Preface

This project is a culmination of my time as an intern at the wonderful publications department at the Getty. Like the blankets my aunt Anu stitches together, it is a patchwork: comprised of my research on Indian textile histories (particularly Kalamkari from the Coromandel Coast), an outpouring of stories I have heard about my aunts’ own childhoods as well as my memories with them, and extracts from writings by feminist Indian authors who documented and elevated the invisible struggles of married Indian women and mothers so they could be seen (sometimes for the first time). So, I have decided to write about my mother and two of her (six!) sisters who I spent much of my childhood with and continue to learn from

I do not exist in isolation. I am a tapestry of my own, woven together by the cultural and artistic heritage I inherited from the women of my family and the feminist scholars and authors of my country. Here, Indian textile histories intersect with my own penchant for art-making and my positionality within Los Angeles’ socio-political landscape. So, reader, as you traverse through this archive of-sorts, remember that everything is intertwined, every strand connected to the other. Ultimately, remember that the importance of this publication is simply the fact that it is here, blinking awake on your computer screen, unfurling under the rhythmic clicks of your keyboard. I am here, holding out these erased, obscured histories for you to see, making up for the ways that they were hidden from me as I was growing up.

[As a note of clarification, I call both my aunts ‘amakkaiyya’, but Anu Amakkaiyya is younger and Papai Ammakkaiyya is older out of the two of them; chapters vii—ix are about Anu Ammakkaiyya and chapters x-xii are about Papai Ammakaiyya]!