Peeling Ancestors: Jell-O as Archive and Anarchive
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Date
2022
Authors
Herceg, Noelle
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In the cold-lit stale rooms of IDEAL LIVING, her food tray is brought up as close as it could be to her chair, and my grandpa sits behind it. He picks up the spoon and scoops up mush— brown mush, with a little bit of green mush, and then to the whitish orangish mush. Lifting the spoon to my grandma’s mouth, he waits. Sometimes she was able to barely open her mouth, her lips quivering as if taking all of her strength just to move them a centimeter apart. Sometimes he’d push the spoon right into her lips, and chunks left around her mouth and dripped onto her chest, which grandpa would carefully wipe
away with a napkin. Some days she couldn’t open her mouth, some days she probably didn’t want to. But even if she wasn’t hungry, she’d always have room for her red purée juice. Grandpa would place a straw into the cup and hold it to her lips, sometimes needing to place the straw into her mouth, but she would suck that sweet red juice right up. I’d watch it move from the cup into the straw, going up and up until it reached her. It was thicker than I expected the first time I saw it, jiggling a little bit if you shook the cup.
Description
16 pages
Keywords
MFA