Atlantic: My Family’s Slave

[Gamebreaker]

What happened to that poor woman is horrible, and the family responsible are cowardly, pathetic monsters. I actually had to stop reading for a bit and rage to my wife when I read about the father running out on his family, he seemed to have zero redeeming qualities. The author's bio-mom, a delusional hypocrite. As much as he tried to make his part seem innocent in it all, he's just as guilty as his parents. I didn't miss how he mentions how cheap the container is that held her ashes, yet he pretends he cared so much for her. Just not enough to purchase an actual Urn for a someone he claims was like his mother. 

 

Of course this comes out after that coward's dead. Like most monsters who don't want to face the music, they want the world to know what they've done long after consequences are no longer on the table. 

[Riggo-toni]

2 hours ago, TimmySmith said:

Embellished, as in, all, most or some of this never happened.  

Geez man...next you'll try to tell me Chuck Barris didn't really kill people for the CIA....

[Going Commando]

6 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

the author clearly wrote this in at least part to explore (and possible ameliorate) his conscience....   but the author is human scum?  worse than a murderer? 

 

Yeah... saying Tizon is scum is the same as saying a child of an abused mother is scum because they didn't rescue their mother.

 

Everyone should finish reading the article before they comment.  Maybe read it a second time.

[Gamebreaker]

I don't blame Tizon for inaction during his childhood, at that time he probably didn't know any better or didn't quite understand what was wrong. But clearly, as he neared adulthood, he saw what was wrong and did next to nothing to stop the abuse. I don't find an argument with his POS mom and refusing to visit your family anywhere close to reporting his ****ty parents to the authorities. They deserved whatever legal action came their way. That he chose not to because of the consequences is cowardly, and so is not coming clean while he was alive. 

 

If he did the right thing, and maybe he would've been ostracized by his immediate family, at least he would've given Lola the opportunity to go back home and potentially make a life for herself. Instead, his inaction is an action itself. If he is embellishing anything, it's likely his care for Lola or his omitting any potential abuse he and his siblings may have engaged in. By the time he tries to do right by her, she's so damaged by the state of her life that she is completely incapable of being an independent human being. Sitting on a couch, sipping tea and watching tv shouldn't be a defining moment of progress. I'm thoroughly disgusted by that family and I'm once again reminded how ****ed up this world is. 

[Going Commando]

I feel like the criticism of the article being flawed for not drawing the connection to larger issues of institutional domestic abuse are missing the point of the article.  The author is giving Lola an elegy and telling the story of a profoundly marginalized person, making the public aware that this kind of institution exists, and then raising the question "is this a form of modern day slavery?"

 

Actually, whether or not the answer is yes to that question, I think where you go from this article is how widespread is this practice?  Elessar points out that it's unheard of among Filipinos he knows, so I think this article might have turned over a rock that the mainstream in the Philippines didn't know about.  We need some serious reporting on the subject to figure out the scope of the institution.  Especially in its existence in the US.

[mcsluggo]

My wife's extended family just burred my father-in-laws ashes in what was essentially a cardboard shoebox.

 

if you try to argue that they didn't love him, i will kick you in the face.

 

 

 

the simple fact is that while this story is unequivocally horrible at its basic and fundamental level ... this story is ALSO more emotionally complex than you are willing to give it credit for.   While they might possibly be personally satisfying, black and white responses never actually work in emotionally complex situations.

[Destino]

7 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

Yeah... saying Tizon is scum is the same as saying a child of an abused mother is scum because they didn't rescue their mother.

 

Everyone should finish reading the article before they comment.  Maybe read it a second time.

This is not an abused mother, this is a slave.  He did not fail to rescue his abused mother, he failed to free a slave.  When cancer freed this woman he portrays his caring for her and paying her $200 dollars a week as a great kindness.  Truth is she should have received his mothers estate, if there was anything to inherit, as she was due 50+ years of wages.  That family owed her more than a few years of less than minimum wage to send to her family.  A great deal more and at no point in that article does anyone attempt to make that right.   

 

His family kept a slave and while he did not create the situation, he participated in its continuation and cover up.  

[mcsluggo]

do you honestly think that buying a $40 stone urn means ANYTHING...... whereas personally flying the remains to the exaxt other side of the world, cheap-ass plastic container and all, and personally travelling to a remote villiage to hand deliver them... means nothing COMPARED to that magical stone urn??? 

