A SPOTLIGHT ON HELLO AUNTIE, HELLO UNCLE
“Seeing my words on the wall has made my writing come alive. There is something magical about that.”
- Maliha Masood
April 30, 2024
With our community being at the core of our identity, our mission, and our way of work, Wing Luke Museum seeks to create exhibitions and programs that serve the folks we represent well. In our newest exhibit, Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle, we spotlight our Elders, sharing their rich life stories and looking at where they are today, and how they are challenging our perceptions of what it means to age and be an Elder.
One featured Elder in our exhibit is activist Sue Kay, who embodies intergenerational learning in her work and community. A self-described “Yelder” (Young Elder), Sue credits her growing knowledge of settler colonialism, capitalism, and other social justice issues to her young fellow activists, while also holding the rich, storied history of her family’s three generations in Seattle. Alleys, buildings, and streets in the C-ID spark her memories of old pharmacies, beansprouts, and live chickens.
“My mother did grow up in Canton Alley, which is right across from the museum, and I got to tour the unit, which blew me away. My grandmother came over in 1920. My mother was then born and lived there for almost 21 years. And then I went through with my aunt recently, about five years ago. We went through the Wing Luke and they have a bathtub in there and my aunt said to me, ‘We didn’t have a bathtub in our room.’ ….It’s like I’m always learning something new about the history. When I spoke at the museum, I said I wished I had heard more of the stories. The real stories.”
“Later on, the family moved up to a big house on Beacon Hill with five bedrooms, so that's a really drastic change from the way that unit is. The lower level, her son had a family of seven kids and my mother and her sister were upstairs with my grandma. I just remember it being a community where everybody knew the people across the alley next door and, you know, went to pick watercress, bean sprouts…”
- Sue Kay
Pro-choice supporters take to Westlake Park to protest the leaked Roe vs Wade initial draft majority opinion in May 2022. Emma Ottosen
Sue attending the annual From Hiroshima To Hope Floating Lantern Ceremony
And yet, Sue remains curious about the past, having gone on five different tours at the Museum and always learning “just a little bit more.” She will always be quick to reference a word of advice from a young friend, or mention a new perspective she learned from a community meeting for Sound Transit. When thinking about the Wing Luke Museum, too, it is the way the museum has developed, listened, and heard the needs of the ever-expanding community that excites her.
Sue speaking at the exhibit opening event for Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle
“It's like an incredible museum, I mean in just the way it has grown, and the incorporation of you know, all the different international district groups, new immigrants. It's just widely accepted. It's a place to come to. One thing that I hear from the young people too, is that they wish that there were more translations in Chinese for low-income people, there's a barrier there too. But they [Wing Luke Museum] seem to hear, they listen and hear. It's a place where we all bring our visitors.”
- Sue Kay
As exhibit text writer Maliha Masood points out, it is this collaborative process of creating and sharing that makes the Wing Luke Museum’s exhibits so authentic. For her, contributing to Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle was quite intimate, as she not only wrote the text for the entire exhibition, but also wrote of her parents’ stories of growing old in the United States.
When penning their entire arc, from young immigrants in the 1980s awestruck by Mount Rainier, to an elderly couple, with her father by her ailing mother’s side, Maliha felt like paying a tribute to her parents and the sacrifices they had made. She then wove her parents’ stories with other AANHPI Elders’ to create a “beautiful tapestry” of aging as a shared human experience.
Exhibit text writer Maliha Masood. Photo courtesy of Maliha
“I think community stories are way more powerful than the splashy headlines. WLM gives us a vehicle to air those long-forgotten or neglected stories that have made such a strong impact in our world…I think duality is a powerful concept and I like how WLM encourages us to explore deeper so we go beyond the superficial and understand the little stories lurking beneath the mainstream headlines. That’s a big part of any cultural institution. Shifting the power dynamic from majority to minority voices. WLM excels in this arena.” - Maliha Masood
Masood and Aziza’s wedding photo
Masood and Aziza at Mount Rainier, 1983.
Masood caring for Aziza at the hospital.
Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle is as much a journey to the past as it is an invitation to reflect on our present selves and our futures, even as Elders. Wing Luke Museum mirrors this, preserving spaces and stories that honor our histories while simultaneously asking, “But who are you becoming now?” To age is to continue learning and making room to do better, to be better.
We hope that the museum can be a space to invite such dialogue so that in connecting to these stories, we can all help to shape a better future for our community. This AANHPI Heritage Month, consider making a gift to support the Wing Luke Museum’s efforts in continuing conversations, past and present.
Our mailing address:
PO Box 3025
Seattle, WA 98114
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Learn more about the C-ID Coalition and Raging Grannies.
Learn more about Maliha and her writing here.