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Shyamala and Donald separated when Kamala was just five, according to the BBC. The reason, per Kamala’s book, The Truths We Hold: Donald took a professorship position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Shyamala filed for divorce when Kamala was 7 and won custody of Kamala and her sister, Maya, two years later. “They didn’t fight about money. The only thing they fought about was who got the books,” Kamala wrote in her memoir.
“I knew they loved each other very much, but it seemed like they had become like oil and water,” she also wrote in her memoir, per the NYT.
In her memoir, the senator also wrote that her parents struggled with “incompatibility” and that she and her sister spent most of their time with their mother. She said that they would see their dad Donald “on weekends and spend summers with him in Palo Alto.”
“[H]ad they been a little older, a little more emotionally mature, maybe the marriage could have survived. But they were so young. My father was my mother’s first boyfriend,” Kamala also revealed in her memoir, according to PEOPLE.
And her parents rarely spoke after their divorce.
The split left Shyamala so angry that, for years, she barely interacted with Donald, per the New York Times. Kamala recalled that, when she invited both her parents to her high school graduation, she feared that her mother would not show up, the publication reported.
“She was quite unhappy about the separation, but she had already got used to that and she didn’t want to talk to Don after that,” Shyamala’s brother, Gopalan Balachandran, told the New York Times. “When you love somebody, then love turns into very hard bitterness, you don’t even want to talk to them.”
Kamala’s mom raised her to be a “strong, Black woman.”
Kamala shared a tribute to her mother for Black History Month: “My mother was very intentional about raising my sister, Maya, and me as strong, Black women. She coupled her teachings of civic duty and fearlessness with actions, which included taking us on Thursday nights to Rainbow Sign, a Black cultural center near our home.”
She continued: “This #BlackHistoryMonth, I want to lift up my mother and the community at Rainbow Sign who taught us anything was possible, unburdened by what has been.”
Shyamala and Donald both had impressive careers.
Kamala’s mom was a leading breast cancer researcher who worked at UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin, and was eventually part of the Special Commission on Breast Cancer, according to her obituary. The obituary also points out that Shyamala “made substantial contributions to the field of hormones and breast cancer, publishing her research in countless journals and receiving numerous honors. Her discovery sparked a plethora of advancements regarding the role of progesterone and its cellular receptor in breast biology and cancer.”
Donald is a prominent economist who worked at UC Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Stanford University, according to his Stanford bio. His research has focused on “exploring the analytical conception of the process of capital accumulation and its implications for a theory of growth of the economy, with the aim of providing thereby an explanation of the intrinsic character of growth as a process of uneven development,” the bio says.
Donald also served as economic consultant to the Government of Jamaica and as economic adviser to several prime ministers.
Donald Harris C-SPAN
Kamala was particularly close to her mom.
Kamala has spoken about her relationship with her mother a lot in public, praising her for being a strong woman. “I’m the daughter of a mother who broke down all kinds of barriers,” Kamala wrote on Instagram in May. “Shyamala Harris was no more than five feet tall, but if you ever met her you would think she was seven feet tall. She had such spirit and tenacity and I’m thankful every day to have been raised by her.”
In August, she paid tribute to Shyamala in an Instagram post. “My mother always use to say, ‘Don’t just sit around and complain about things. Do something.’ I dearly wish she were here with us this week,” Kamala wrote in caption.
Shyamala died from colon cancer on February 11, 2009.
“It was one of the worst days of my life,” Kamala wrote in a New York Times opinion piece reflecting on the day in 2008, when her mom told her she was diagnosed with colon cancer. “Are my daughters going to be okay?” was one of the last questions Shyamala asked the hospice nurse. Kamala says, “she was focused on being our mother until the very end.”
She added: “And though I miss her every day, I carry her with me wherever I go. I think of the battles she fought, the values she taught me, her commitment to improve health care for us all. There is no title or honor on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter.”
Kamala’s vote was inspired by her mom, Shyamala.
In 2020, the VP shared on her Instagram that she was voting for folks like her mom.
“#ImVotingFor people like my mother, Shyamala, who taught my sister and me that if you see a problem, you don’t complain about it: you do something about it. It’s because of her that I know change is possible when we put in the work,” she wrote in her caption.
She is super tight with her sister, Maya.
Kamala’s younger sister Maya, 53, is Kamala’s only sibling, and they are extremely close.
“We forged a bond that is unbreakable,” Kamala said of her sister last year in an interview with the Washington Post. “When I think about it, all of the joyous moments in our lives, all of the challenging moments, all of the moments of transition, we have always been together.”
Maya also helped introduce Kamala during this year’s DNC, and talked about their bond. “Growing up, heaven help the poor kid who picked on me because my sister would be there in a flash to have my back,” she said. “Now we’ve got your back as you and Joe fight to protect our democracy.”
Kamala also shared a cute picture of her and Maya rocking bell bottoms and posing back-to-back with each other in another Instagram post, where she noted that she had gone “through a growth spurt and her mom had taken the hem out of her pants.”
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Publish date : 2024-11-04 04:37:00
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