Great Grandmother Research Articles

Preguntas y frases para una nieta americana

<p>“Preguntas y frases” is an imagined letter from my grandmother. It is composed of Spanish words and phrases (including missing accents and misspellings) as my grandmother, Esther, wrote them in 1983 in a series of letters she sent to my mother while my mother was living abroad in Ecuador. In those letters, Esther spoken plainly with her daughter—principally, by questioning her decision to leave the United States and asking that my mother back home to Calexico, California.</p><p>Many years after my grandmother’s death, my mother found these letters tucked away in the house attic. When my mother shared these letters with me, it was startling for me to see and hear so clearly my grandmother’s voice and way of speaking after so many years since her passing. In response, I wrote “Preguntas y frases para una nieta americana.” The title is inspired by Teresa Palomo Acosta’s poem “Preguntas y frases para una bisabuela española” in which Acosta reflects on her Spanish heritage by writing a letter to her great Spanish grandmother. In contrast, “Preguntas y frases para una nieta americana” reflects on American assimilation and what is lost, protected, and honored across three generations of Mexican American women. The letter is my imagination of what my grandmother would say to me today if she were to write me—and speak plainly—as she had with my mother all those years ago.</p>

A Patient with Late-Onset Cerebellar Ataxia and a Novel FAT2 Gene Variant Concerning for Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 45: A Case Report (P9-11.009)

<h3>Objective:</h3> We describe a patient with late-onset ataxia, parkinsonism, tremor, and neuropathy with a novel <i>FAT2</i> gene frameshift variant, a gene primarily expressed in the cerebellum and recently implicated in spinocerebellar ataxia type 45 (SCA45). <h3>Background:</h3> Spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs) are a heterogeneous group of autosomal dominant (AD), neurodegenerative disorders that manifest with cerebellar dysfunction. SCA45 is associated with <i>FAT2</i> gene variants and is characterized by late-onset, pure cerebellar ataxia with autosomal dominant inheritance pattern. So far, only two families and one sporadic case with likely pathogenic <i>FAT2</i> variants have been reported, all of which involved missense variants. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> NA <h3>Results:</h3> A 57-year-old woman presented with 3 years of progressive ataxia, neuropathy and mild tremor in the setting of a mood disorder. Family history was notable for a mother, maternal grandfather, and maternal great grandmother with similar symptoms. Exam revealed limb and gait ataxia, normal eye movements, mild symmetric parkinsonism, subtle postural and action tremor, and length-dependent neuropathy. Medications included aripiprazole. Lab work-up for metabolic, inflammatory, and immune related etiologies was negative. MRI brain showed no significant atrophy or lesions. CT brain showed calcification in the globus pallidus internus bilaterally. Genetic testing revealed a heterozygous frameshift variant (c.3039_3040del; p.Cys1014Profs*11) in the <i>FAT2</i> gene. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> Our patient’s inheritance pattern, cerebellar dysfunction and age of onset are consistent with SCA45. However, her phenotype includes tremor and neuropathy in addition to cerebellar ataxia, which contrasts with previously reported cases of a pure cerebellar syndrome associated with <i>FAT2</i> missense variants. Our patient has a frame-shift mutation that likely resulted in a non-functional protein. This type of variant has not been reported before and can currently only be classified as a variant of unknown significance (VUS) as affected family members are deceased. This case adds to the growing body of information regarding <i>FAT2</i> gene variants and their relation to hereditary ataxia. <b>Disclosure:</b> Dr. Ameri has nothing to disclose. Dr. Rosenbaum has nothing to disclose. The institution of Dr. Kirby has received research support from Parkinson’s Foundation.