[Going Commando]

5 minutes ago, Destino said:

This is not an abused mother, this is a slave.  He did not fail to rescue his abused mother, he failed to free a slave.  When cancer freed this woman he portrays his caring for her and paying her $200 dollars a week as a great kindness.  Truth is she should have received his mothers estate, if there was anything to inherit, as she was due 50+ years of wages.  That family owed her more than a few years of less than minimum wage to send to her family.  A great deal more and at no point in that article does anyone attempt to make that right.   

 

His family kept a slave and while he did not create the situation, he participated in its continuation and cover up.  

 

He got her legal status in the US, tried to let her go home, tried to help her better assimilate into American life, and then finally provided her with a home and the most comfortable conditions of her life until she died.  He treated her like an elderly blood relative.  What more do you want from him?  To have called immigration and said his mom is keeping an undocumented immigrant in her household and get them deported?  You have to realize how common it is for people living in families where this kind of abuse is going on to not report it because they don't want to break up the family.  That they still love these people and don't want to send them to jail.  You're victim blaming here.

[Elessar78]

There's a lot of complexity in this situation. Power, justice, abuse, neglect, regret . . . like I said my mom is enraged by this family's behavior. I feel more sadness—for everyone. Lola was the main sufferer, but that family seemed like they had a (self-inflicted) ****ty life in America. I kinda feel like there was an un-mentioned aspect in the story of the family finances. I have family who were also diplomats around the same time frame like Tizon's father and they didn't get paid very well but it was a living wage. Plus working several jobs—kind of hard to imagine they were struggling so mightily. He says his dad was a gambler and womanizer—there just might have been more to the story. 

[Popeman38]

30 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

do you honestly think that buying a $40 stone urn means ANYTHING...... whereas personally flying the remains to the exaxt other side of the world, cheap-ass plastic container and all, and personally travelling to a remote villiage to hand deliver them... means nothing COMPARED to that magical stone urn??? 

I'm gonna try to remain civil here. Flying halfway around the world to return Lola's ashes to her family after being enslaved for 70 years was nothing more than an attempt to assuage his guilt. He "paid" her $200 a week (in the article, he makes a point to say he gave her the money, like it was out of the kindness of his heart)? Who the **** cares what he paid her after she endured 50 years of physical and emotional abuse? The altruistic Tizon says the following:

Quote

I gave the eulogy at Mom’s funeral, and everything I said was true. That she was brave and spirited. That she’d drawn some short straws, but had done the best she could. That she was radiant when she was happy. That she adored her children, and gave us a real home—in Salem, Oregon—that through the ’80s and ’90s became the permanent base we’d never had before. That I wished we could thank her one more time. That we all loved her.

She did the best she could? She kept a slave, even hiding it from immigration for fear of being deported. In other words, her desire to not get sent back to the islands for breaking immigration law trumped Lola's "privilege" of going to see her mother or father before they died. She was the first one up, and the last one down, and slept with laundry. THAT was the best she could do? The **** outta here with that bull****.

Quote

After the big fight, I mostly avoided going home, and at age 23 I moved to Seattle. When I did visit I saw a change. Mom was still Mom, but not as relentlessly. She got Lola a fine set of dentures and let her have her own bedroom. She cooperated when my siblings and I set out to change Lola’s TNT status. Ronald Reagan’s landmark immigration bill of 1986 made millions of illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty. It was a long process, but Lola became a citizen in October 1998

 

Quote

During that time, she and Ivan took trips to Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, and sometimes brought Lola along. Lola loved the ocean. On the other side were the islands she dreamed of returning to. And Lola was never happier than when Mom relaxed around her. An afternoon at the coast or just 15 minutes in the kitchen reminiscing about the old days in the province, and Lola would seem to forget years of torment.

 

Quote

Before she died, she gave me her journals, two steamer trunks’ full. Leafing through them as she slept a few feet away, I glimpsed slices of her life that I’d refused to see for years. She’d gone to medical school when not many women did. She’d come to America and fought for respect as both a woman and an immigrant physician. She’d worked for two decades at Fairview Training Center, in Salem, a state institution for the developmentally disabled. The irony: She tended to underdogs most of her professional life. They worshipped her. Female colleagues became close friends. They did silly, girly things together—shoe shopping, throwing dress-up parties at one another’s homes, exchanging gag gifts like penis-shaped soaps and calendars of half-naked men, all while laughing hysterically. Looking through their party pictures reminded me that Mom had a life and an identity apart from the family and Lola.

