It has been almost five years since I studied Hindi. In the meantime, I switched to study Asian American history for my doctoral work, got married ('cause a woman's got a personal life!), and have taught hundreds of students history, public speaking, and college-level writing - all in English. I don't need a blog for language learning at this stage of my life, but lately I have considered how helpful a blog would be to work through the research I am finding. Frequently, I find tidbits that I don't think will ever fit into my dissertation project. But they are cool! They are the stories of people who used to be here. Even when most of the things that they poured their lives into are gone - businesses bulldozed, neighborhoods restructured, organizations disbanded, movements ended - they still lived and worked through how to respond to the world around them.
As a historian (semi-official - I'm "all but dissertated"), my work is to dig through the old documents, photos, recordings, and material detritus of people who lived before us and make sense of it all. This is not an easy job! Historians have to balance the perspectives we carry with what historical material actually can tell us. And sometimes we do a better job of that than other times. While I enjoy the analysis part of history-telling, the things that drew me to history were the tiny stories one finds happening in the pages of some long-forgotten correspondence.
So, I hope this will be a venue where I can practice telling some of those stories. In my own life I know that a story is not really well told the first 4 or so times I share it. (Note to history students: this is why you write drafts of your writing assignments & don't try to write a paper in 24 hours!!!) Many of these blurbs may not be well-told either. They also reflect research in process, so I may need to return and include edits as I discover historical details that make me re-think my initial summaries. In other words, don't take these as the last word on whatever topic I mention! Instead, these are vignettes. And hopefully anyone who reads this will see why historical study is such a delightful treasure hunt.