Polish Mother

Polish Mother

Recognizing the Authentic, Documented Middle West

Recognizing the Authentic, Documented Middle West Christopher Reed (bio) As an American historian, I view the Old West (and now the Middle West) as a place of diversity and contradictions, and as being a real place. In the historical mind, but perhaps more importantly, because of the documented record, the Old West/West/Middle West is as authentic as could be experienced, or even imagined. My personal recollection from the mid-twentieth century of the image of the Midwest is linked to an oft-told family story of how my mother's great grandmother "safely brought her little children across the mountains" into Ohio. This bit of oral history from the mid-nineteenth century, backed up by documentation in later years, depicted the Trail of Tears and left an imprint on my mind and in my imagination of the Middle West as a place of safety and security. The offshoot of this sojourner's trek as part of the displacement of the Cherokee nation eventually led to the enlistment of her offspring as combatants and participants in the liberation of an entire people by 1865. So, the Midwest carried a salutary image in my imagination despite its sometimes contradictory resistance to abolitionism counterbalanced by a willingness to embrace a civic nationalism to preserve the Union. This sentiment was embraced by many Whites despite their holding firmly to the notion of White supremacy as "White men fought a White man's war." Despite the current national rancor over censorship in all spheres of communication, the evolving world of academics allows for new interpretations to emerge as is exemplified in the foci of Imagining the Heartland on whiteness and imagination as negative influences. In this somewhat controversial piece, a coterie of writers has undertaken the task of exposing the supposed wholesomeness of the geographical Midwest as established in the popular imagination. Contributing to the latter [End Page 153] dimension, Hollywood with the Wizard of Oz, the media in its forms ranging from television to advertisements, politicians from Reagan to Trump, and leading literary publications have created an impression in the American mind of a nation with a pure regional environment that acts to both nurture and preserve whiteness. What our colleagues across disciplinary lines have advanced as a concept bears little resemblance to a provable theory. Rather than in the Midwest, White racism originated in the South as a justification for the subjugation and economic exploitation of African labor. Unfortunately, its pervasiveness is real and an integral part of the national fabric. Further, the element of racial purity had its roots in the earliest efforts at English settlement along the entirety of the North American coast. America was envisioned as a City upon a Hill, a new Jerusalem bestowed on God's favorites. This is the origin of some of the nation's most deep-seated convictions about the value of whiteness for it has led to a heritage for almost all non-Black groups, newly arrived or lengthily rooted, in which they locate cultural comfort. America's problem started with an aversion to anyone or any group unlucky enough to be considered an Other. So, it is not just the Midwest that has upheld some of the nation's most deep-seated convictions about the value of whiteness. From opposition to a recognition of the humanity of Indigenous people, it spread to "Outlandish Africans." For the latter group, it produced an indelible stain that persists even today (even with a near national aversion to use of the "N" word publicly). From the hostility in the Midwest directed against darker-complexioned (and other complexioned) peoples, whether Indigenous, Hispanic or Chinese, it seemed a likely extension of New England coastal aversion to Anabaptists, Catholics, Quakers, and Jews which was aggressively held by Englishmen. With the advent of the twentieth century, a partial acceptance of the Irish within the body of Whites led to their partial welcome by the Second World War. For historians, beginning with the decline in acceptance of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis that featured the admirable and highly successive efforts of hardy White settlers civilizing a demographically empty land to be designated the Middle West with their muscles, good...

Married to a ‘British Subject’

In the archives lie the stories of our past, stories that knowingly or unknowingly live in our present. For Aboriginal families, finding records can be a critical source of great healing, enhance and affirm identity, and provide families with new understandings of how things came to be. This essay affords agency to First Nations families looking to the archives for their stories, reading historical documents against the grain, and telling their stories their way. Through family memory, reflection, and archival research, it delivers the microhistory, rich in feeling, of one First Nations family, through the experiences of Mabel Ita Eatts (née Frederick), an ancestral matriarch, a Jaru woman, and the Great Grandmother of the author. Mabel was a member of the Stolen Generations and was later deeply influenced by exemption policy. Her story brings to life the struggles faced by Aboriginal ‘half‐caste’ women living in Broome and Derby in the 1920s and 1930s, explicitly highlighting not only the invasive oppression expressed through this policy but, more importantly, how Mabel actively negotiated the system. This paper is a powerful example of how one Aboriginal family writes back to the colonising archive.