 

He felt guilty, so he returned her ashes to her distant relatives that never got to know her. I don't care if she got to spend a couple weeks there at ****ing age 83!!! His family owned a woman from the age of 18 until the day she died. The author claims it was 56 years, but that math just don't add up...

[Destino]

16 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

do you honestly think that buying a $40 stone urn means ANYTHING...... whereas personally flying the remains to the exaxt other side of the world, cheap-ass plastic container and all, and personally travelling to a remote villiage to hand deliver them... means nothing COMPARED to that magical stone urn??? 

5 years after she died he shows up with a plastic box and no apologies.  But it's all good but he really liked his slave?

 

How did he handle his mothers funeral versus this poor woman's?  Did he even ask her family if they wanted her cremated or include them other than to simply inform them what he was doing?  Doesn't read like they were even aware she was cremated.  

[Gamebreaker]

22 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

do you honestly think that buying a $40 stone urn means ANYTHING...... whereas personally flying the remains to the exaxt other side of the world, cheap-ass plastic container and all, and personally travelling to a remote villiage to hand deliver them... means nothing COMPARED to that magical stone urn??? 

 

Are we really comparing actions now? I'll see your exaggeration of hand delivering the ashes of his slave, and raise you the complicity of the author in her enslavement for her entire life. 

 

Why the **** are you in even defending this guy? 

[Elessar78]

4 minutes ago, Popeman38 said:

I'm gonna try to remain civil here. Flying halfway around the world to return Lola's ashes to her family after being enslaved for 70 years was nothing more than an attempt to assuage his guilt. He "paid" her $200 a week (in the article, he makes a point to say he gave her the money, like it was out of the kindness of his heart)? Who the **** cares what he paid her after she endured 50 years of physical and emotional abuse? The altruistic Tizon says the following:

She did the best she could? She kept a slave, even hiding it from immigration for fear of being deported. In other words, her desire to not get sent back to the islands for breaking immigration law trumped Lola's "privilege" of going to see her mother or father before they died. She was the first one up, and the last one down, and slept with laundry. THAT was the best she could do? The **** outta here with that bull****.

 

 

 

He felt guilty, so he returned her ashes to her distant relatives that never got to know her. I don't care if she spend a couple weeks there at ****ing age 83!!! His family owned a woman from the age of 18 until the day she died. The author claims it was 56 years, but that math just don't add up...

I think you also avoid the fact that he did give her a chance to be repatriated but she felt that it wasn't her home anymore. Maybe I mis-read, mis-remember that part. 

[Destino]

Just now, Elessar78 said:

I think you also avoid the fact that he did give her a chance to be repatriated but she felt that it wasn't her home anymore. Maybe I mis-read, mis-remember that part. 

 Think that's what he was referring to when he wrote "I don't care if she spend a couple weeks there at ****ing age 83!!"

[Popeman38]

Just now, Elessar78 said:

I think you also avoid the fact that he did give her a chance to be repatriated but she felt that it wasn't her home anymore. Maybe I mis-read, mis-remember that part. 

He "gave her the chance" at 83? She left at 18, WTF did he think she would do, fly from America to a village in the middle of nowhere jungle and pick right the **** back up where she left off? If you go anywhere for 10 years and come back home, it takes a while to feel like home again. 65 years? Come on...

[Gamebreaker]

He could've blown the whistle on this decades ago. Instead, he felt her continued enslavement was acceptable if the alternative was sullying his family name and potential jail time for his immoral mother. 

 

But hey, he let her sit on the couch and have a bed when she was 70 so it's all forgiven, right? 

[Popeman38]

4 minutes ago, Gamebreaker said:

He could've blown the whistle on this decades ago. Instead, he felt her continued enslavement was acceptable if the alternative was sullying his family name and potential jail time for his immoral mother. 

 

But hey, he let her sit on the couch and have a bed when she was 70 so it's all forgiven, right? 

This **** makes my blood boil...

[Destino]

39 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

He got her legal status in the US, tried to let her go home, tried to help her better assimilate into American life, and then finally provided her with a home and the most comfortable conditions of her life until she died.  He treated her like an elderly blood relative.  What more do you want from him?  To have called immigration and said his mom is keeping an undocumented immigrant in her household and get them deported?  You have to realize how common it is for people living in families where this kind of abuse is going on to not report it because they don't want to break up the family.  That they still love these people and don't want to send them to jail.  You're victim blaming here.

