Post by @blogdiva@mastodon.social

2026-10-04 16:21 UTC

my mother was just another sweatshop garment worker with high computational and visualization skills that could look at a diagram once and go to town soldering little bits of metal and silicone covered bobs like it was nobody's business. but because the capitalists saw her labor as just an extention of Delancey Street sweatshops, her skills were devalued. and after all, she had never gone to college. they couldn’t possibly call her an engineer without the academia gatekeeping… 🧵…

Replies (2)

@blogdiva@mastodon.social 2026-10-04 16:26

which is why when almost 20 years later i wanted to come back to the city of my birth to see what the hype was all about (by way of transferring from UPR to NYU, mind you), the only way my mother would support it was to SWEAR I WOULD NOT GET A JOB SEWING CLOTHES. my mother did try to be reasonable and teach me to sew, by the way. but as the clumsy child i was, i ended up with a Singer needle impaling one of my fingers. she used that as an excuse to make me sew by hand, mostly…

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@autoperipatetikos@neurodifferent.me 2026-10-05 08:01

@blogdiva@mastodon.social Thank you for sharing. Sorry for all the health troubles you've had and the loss of your mother. I was also discouraged from sewing in a factory or doing piece work. But I made loads of my own stuff when I was younger. I eventually worked for a designer in her couture sewing room but it wasn't a good environment for me. I'm mostly too unwell to still do it now.

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