Advanced maternal age has negative multigenerational impacts during Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis

Increasing maternal age is commonly accompanied by decreased fitness in offspring. In Drosophila melanogaster, maternal senescence negatively affects multiple facets of offspring phenotype and fitness. These maternal effects are particularly large on embryonic viability. Identifying which embryonic stages are disrupted can indicate mechanisms of maternal effect senescence. Some maternal effects can also carry-over to subsequent generations. We examined potential multi- and transgenerational effects maternal senescence on embryonic development in two laboratory strains of D. melanogaster. We categorized the developmental stages of embryos from every combination of old and young mother, grandmother and great grandmother. We then modelled embryonic survival across the stages and compared these models among the multigenerational maternal age groups in order to identify which developmental processes were most sensitive to the effects of maternal effect senescence. Maternal effect senescence has negative multigenerational effects on multiple embryonic stages, indicating that maternal provisioning and, possibly epigenetics, but not mutation accumulation, contribute to decreased offspring survival. This study shows the large, early and multi-faceted nature of maternal effects senescence in an insect population.

Analysis of GCH1 gene variant in a consanguineous Chinese pedigree affected with tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency

To explore the genetic basis for a child featuring tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency and global developmental delay. Clinical and laboratory examinations were carried out for the child. Genomic DNA of the patient was subjected to high-throughput sequencing to identify genetic variants associated with hyperphenylalaninemia. Candidate variants were verified by Sanger sequencing. The result of blood tandem mass spectrometry showed that the Phenylalanine in the blood was 642.7 μmol/l, and the ratio of Phenylalanine/Tyrosine was 5.42. Analysis of urinary pterin: neopterin 0.09 mmol/mol Cr, biopterin 0.04 mmol/mol Cr, biopterin% 77%, which suggested tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency. The parents of the proband were first cousins. DNA sequencing revealed that the proband has harbored homozygous c.353A>T variants in exon 2 of the GCH1 gene, for which his great grandmother, grandfather, mother, uncle, father and elder brother were heterozygous carriers with normal phenotype and no clinical symptoms associated with dopa responsive dystonia. The homozygous c.353A>T variant of the GCH1 gene probably underlay the tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency in this pedigree of consanguineous marriage.

The Spokane River ed. by Paul Lindholdt

Reviewed by: The Spokane River ed. by Paul Lindholdt Larry Cebula THE SPOKANE RIVER edited by Paul Lindholdt Washington University Press, Seattle, 2018. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 296 pages. $24.95 paper. Who can tell the story of a river? Such a tale requires more than one voice. Geologists have their stories, as do Native peoples who live along its banks. Biologists see a river of interconnected life, while urban planners see a barrier to transportation and an urban amenity. Historians, environmentalists, and even lawyers have things to share. It is an interdisciplinary effort. It is to the credit of editor Paul Lindholdt that the anthology The Spokane River includes all of these voices and more. The twenty-eight chapters of the book include historical essays, policy reviews, poems, and personal experiences. The Spokane River begins as the outlet of Lake Couer D'Alene in Idaho. Over the course of its 111 miles, it rolls through the fertile Spokane Valley, plunges over a series of basalt cliffs in downtown Spokane, and snakes across ancient landscapes, gaining tributaries and volume until unites with the Columbia River beneath the waters of Lake Roosevelt. Its spectacular waterfalls are both the City of Spokane's most impressive sight and the reason for the town's existence. Yet, the river is not what it was. Dams turn long sections into slack-water lakes, some covered with algae blooms and dead fish in late summer. Houses crowd the banks in some places, and even where the river runs cool and clear, it carries heavy metals from long-ago mining operations and PCBs from paper plants. Signs warn anglers to limit their consumption of fish taken from the deceptively clear waters. Native voices in the book are strong. In the chapter titled "The River Gives Us Our Way of Life," Margo Hill of the Spokane Tribe recounts how her grandmother told her "the salmon hung from the horn of the saddle and stretched toward the ground" (p. 85). Her great grandmother Sadie Boyd made fish head soup, and when Hill would check to see what was cooking on her stove, she recounted: "Quite often I saw salmon eyes staring back at me" (p. 94). Fellow Spokane tribal member Barry Moses writes of the Spokane dialect of Interior Salish and how traditional names remind us of the Native uses and perceptions of the river. Lindholdt offers his own chapter, a biography of Lokout, brother of Qualchan and son of the Yakama chief Owhi. Born in the 1830s, Lokout's long life included stints as a linguist, a guide, a warrior, and finally a subject for photographer Edward Curtis in 1910. Other sections of the book focus on river history, efforts at environmental protection, The Expo '74 (Spokane's world's fair that reclaimed the banks of the river as a public park), personal essays, poems, and analyses of future threats to the Spokane River, including a loss of water and industrial contamination. The Spokane River is not only a superb book, it is a model for the kind of interdisciplinary collection that can be created around a common feature such as a river. The chapters are short, readable, and uniformly interesting. The book would work well in a college classroom. [End Page 216] Larry Cebula Eastern Washington University Washington State Archives Copyright © 2022 Oregon Historical Society

