I am Katherine, daughter of Susan, daughter of Mary, daughter of Lillie, daughter of Martha, daughter of Lucinda, daughter of Emily, daughter of Emeline, daughter of Martha, daughter of Julia, daughter of Mary, daughter of Hannah, daughter of Mary, daughter of Mary, daughter of Jane, daughter of Isabella, daughter of Aliciæ, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Sarah, daughter of the earth…
When I sent in my saliva sample to a popular testing service, I had my share of reservations. As a white woman in America, I am granted certain privileges, and tracing one’s genealogy is one of them— my colonizer ancestors documented births, weddings, deaths, and land acquisitions with a virulence (it seems incredibly macabre and yet predictable that those who participate in cultural genocide often document it so thoroughly).
Each way that humans have conceived of ancestry has been layered onto others. Genealogies record spiritual and social priorities rooted in origin stories. Family and citizenship law codify privileges and exclusions based on lineage. Today’s addictive Web sites and sleekly packaged DNA kits rest on deep, if not always acknowledged, assumptions about the fixity of status, race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Maya Jasanoff, “Ancestor Worship,” The New Yorker, May 9, 2022
And yet… how lovely to see the names of these women, written out in censuses and church records (again, a colonizer privilege). To name those who came before feels like giving form to something nebulous, a sense of oneself as both a result of pure chaos and entirely inevitable.
How strange, to imagine explaining to the furthest back I could trace— one day I will find you, through advances in science. This line will end, another result of scientific advances, but also through social advances— I am childfree by choice. I am also a self-proclaimed witch. You were of a culture that burned women for witchcraft, that perpetuated the violence of colonialism.
To bear this legacy, I work (stumbling, haltingly, failing repeatedly) at the practice of unsettling; of reparations; of dismantling these systems that would perpetuate harm.
But I also celebrate my legacy. I am more than some government documents would reveal, and I imagine they were as well. And so I celebrate the humanity of those who came before, generations of women with stories not captured in the church records or census data, women who shared the old knowledge, experienced joys and sorrows, and engaged in their own everyday rebellions.
And so…
I am Katherine, daughter of Susan, daughter of Mary, daughter of Lillie, daughter of Martha, daughter of Lucinda, daughter of Emily, daughter of Emeline, daughter of Martha, daughter of Julia, daughter of Mary, daughter of Hannah, daughter of Mary, daughter of Mary, daughter of Jane, daughter of Isabella, daughter of Aliciæ, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Sarah, daughter of the earth…
