In your introduction you touched on the idea of constructing an unreliable image of your grandmother, can you talk a bit more about that?
In my book, I touch on the idea of constructing my own understanding of my grandmother. Since I’ve only met my grandmother a few times before her dementia progressed, I was never able to spend much time with her and ask her about her life. As a result, much of what I know comes from stories told by relatives. But the thing about oral storytelling is that, as time goes on, memories shift and people recount things in different ways. People recount stories based on the context of who’s in the room, where they are, and when they are telling it. There is no objective reality, but there is a truth to the emotions that people feel and remember when they tell stories.
What I know of her now is not necessarily her truth, but it’s my subjective truth about her. With the images in Wa Leng Wa Hor, one can take a look and make assumptions about who she was, but I know her to have been a fiercely stubborn and independent matriarch who was often grouchy in her last years of life but still had her own moments of joy.