The transmission of human mitochondrial DNA in four‐generation pedigrees

Most of the pathogenic variants in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) exist in a heteroplasmic state (coexistence of mutant and wild-type mtDNA). Understanding how mtDNA is transmitted is crucial for predicting mitochondrial disease risk. Previous studies were based mainly on two-generation pedigree data, which are limited by the randomness in a single transmission. In this study, we analyzed the transmission of heteroplasmies in 16 four-generation families. First, we found that 57.8% of the variants in the great grandmother were transmitted to the fourth generation. The direction and magnitude of the frequency change during transmission appeared to be random. Moreover, no consistent correlation was identified between the frequency changes among the continuous transmissions, suggesting that most variants were functionally neutral or mildly deleterious and thus not subject to strong natural selection. Additionally, we found that the frequency of one nonsynonymous variant (m.15773G>A) showed a consistent increase in one family, suggesting that this variant may confer a fitness advantage to the mitochondrion/cell. We also estimated the effective bottleneck size during transmission to be 21-71. In summary, our study demonstrates the advantages of multigeneration data for studying the transmission of mtDNA for shedding new light on the dynamics of the mutation frequency in successive generations.

Wau Tradisi: Branding of a Traditional Family Mixed Gravy Spice

This case describes a family business producing gravy mix spices—known as' gravy 'in Malay—that has been operating since the 1970s in Kampung Kubang Pasu, Kota Bharu, Kelantan. In 1984, Mr.Mohd Anazim Adnan (henceforth he shall be known as "Anazim"), a family member of the third generation, was entrusted with the legacy of this mixed spice "gravy" business that was started by her great grandmother. In 1986, via Kilang Bimbingan Bank, Pembanggunan started the first pilot test in Kota Bharu. In line with the development of the local food industry and the transition of business management from the store to the factory, Mr. Adnan (Anazim's father) applied for the grant and set up the wau tradisi in 1986 in Kilang Jalan, Padang Tembak. As a result, the transition from Anazim's father to him was successful. The company was able to maintain the success of this mixed spice gravy by continuing the family’s secret recipe for generations. Most of the traditional methods for food manufacturing and business management are still practiced in the business of Wau Tradisi. As the company manager, Anazim feels there is a need to update the company’s management, expand the market, and conduct research on the products. Because the mixed spices gravy market is highly demanded in Malaysia, and there is not enough supply to supply all of Peninsular Malaysia, In the transition and expansion process, there are two vital turning points that have to be overcome. First, the product branding, and second, the human resources. During the period, Anazim faced difficulties managing the obstacles, such as poor support from its management and documentation issues. Anazim was able to move the business forward after the obstacles were removed by using trial and error steps. Currently, Anazim is able to expand his business internationally and capture the demand both locally and internationally. ===== Case Teaching Strategy This case is rated medium to difficult; depending on how deep the analysis one wants to undertake. The case should be distributed to participants or students a few days before the discussion session takes place, and at least THREE HOURS should be allocated for the discussion and class activity. If desired, the initial discussion can be conducted in groups of THREE or FOUR participants/students and followed by a general class discussion. For students, the case study can be used for a long report in lieu of the traditional final exam. ==== Teaching note You do not currently have access to these teaching notes. Please email at geric@umk.edu.my if you require the teaching note. Teaching notes accompany case studies with suggested learning objectives, classroom methods, and potential assignment questions. They support dynamic classroom discussion to help develop student's analytical skill

