (another troubling inheritance?), so I'm still leaning into the discomfort. Gerth v.d. Berg is the shorthand I’ve adopted as my own, borrowing a common practice in Dutch to shorten the propositions (van den = of the); an assertion of agency into the inheritances.

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It’s one of my favorite lines in

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Being a member of the social group known as WASPs-(white anglo saxon protestants) has often felt like a troubling inheritance because of the connotations of privilege, exclusivity, and elitism that are often connected to it. My parents seemed very comfortable with it but I always felt like I was running from it-but I'm never sure towards what.-Peter

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I never went to Hebrew School. I know a few Yiddish words from my grandparents and dabble in the high holidays, but my knowledge of Judaism is so limited that I feared writing about the complicated inherited history that I am less familiar with than I'd like to be. I share this photo as a representation of moments I sat at friends' bar/bat mitzvahs and worried only about the social dynamics, the dresses, the party after, and rarely learned about my inherited religion which I do hope to explore, to know, to learn, to hold.

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Took a class on philosophies the last semester, and one making the theme of the class was "cultural inheritance", which means some invaluable knowledge could be applied to almost every human situation as a sense of cosmopolitanism. The concept keeps plaguing me about the conception of knowledge which is whether any universal knowledge exists, or whether any solely local knowledge exists. JP

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Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools : Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, The Arts

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Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools : Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, The Arts

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This text book was given to me by my supervising classroom teacher during my student teaching practicum in 2013. The teacher was wonderful and a great classroom teacher supervisor, but the idea that best practices can be put into a book and applied is a little troubling.

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language is inherited
language is a site by which inheritance might constrain the individual or act as a site for liberation

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I use this tote bag when I am grocery shopping or bringing a book on the subway, but I think the fact that I often want to turn this side of the bag inward towards my body speaks to its troubling nature. Just by looking at the language on the bag, I am troubled. The "Member" stamp delineates an in-group.

The other part that is troubling is the Stanford alumni aspect of the bag. My dad went to Stanford, along with my uncle and grandpa. Then my brother and cousin also got in, along with me. I know that legacy helped us get in, something that I find incredibly troubling in how it upholds intergenerational wealth. This does not trouble most other members of my family, nor did it trouble me enough not to attend.

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[absence of a name and an image]

I thought about the idea of a "troubling" inheritance and was drawn to the word troubling--which brought up thoughts and feelings around what I am ashamed of, what do I inherit that troubles me. I thought about my mother's father, my grand father. He was a monster of a human ( edited 2 minutes later: I thought about this description and decided to change it, but don't know how else to describe him)  and I realize I don't know his name and I can't recall an image of him. I have heard many stories, know a lot about who he was, but it's interesting to know that there is a clear absence of him--an intentionally leaving out of who he was.--Raquel

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entangled stuff (borrowed collection Andrea Lira)

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entangled stuff (borrowed collection Andrea Lira)

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money, land, or possessions received from someone after the person has died

also means the particular characteristics received from parents through the genes.

Alebrije from Oaxaca, Mexico
Inscribed ring
Gold Plated cup and plate
In the back a clay Guanaco from Antofagasta desert

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (2002), from the Collection of Seth McCall

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (2002), from the Collection of Seth McCall

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This books was given to me by my aunt in 2004. She died not long after that, so I can’t get rid of it. The book is problematic for a couple reasons. It claims to provide a curriculum of “what every American needs to know.” The construction of cultural literacy itself is hostile to difference. The design of the book, with sections dedicated to different subject areas, compartmentalizes entries, disconnecting them from other sections.