Yesterday Dennis and I took Melina to the Wing Luke Museum (Actually The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience). I hadn't been in many years, it had a whole new building. Actually the building itself was interesting as it was built inside an asian trading company that was largely unreconstructed. They gave tours of the building but we weren't there at the right time.
Melina was thrilled that they had an entire small room just about Cambodia. Though there's a lot of Pacific Rim influence in Seattle, it's hard to find material specifically about Cambodia. I had been warned that one side of the room was about the Pol Pot genocide. Melina has bumped into this several times and looks very upset. She knows that her grandfather's family was caught up in this ("My grandpa told me that some very bad men came and killed many members of his family"). She is very close to this grandfather who is the head of household where she lives. So I try to steer away from it (she's 10 years old). But it's hard to find books about Cambodia not about that period. But this time, she looked at the display and seemed fine. There was a picture of an apt building used as a prison and individual mug shots. She looked at them and said "I wonder if that's a picture of my grandpa...or his mother".
But she really enjoyed the other part of the room centered around a big display case of Cambodian art and statues. And a big painting of Angor Wat. She kept saying "a whole room just about Cambodia". She talked a little about her ethnicity "I guess I'm some Korean and a little Chinese and a lot Cambodian. But mostly just American" she concluded.
Ilana had her wisdom teeth out this morning so she's zonked out upstairs.
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