“Girmit Root and Pacific Shoot”: An Indo-Fijian Autobiographical Poetic Narrative for Constructing, Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Girmit Story

This article draws from the narratives through oral story telling of my great grandmother’s experience during Girmit. It aims to preserve the past and present for future generations in a creative manner. Narrative and poetic inquiry has been used to bond the Girmit root and the Pacific shoot. Inspiration from Teresia Teaiwa’s (1968–2017) efforts which emphasized creative practice as a path to drawing out and deepening one’s knowledge guided this article. Data, presented as poems, express and communicate the stories pertaining to Girmit and its descendants. Present curriculum should seize opportunities to cultivate the usage of narratives and poetry to create a creative curriculum. This article, hopes that the poems could be used in the curriculum to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the colonial mind-sets. It is written from my heart to the many hearts who, like me, are still in search for answers and insights of being and belonging to the diasporic/Hybrid identity.

EP263: A pathogenic deletion at 13q32.1q33.1 presenting with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and pigmentation anomalies, mimicking Waardenburg syndrome

13q deletion syndrome is caused by structural and functional monosomy of the long arm of chromosome 13. Individuals with partial deletions of 13q have a wide spectrum of clinical phenotypes, including mild to severe intellectual disability, growth retardation, craniofacial dysmorphism, hand and foot anomalies, brain, cardiac and renal defects. Previous reports suggest that deletions including the 13q32 band are associated with severe congenital malformations. The ZIC2 gene maps to this critical distal region at 13q32.2 and has been considered a possible candidate for brain malformations, such as holoprosencephaly and Dandy-Walker malformation. We present an individual with a 7.9 Mb deletion on chromosome 13, encompassing almost all of band q32, with a relatively mild phenotype. An 11-month-old term male was seen in the medical genetic clinic regarding concerns for possible Waardenburg Syndrome. He presented with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss at 9 months of age and was noted to have multiple hypopigmented lesions on both his feet and chest. Prenatal and post- natal course was unremarkable with normal growth and development. Physical examination revealed mild dysmorphic features such as borderline, low set and posteriorly rotated ears with folded upper helixes and a broad nasal bridge. Hypopigmented lesions consistent with leukoderma was noted over the anterior chest wall, abdominal wall and medial aspect of his right thigh. Family history was positive for a maternal cousin with similar hypopigmented lesions and maternal great, great grandmother with early premature graying of hair. There was no family history of congenital hearing loss or birth defects. A chromosomal microarray (CMA) was performed and revealed a 7.9 megabase pathogenic deletion at chromosome 13q32.1q33.1, involving 65 genes. This deletion encompasses the ZIC2 gene which is associated with holoprosencephaly. This was an unexpected finding and further imaging studies to evaluate for cardiac, renal and brain malformations have been planned. Deletions of 13q are rare and additional cases are needed to better understand the genotype-phenotype correlation. We present an atypical case of a 13q deletion syndrome associated with mild dysmorphism, bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and leukoderma. There have been suggestions that distal deletions are associated with a more severe clinical phenotype and proximal deletions causes less severe major anomalies. This case broadens the clinical spectrum of 13q deletion syndrome as hearing loss is an uncommon finding and dermatological involvement has not been previously reported. There have been one prior report indicating that the loss of Zic2 function results in impaired inner ear development in mice and may be a candidate gene that contributes to the genetics of hearing loss in humans. Additionally, although the region deleted on the long arm of chromosome 13 involves the ZIC2 gene, this patient appears to be growing and developing normally. These findings suggest regions outside of band 13q32 likely contribute to the severe congenital malformations previously associated with distal 13q deletions.

