Making the Invisible, Visible: The first step…

Domestic Work, 1937

                                         Natasha Trethewey

All week she's cleaned

someone else's house,

stared down her own face

in the shine of copper-

bottomed pots, polished

wood, toilets she'd pull

the lid to--that look saying

Let's make a change, girl.

But Sunday mornings are hers--

church clothes starched

and hanging, a record spinning

on the console, the whole house

dancing. She raises the shades,

washes the rooms in light,

buckets of water, Octagon soap.

Cleanliness is next to godliness ...

Windows and doors flung wide,

curtains two-stepping

forward and back, neck bones

bumping in the pot, a choir

of clothes clapping on the line.

Nearer my God to Thee...

She beats time on the rugs,

blows dust from the broom

like dandelion spores, each one

a wish for something better.

from Domestic Work, 1999

Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

  

1) What is the issue or challenge you are addressing? Explain.The challenges we are addressing are Domestic Worker. Domestic Worker is the worker that works in the employer household. Unfortunately, some of them got abuse and they don’t have a very fair wages. And even sadder, some of them couldn’t even contact with their family back home or died in an accident during the training period. 

2) Why is this important to you and your community and who does it impact? Explain.It is important to my community to work with together with me and help the Domestic Worker because every year, an estimate of 300,000 domestic worker in Malaysia and mostly got abuse and even got killed. But we can make a different by do something to make the world know that Domestic Worker are not slave for us to abuse them and we should not rely on them every time.

 

3) What kinds of surprises have you encountered in your research?Before I studied this unit, I didn’t know that most of the domestic workers got abuse even though some of my mom side’s aunts/uncles are a domestic worker. But after learning and discussing about these issues, I was kind of shock and thinking that the news that I found was unreliable, because since my country is a resourceful place to get domestic workers, we could meet many of them in the airport when they return home at the end of the year. But they had never spoken about “abuse” or anything that would harm them only that the life condition was not as good as they expect plus that usually when people think about Malaysia, they would think about the nice side of it not the bad side.  

4) How does learning about this issue make you feel and why?From learning about this issue, it make me feel sad and feeling quite ashamed of how people like me or anyone could have stand up and speak for Domestic worker rather than being a bystander, because as I said up there, every day about 300,000 domestic worker got abuse and the number might get rise if we don’t stop the issue. By that as the Human Rights declare “all human are set to be free” therefore domestic worker should have more freedom simply because they are human like us and they are worthy to have a life like all human do.