Sydney Ogude
Personal artifact
The artifact that I decided to choose was the portrait of my late great grandmother and she is very important to our family although she is no longer with us she was a role model to all of us and taught us the importance of family. She had 7 kids and they went on to have kids and I eventually came about. Although I didn’t meet her, my mom always told me stories about how she instilled a working ethic in all her kids and always laid a foundation of always facing adversity to get what u want. Being Ghanaian myself these foundations were always instilled in me at a young age. This picture was taken in the 1950s and I got this picture when I went back to Ghana in 2013 to visit family back there and we brought it with us . I believe the picture is over 50 years old. This photo was taken for her 30th birthday near the garden by her house. The photo was taken by my uncle who was a photographer at the time. The photo was in a wooden frame. In the portrait she is sitting with her arm crossed with a dress tailored by my aunt. Whenever we have a family gathering her picture is always in the center of the room because we all adored her that much. The reason why I chose this artifact is because our grandmother has always been the glue that held the family together when it came to arguments and what not she was always the delegator and made sure things always ran smoothly. Another reason why I chose this artifact was because it meant a lot to my family and it was fairly easy to pick due to the admiration we had towards her. It only seemed right. This artifact is important to me personally because the values that my grandmother teaches her kids is what my mom instilled in me. Hardworking ethics and core values are what my family embodies and she had a big part in that happening. Culturally the way my family acts and the things we value is because of her because she instilled in her kids the importance of having family by your side and the work ethic. Being a single mom of 7 she really was like a superhero to us and made sure her kids always had what they needed. The greater story that the artifact tells the reader about my life, family, and culture is that I come from a place of strong values and work ethics and also it shows that my grandmother was an important figure in my family and was sort of the leader in my family. Women in Ghanaian society back then were seen as bearers of children, housewives and sellers of produce so it was very rare for women to be the head of the household but in recent years this has changed. So her doing it at a time when it was out of the norm made her even more respectful. If I wanted to find the background of the artifact I could ask my other family members about it because they could possibly know more than me given they were all very close to her. That portrait is the only living picture of her so that portrait is precious to us. The portrait is given to the eldest female in our family so right now it’s with my mom. My grandmother instilled in us the importance of family. Every Sunday we always have a big dinner with all my family. My family is very huge so at least 20 people come every Sunday. I used to ask her why we always had a big dinner every Sunday and she said that because of my grandmother she used to tell them when they were young that when they grow up and she’s not here she wants them to always have dinner on sunday with family and that’s been something we’ve been doing for years just because of her. Family was important to her because she felt the bond between family was the strongest thing in the world
REFLECTION
This artifact was to show readers a little bit about things I value and where they originated from. I want the reader to feel enjoyment from reading my work but also a bit about my culture and the things we value. I think the readers will be you and my fellow classmates. At first I didn’t know what artifact to choose but the portrait of my grandmother came to my head fairly easily. My planning was very freeform. I wrote a couple of sentences about the person she was and the rest just came about organically. I also had the help of the prompts to keep me on track. Some chances that I made was my intro. Ms Buno suggested that I should change my introduction a bit because it sounded like a presentation so I fixed it. I also had difficulty when it came to the addition of certain thighs because I didn’t want to lose track of the objective at hand so I just focused on the most important things.
