Chokers inlaid with rubies. Strands of clear emeralds. Delicate headgear framed by opalescent pearls. These are just a few of the golden treasures of her mother who admired Farah Khalid for a long time – and knew she would inherit one day.
However, that day came too early. Khalid’s mother unexpectedly became ill and split her collection between Khalid and her older sister, Lubna, before she died in 2013. In 2021, Khalid inherited the rest of her mother’s items when Lubna died at 47.
Khalid wanted to honor her family members by wearing their jewelry, but she usually preferred silver. She decided to take some of the smaller trinkets to Lahore, Pakistan and again to make them in a chain with the names of her mother and sister translated into Urdu. The chain was washed to weaken the yellow shades so that she could wear it more often.
“Their names on me from something they used to wear – it just felt very important to be close to them that way,” said Khalid, 48, a film director who lives in Brooklyn.
Passing on gold is a common practice in many Asian families. The precious metal is not just a superfluous decoration; It is seen as a liquid active: something that can be traded, acts as collateral or melted and sold. In the pop culture, gold has even become something of its own character: consider the Mangalsutra, a traditional Indian chain that represents the wedding, in the Netflix-hit TV program, “Never have I ever”, and the Rom-Com “Picture this” from 2025, in which Simone Ashley plays a financially wrestling photographer.
For many Asian American women such as Khalid, these accessories of their mothers or grandmothers appoint these accessories about how to bring the past to the present. Many women simply disturb these delicate heirlooms in Safe Deposit Boxes themselves. Others keep the jewelry for special occasions such as their weddings. Some have even reformed them in more contemporary, portable pieces. Here are four other women and the stories that tell their gold jewelry.
‘Small small piece of history’
Alicia Penn, 42, Charleston, SC
Alicia Penn and her brothers and sisters would grow up in Baltimore and would make routine stops in a jewelry store with their mother after a visit to the temple. Her mother would spend an hour with the owners, family friends who were also Cambodian, to buy gold accessories that she did not intend to keep. Instead, she would carry a piece until a friend showed an interest to buy it and then resell it for profit.
Penn never gave a second thought to what her mother did. “She explained it as a way to invest and enjoy buying things,” Penn said. “I thought it was an interesting way to think about investing, unlike traditional shares and bonds.”
What Penn did not know then was that the Khmer Rouge, who was responsible for the death of at least 1.7 million Cambodians, had abolished the Cambodia currency, making gold even more valuable. Penn’s parents left the country for the most brutal years, 1975 to 1979, but her mother’s sides were not lucky.
She eventually reached the United States in 1980 and helped Penn and her brothers and sisters to lift until she died when Penn was still a child. Penn taught the story of how her grandmother escaped in 2022 during a visit to her mother’s bank box, where she was invited to select a piece of jewelry: a small flat piece of gold in the form of a mermaid.
“I had never seen anything like that,” Penn said.
The jewelry was one of the two remaining charms of a golden belt that was once from her grandmother. She had sold pieces of the belt, consisting of charms connected to charms, to escape from the genocidal murder fields and to flee on foot to Thailand.
Penn wears the charm on a heavy gold chain with a malleable hook increase. “It’s this little piece of history that you can’t replicate,” Penn said. “Nobody makes things like this anymore.”
‘I want to wear it’
Nigar Iqbal Flores, 39, Clovis, Calif.
Marrying a man outside her Pakistani descent complicated the issue of whom the family gold of Nigar Iqbal Flores could inherit, even further aggravated by the couple with three boys. “A problem that I have to think is: are my children getting married to a desi girl that would appreciate this jewelry?” Said Flores. “Or are they going to marry a Desi girl that doesn’t appreciate it?”
Her children are still young, but the questions offer an opportunity for a new tradition, already a well -known concept in her family.
When Flores’ parents married in Karachi, her paternal family insisted that her mother did not work. She defended them, became a professor in the house economy and spent her first salary on an emerald green set, including a chain, earrings, a tikka (headpiece) and a ring.
“When I was a small child, I remember that I was, what a strange set because circles are not a traditional shape,” said Flores. The reason, her mother said, was that she had designed them herself.
Her mother gave Flores the set the day after her own marriage in 2012. Now Flores is looking for the emerald green jewelry from her mother to as many formal occasions as she can. “I now only buy Green Shalwar Kameez,” she said, referring to the traditional outfit of loose pants and a long shirt. “Because I want to wear it.”
Something again
Robin Kasner, 41, Chicago
Robin Kasner remembers that her 16th birthday was a bit of a test. She received a jade bracelet that was measured so close to her wrist that she was the help of her doll (grandmother on the mother’s side), her mother, some oil and a plastic bag to slide it up. “I’ve never made up for 20 years,” said Kasner. “To the shattered.”
A spontaneous visit to a battle cage led it to split into four pieces. Kasner called her mother in tears, who did not reflect her panic. She said that in Chinese culture, when Jade breaks, it is a form of protection, and she advised Kasner to keep the pieces. But Kasner was determined to find a way to make it for posterity.
She came across IncentiveA jeweler based in New York that again presents heirs as everyday documents. The broken bracelet was made all the way back in something else: a smooth, curved jade pendant attached to a gold chain of 22 carat. “I think it’s great that the broken piece was made in a new piece, and that it is something that I can hopefully pass on to my future daughter,” said Kasner.
An ‘acceptance of the relationship’
Lisa Kumar, 51, Franklin, Mich.
As a child, Lisa Kumar did not like the yellow gold that she was associated with Indian jewelry. But when her mother, now 83, started to suffer more and more pieces on her, she finally came around. For Kumar, the jewelry offers a memory that he had won heavily.
Kumar’s father came to the United States from Mumbai as a student in the 1960s. He soon met her mother, who is white and American, and they fell in love and married – a decision that his parents were not happy about. The couple made a trip to India shortly after their marriage to meet the family, and when it was time to leave, Kumar’s mother decided to stay behind almost two months to travel through South India with her new in-laws. “That was a really crucial moment in her relationship with them because they didn’t think she could hack it,” said Kumar. “And she did.”
In the following years, Kumar’s grandmother gave her daughter -in -law jewelry: heavier pieces but also simple things she could wear, such as half a set of gold bracelets. “My grandmother who gave all this to her was a sign of acceptance of the relationship, acceptance of my mother,” said Kumar.
Now Kumar tries to wear the accessories when she can and plans to pass them on to her own daughter, who is 20 and usually wears silver. “I hope that as she gets older,” Kumar said, “she will come there as I have.”
This story is part of a series about how Asian Americans are American popular culture. The series is funded through a subsidy from the Asian American Foundation. Financiers have no control over the selection and focus of stories or the processing process and do not assess stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of this series.