In the Garden of Great Grandmothers

The Spring 2022 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares "the Triton among minnows."

Assistance in improving the welfare of foster grandmothers at the Tikung Health Center, Lamongan Regency

This community service intends to assist Tikung Health Center foster grandmothers in becoming great grandmothers with healthy toddlers. Because the toddler's mother was at work, the foster grandmother program began with the Posyandu Toddler activity, which was attended by grandmothers taking their grandchildren. As a result, support is still required to improve grandmothers' and grandchildren's nutrition and health awareness. Nutrition education for the elderly, parenting and nutrition education for toddlers, nutrition counseling services and blood glucose checks, and community empowerment through cassava processing competitions (local foods) are all part of this program. The program went off without a hitch, thanks to the foster grandmothers' joyful reception and a lot of help from cadres, PKK, village officials, and the Tikung Health Center in Lamongan Regency. Foster grandmothers' knowledge of parenting and nutrition is also increased, as is their ability to process many varieties of processed cassava, which can provide income opportunities for foster grandmothers and their family.

Essay: “They're Loud, They're Religious, and They Talk with Their Hands”

Essay: “They're Loud, They're Religious, and They Talk with Their Hands”

Great granny still ruling from the grave: Phenotypical response of plant performance and seed functional traits to salt stress affects multiple generations of a halophyte

Abstract Environmental changes, for example, in rainfall and land use, lead to changes in the environment experienced by subsequent generations of plant species. Environmental conditions of maternal plants can influence the fitness and phenotypes of subsequent generations via non‐genetic mechanisms: transgenerational plasticity (TGP). However, relevant empirical evidence remains scarce and ambiguous. What are the adaptive consequences of TGP for plants in the face of environmental change? For how many generations does the TGP effect remain? We tried to answer these questions by measuring life‐history traits and reproductive characteristics of progeny plants of the diaspore‐heteromorphic annual halophyte Atriplex centralasiatica in a 3‐year TGP experiment covering F0, F1 and F2 and partly F3. Plants from diaspore types A (low dispersal and high germination ability) and C (high dispersal and low germination ability) were grown in favourable versus stressful salinities over three generations in a fully factorial design. Transgenerational plasticity of plants grown in favourable versus stressful salinities decreased from F2 → F1 → F0. Compared to the favourable condition, the stressful condition decreased the length of the vegetative period, increased the length of reproductive time, reproductive allocation and progeny diaspore size. Salinity tolerance and phenotypic plasticity were higher in plants from diaspore A than in those from diaspore C. In the stressful condition, plants produced less plant biomass, larger diaspores, a higher proportion of diaspore C, but lower proportion of diaspore A. Production of the proportion of diaspore C increased with increase in number of previous generations that experienced stress. The stress experience of the great‐great grandmother (F0) continued into the lower A:C ratio of the F3 diaspores. Synthesis. Our findings provide evidence for the ‘escape strategy’ of A. centralasiatica: TGP could spread the risk of environmental adversity by delaying seed germination temporally and broadening seed dispersal spatially, thus allowing plants to cope with environmental heterogeneity. Specifically, the trade‐off in reproductive allocation between diaspores A and C enables plants to develop divergent strategies. New research should reveal the extent to which wide‐ranging taxa can benefit from TGP and whether even (great)‐great grandmother might be the starting point of TGP.

