Jasmine Wilson HUM-100 2-4-1 Short Answer PDF

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Jasmine Wilson July 12, 2019 HUM-100 2-4-1 Short Answer: Seeing Your Artifact in a New Light

The artifact that I have chosen to focus on is my “welcome to the world gift”, the quilt that my great grandmother made for me. This quilt is many colors, a rainbow you can say, of purples, pinks, blues, greens and yellows. It is also twenty-two years old, so the colors have faded throughout the years. It shows signs of love, of adoration, of constant use. This quilt has frayed edges, although they were not always like that, they were once very soft and very smooth. This quilt is made from a soft vibrant fabric. It also has a silk like material incorporated into it to allow for smooth transition. Growing up, I remember my mother explaining to me that my great grandmother did this to allow me to easily roll off of the blanket or for the blanket to slide off of me in the case that it got caught and I could not breath. I think this was a very good idea. As I got older, I would use the silk like parts of the quilt as a soother. I was a thumb sucker growing up (one of my worse habits that took forever to break) and with that I would fold a corner of the quilt in half and create a sharp edge for me to rub my finger along as I self-soothed. I think having this silk like material incorporated into my quilt had a huge impact on me growing up. I grew up in the foster care system. The one thing I did not lose was my quilt. Having it, and having that method of selfsoothing helped me to get through what was a very difficult time in my life. Of course, I grew out of the thumb sucking, but I still find myself grabbing that quilt and folding one of those silk-

like pieces in half to create that sharp edge and rub my finger along it whenever I am feeling stressed. I believe the purpose of this quilt was to provide comfort and to show me love can be one of the biggest factors to produce change. My great grandmother was born and raised in a time, and a family, that believed widely in the Ku Klux Klan and even practiced. My arrival changed her in so many ways. I am tri-racial, African American, Puerto Rican and Caucasian. To KKK members I am an even bigger “abomination” than pure African Americans (although there is no such thing, but we all get the picture). My great grandmother never left my mothers side when she was in labor with me, and held her hand during my delivery, a total of twenty-seven hours and 33 minutes. She was the second person to hold me and didn’t let me go until the doctors needed to check on me. The quilt she made for me is seen, in my eyes, as a symbol of love, admiration, and most importantly, change coming from those things alone. In the late 90’s baby quilts seemed to be a big thing, so having one created for me wasn’t unusual. The circumstances surrounding the creation of mine is what grounds me so much. I was born into an area in Indiana that still to this day is extensively racist, there are confederate flags all around, the “N-word” is used widely and even KKK hats and other racist symbols are seen all around. People in the community do not see me as a person, they see through me and that is their own perception. I think this quilt, making the impact on my life the way that is has, changing my great grandmother the way that it has, shows that social perceptions can change....