Victim blaming?!  Steve please tell me you're not saying Alex Tizon is a victim in this.

[Going Commando]

11 minutes ago, Destino said:

Victim blaming?!  Steve please tell me you're not saying Alex Tizon is a victim in this.

 

I don't know.  He grew up in an abusive household.  I don't know how that abuse touched him.  And neither does anyone else.  Trying to scapegoat him for the situation is the same as blaming the children of a battered spouse for not doing enough to prevent the abuse.  It's completely misplaced anger.

[bearrock]

When you list the facts in the article in bulletpoints, I think it looks much more black and white, whereas my emotional reaction after reading the article is more shades of gray.  I think Stevemcqueen's analogy to an abused spouse rings true to me.  I've had cases where the abused spouse was treated far worse than Lola was here and children far more willing to turn a blind eye.  My reaction to those children (many of them adults, even middle aged) is that of sorrow and quite frankly gratitude when they are willing to support the abused parent during and after the divorce.  There are layers of complexity in 60 plus years of history that's hard to distill down to an article.  Ultimately, it may not change the moral calculus, but I think it may be more complex than our initial reaction may allow.

[Gamebreaker]

18 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I don't know.  He grew up in an abusive household.  I don't know how that abuse touched him.  And neither does anyone else.  Trying to scapegoat him for the situation is the same as blaming the children of a battered spouse for not doing enough to prevent the abuse.  It's completely misplaced anger.

 

No, it's holding people accountable. I am not blaming 10 year old Tizon, I'm blaming 30+ year old Tizon. Comparing a grown man's decisions to a child is ridiculous. I am not accepting of excuses for the behavior, actions, or inactions of others. Once you are aware that you grew up in an abusive household, you lose the ability to excuse your actions away from that moment forward. And how do we know Tizon had reached that point well before he wrote this piece? His argument and avoidance of his mother decades earlier. 

[Popeman38]

21 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I don't know.  He grew up in an abusive household.  I don't know how that abuse touched him.  And neither does anyone else.  Trying to scapegoat him for the situation is the same as blaming the children of a battered spouse for not doing enough to prevent the abuse.  It's completely misplaced anger.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!  HE DID NOTHING TO PREVENT HER SUFFERING. He even helped his family cover it up by lying to his friends. The woman knew nothing other than being a slave to the point she acted like a slave when he "freed" her in Seattle and for the first time in her life gave her her own room. And then he even let her start cooking and cleaning for him and his family again. He felt guilty at the need of his life and took little steps to assuage that guilt.

 

The mental gymnastics being performed in this thread sure as **** don't get applied to slave masters in the south! (and shouldn't be, to be clear) Read in sarcastic voice --->Well, they gave them their own rooms! And they even fed them. And they stopped beating them, so were they REALLY bad people? Or were they victims themselves since they were born into a broken system? 

 

I just ****ing can't anymore. I'm done...

[BornaSkinsFan83]

2 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

Yeah... saying Tizon is scum is the same as saying a child of an abused mother is scum because they didn't rescue their mother.

 

Everyone should finish reading the article before they comment.  Maybe read it a second time.

 

So saw it coming. 

5 minutes ago, Popeman38 said:

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!  HE DID NOTHING TO PREVENT HER SUFFERING. He even helped his family cover it up by lying to his friends. The woman knew nothing other than being a slave to the point she acted like a slave when he "freed" her in Seattle and for the first time in her life gave her her own room. And then he even let her start cooking and cleaning for him and his family again. He felt guilty at the need of his life and took little steps to assuage that guilt.

 

The mental gymnastics being performed in this thread sure as **** don't get applied to slave masters in the south! well, they gave them their own rooms! And they even fed them. And they stopped beating them, so were they REALLY bad people? Or were they victims themselves since they were born into a broken system? 

 

I just ****ing can't anymore. I'm done...

 

So as a child he doesn't cover for his parents and the whole family is deported. You're really holding that decision against a child? 

 

And curious what you think he should've done after his mother died?

[Going Commando]

3 minutes ago, BornaSkinsFan83 said:

So saw it coming. 

 

Also saw the comparison to 19th century slavery in America coming too.  Tizon used the word deliberately.  I think it was a form of self flagellation, as well as a way to draw attention to the story and the issues at play.  But the word slave in America means something different.  Our system of slavery was different--a chattel system that was legally and racially grounded.  It's very different from the sort of exploitative domestic servitude that was going on in this story.