{"id":58146,"date":"2019-05-22T21:03:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T21:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58146"},"modified":"2019-05-22T21:24:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T21:24:22","slug":"the-secret-album-reveals-how-a-powerful-truth-changed-a-family-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58146","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Album reveals how a powerful truth changed a family forever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/garage.ext.hp.com\/us\/en\/modern-life\/history-of-memory-secret-album-film.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>The Secret Album reveals how a powerful truth changed a family forever<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/garage.ext.hp.com\/us\/en.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Garage<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/hp.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HP (Hewlett-Packard)<\/a><br \/>\n2019-05-02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Patrick Rodgers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pCvfqryi9W8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>A novelist learns about her mother&#8217;s long-held secret by search for what&#8217;s missing from her family photo albums.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pCvfqryi9W8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secret Album<\/a><em> is part of HP&#8217;s original documentary project, <a href=\"https:\/\/garage.ext.hp.com\/us\/en\/historyofmemory.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">History of Memory<\/a>, which celebrates the power of printed photos.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We treasure family photos not only because they illuminate the past, but also because they can offer up an alternative narrative to the stories we tell \u2014 and retell \u2014 about our identities.<\/p>\n<p>This is true for author <a href=\"http:\/\/gaillukasik.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gail Lukasik<\/a>, who was just as captivated by what was left out of her parents\u2019 snapshots as by the faces and stories they portrayed. Growing up in suburban <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ohio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ohio<\/a>, Lukasik puzzled over why there were so few pictures of her mother\u2019s side of the family. In the stack of family photo albums, there were only a handful of black-and-white prints of relatives from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Orleans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Orleans<\/a>, where her mother, Alvera (Frederic) Kalina, had lived in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. \u201cI felt very close to my mother, but she had a certain mystery,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I used to ask her about that she\u2019d say, \u2018Oh I just don\u2019t have any,\u2019 which I thought was strange.\u201d Her mother\u2019s guardedness about her own family\u2019s origins were yet another layer to their already complex relationship&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;It took Lukasik two years to confront her mother, and the encounter didn\u2019t go well. \u201cI had never seen her so afraid,\u201d says Lukasik, who tells the story in her memoir, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53530\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>White Like Her: My Family\u2019s Story of Race and Racial Passing<\/em><\/a>. \u201cShe said, \u2018Promise me you won\u2019t tell anyone until after I die.\u2019\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article and watch the video <a href=\"https:\/\/garage.ext.hp.com\/us\/en\/modern-life\/history-of-memory-secret-album-film.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A novelist learns about her mother&#8217;s long-held secret by search for what&#8217;s missing from her family photo albums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,459,369,8,6462,20,842],"tags":[27597,27678,25614,29818,29816,1438,260,29819,147,29817],"class_list":["post-58146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-videos","tag-alvera-frederic-kalina","tag-alvera-fredric","tag-gail-lukasik","tag-hewlett-packard","tag-hp","tag-new-orleans","tag-ohio","tag-patrick-rodgers","tag-photography","tag-the-garage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58149,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58146\/revisions\/58149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}