"River Run" (Nancy Maker Brown Song) Revisioned and Reimagined

Video Description (on YouTube):&#x0D; "River Run." Revisioned and Reimagined. 2021.&#x0D; Words, music, arrangement by kei slaughter.&#x0D; &#x0D; Originally written in 2019 while participating in the Acoustic Guitar Project - where artists are given one guitar, for one week, to write one song. This intimate performance is a reimagined and revisioned version, weaving deconstructed elements of the original work, with improvised vocalizations, body percussion, and flute loops, and live vocal and flute performance. "River Run" is dedicated to my maternal great great great great grandmother, Nancy Maker Brown.&#x0D; For me, this (re)mix is an exploration and expression of Black aesthetics - imagining and conjuring new sound worlds through my queer, gender expansive Black body while engaging with ancestral memory. The stripped back elements of breath, tone, and voice, were intentionally used to ground me in my musical-cultural origins, back to a kind of roots music. Thus, embodying the West African concept of Sankofa, as I look back to the past, I also look ahead towards futurity, reflected through the use of live looping, layering, and circular storytelling. Closed captions available.

History in the Attic: Search for Roots in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge

In most of diaspora literature there is an attempt to retrieve the past. This makes one measure time in many ways, different calendars, change of seasons, past encounters narrated through wars, defeats, encounters and disasters. It is remembered through family history, ancestral heritage, nostalgia, memory and even through national disasters. This interaction portrays the immigrants caught in flight of memories, relationships and images. The relocation has its disgust for one thing or the other. The author has to live in the reminiscences, a collective memory representing a symbolic relationship between past and present. The Swinging Bridge by Ramabai Espinet chronicles the multiple exiles that are part of the Indian experience in the Caribbean and Canada through two figures one from the past- great grandmother Gainder and the other from the present - Mona, the protagonist. The novel commemorates the maternal roots and routes of Indo-Caribbean history by establishing the subjectivity of widows and young girls from India who crossed the Kala Pani (Black waters of the Atlantic) in search of new beginnings in Trinidad and the great-grand-daughter who engages in an existential quest for selfhood in Canada. Grief motivates a flood of personal memories as Mona begins to remember intimate details of family life that had been repressed under the cover of migration. Bits and pieces of the past, fragments scattered in various places, childhood memories, overheard conversations, prayer songs, all come together in the attic. She explores the secret songs, photographs and letters giving her a powerful voice for her culture, her family, her fellow women and for herself. Mona’s drive to document history enables her to reveal the family’s carefully guarded secrets- domestic violence, drunken rampages, sexual abuse, illegitimate children, and even AIDS. This paper seeks to analyse the novel’s diasporic contents and find out whether this attempt at retrieval of the past brings about a change in the perception of today’s generation. The author brings to light the problems of a plural society calling for need for relationships and need for mutual respect- all to avoid conflict situations through this effective tracing of history in the novel.

Ancestral childhood environmental exposures occurring to the grandparents and great-grandparents of the ALSPAC study children.

Background: Cohort studies tend to be designed to look forward from the time of enrolment of the participants, but there is considerable evidence that the previous generations have a particular relevance not only in the genes that they have passed on, their cultural beliefs and attitudes, but also in the ways in which previous environmental exposures may have had non-genetic impacts, particularly for exposures during fetal life or in childhood. Methods: To investigate such non-genetic inheritance, we have collected information on the childhoods of the ancestors of the cohort of births comprising the original Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). The data collected on the study child's grandparents and great grandparents comprise: (a) countries of birth; (b) years of birth; (c) age at onset of smoking; (d) whether the ancestral mothers smoked during pregnancy; (e) social class of the household; (f) information on 19 potentially traumatic situations in their childhoods such as death of a parent, being taken into care, not having enough to eat, or being in a war situation; (g) causes of death for those ancestors who had died. The ages at which the individual experienced the traumatic situations distinguished between ages <6; 6-11, and 12-16 years. The numbers of ancestors on which data were obtained varied from 1128 paternal great-grandfathers to 4122 maternal great grandmothers. These ancestral data will be available for analysis to bona fide researchers on application to the ALSPAC Executive Committee.

Have you heard?

A poem about my great grandmother, Marie. Marie, half Black, half Narragansett, married Frank, member of the local NAACP chapter, and built a legacy of Black empowerment in a small Connecticut town.