Due: On the blog as a comment by noon on Monday, 9/21.
The blog assignment is to be about your memories and reflections about your family:
1. Where did your family(ies) live over the past few generations?
What continent(s), nation(s), states(s), region(s)?
2. What do you consider your family background(s) of origin?
What culture(s), nationality(ies), faith tradition(s)?
3. What stories do you remember being told about your family(ies)?
4. What core values, faith traditions, cultural traditions, rituals, etc. does your current family maintain – how are these the same or different than your family(ies) of origin?
5. How are your personally the same or different than the majority of your family? What do you think makes that so?
Below is a place to put your family workshop paragraphs.
The two sides of my family couldn’t have been different. My Italian grandparents on my mother’s side both came from a mid-sized city called Agnone in middle Italy. My father’s side is an amalgam of Scots, “orange” Irish, Native-American, English, and Germans. My father was an only child, the product of a broken home. He lived for the most part on the kindness of his relatives, having spent very little time living with his mother. His father he never really knew. He never graduated the ninth grade.
ReplyDeleteMy mother’s very Italian family was a large, Italian one. She had three brothers and three sisters. They couldn’t seem more different than my father’s family. What unites the two families was their extreme poverty in Youngstown, Ohio, where both families finally settled down. My parents both grew up during the Great Depression, and that fact colored every aspect of my life. My mother liked to tell the story of how they used to steal a bottle of milk from the neighbor’s porch so that they would have something to eat before they went to school. They were fearful that they would get caught until they noticed that the neighbors started ordering another bottle. Sometimes, we can, in fact, count on the kindness of others. It is our duty to return the favor when we can.
My father ran away from “home” after he was kicked out of school for fighting. There really wasn’t much for him there anyway. He hopped freight trains until he got to Salt Lake City, Utah, where, starving and alone, he was fed and given a ticket home by the Salvation Army. My father was not the charitable type, but he always dropped something in the pot when he saw the Salvation Army bell ringer. I would probably not be here to write these words if somebody hadn’t been there to save my father. It is my duty to return the favor when I can.
My parents drove me unmercifully to be what I turned out to be, a college professor. Meals were an ordeal when I would be quizzed about what I learned and bitterly chastised for every failure. I hated the attention, and my mostly-ignored sister envied it. We were not a close family.
Still, meals were the only time we ever talked, and paradoxically, Italian cooking became a kind of obsession with me. When I was about six years old, I once asked my Italian grandmother, who fed so many people during her long, suffering life, why she went to so much trouble to make the beloved Sunday meals for her extended family. She put her flower-coated hand on my cheek and said in her marvelous broken English, “I cook because I love-a you.” Well, yes. Perhaps I will say the same thing to my own family tonight -- even if they don't ask.
Something I wanted to add: I truly detest war. The suffering it brings, mostly to innocents, far outweighs any advantage any given war might produce. However, WW II probably saved my father. He lied about his age to get in the Navy and came back a far more responsible person. I have no doubt whatsoever tat my father would have turned out to be a criminal -- and dead -- long before I was born if the war had not come along.
DeleteMy family is mostly from Southern California. My mother was born in Cleveland, Ohio, my father was born in Palm Springs, California and I was born in Los Angeles, California. My families background of origin is in the heart of West Africa (not exactly sure where). I am African-American, our culture and traditions have been passed down from generation to generation; we share specific holiday dishes, songs, a sayings. Everyone in my family was raised a Christian, we also share some Buddhist beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I remember my aunt telling me the story of how I was adopted back into my biological family. When I was born, my mother and father lost custody of me due to testing positive for drugs and alcohol during the time of my birth, resulting in Social Services and the State of California to legal take me away from them. After a few days, my Aunt was notified of this, and she came to the rescue. After about a year and a half, the adoption process was completed and I live the luxury of seeing my biological parents as often as I please.
My family maintain’s the majority of African cultures and traditions that have been passed down for generations. i.e our Christianity, our special dishes for holiday or events, praying before consuming meals. I would assume they are different than how our ancestors celebrated, because each generation added something different to the recipe. I believe that I am personally different than the rest of my family, and share many similarities with the rest of my family. I am very similar with my Aunt, mainly because she raised me, so I’ve picked up many of her habits, because of her, I am more of the business casual, articulate, classic type. But then again I share a lot of the same qualities with my father; quite when upset, short-tempered, determined and strong hearted. I am different from my family because I was the only one (so far), that decided to go away for college. My biological parents didn't attend college, but my Aunt continued her education and received her Master’s Degree. I am also the only one in my family who is majoring in Pre-Medicine.
Nicely done, MaLia! Do you think that your separation from your biological parents and your relationship with them now has influenced you? How so?
Delete1. My family lives in a small village in the north of Guangdong Province of China over the past few generations.
ReplyDelete2. Atheist, but a majority of them believe the existence of gods and worship ancestors. My family background should be similar to most Chinese traditional families. But it is hard to say they are the same, because indifferent areas or places people will have different beliefs or traditional in different festivals.
3. No.
4. Most traditions and rituals are kept but simplified. Like marriage, we used to give banquets for three days. But most young people have to work, so we give banquets only for one day. About traditions: in different festivals or special days like moving house, marriage and funeral, we have different rituals and traditions. In Spring Festival, we will eat rice pudding, burn the incense to pray to ancestors and light the fire crackers. In Tomb-sweeping Festival, we still eat rice pudding and sweep the graves, as well as pray to ancestors.
5. Different. Generation gap.
Your answer to #5 is particularly interesting. I hope you'll be willing to discuss the "generation gap" a bit in class.
DeleteBoth my parents were born in an industrial city of Pakistan,Karachi.Their families were from Chakwal,a village in Punjab province.They migrated to Karachi after the partition of the subcontnent to look for a better future..My fathers family has a military history with his three brothers,and he himself having served in the armed forces of Pakistan.My mother also had a similar background but became a physiotherapist.
ReplyDeleteOur family has an Islamic tradition with all our ancestors(as far as I have been told) being muslims.We do not have any particular rituals or traditions except those that are in Islam.
For example,we celebrate the Islamic festivals such as Eid( a celebration in remembrance of Abrahams sacrifice of his son Ismael) and also observe fasts during the month of Ramazan.After the demise of my father my mother took care of all us siblings.This made me very close to my mother as I realized how much she did for us to enable us to complete our education.
That is what makes me different from the rest of my siblings because I always felt how she felt,I always realized and acknowledged what she did for us.
I have not been told much about my ancestors or their family traditions but our family places a lot of emphasis on religion.And I believe they are the same as our ancestors traditions because they were muslims as well.
DeleteExcellent, Zafir! I'm curious to find out how your different attitude toward your mother has affected your relationship with your siblings.
DeleteWell done, Zapir. Some of these topics must be difficult to write about, especially the death of your father. I hope that in class you'll be willing to talk a bit more about how his demise affected you and, especially, about how your religion has influenced your life.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of my family is from, and currently lives in, Oklahoma and Colorado. My mom’s family is from Oklahoma and my dad’s family is from Colorado. My mom was born in Oklahoma but moved to Colorado when she was very little so she still considers herself to be from Colorado. We have a few relatives scattered here and there but really most of them live in either Oklahoma or Colorado.
ReplyDeleteMost of my family migrated over to America from either England (The House of Lancaster eh?) and Sweden. Henry the 8th himself came out of the house of Lancaster in the house of Tudor so I like to think I could possibly related to him but who knows? My grandma was really into genealogy but she never traced that far back. I did however learn I am a very distant cousin to Dolly Parton on my dad’s side which is something. My on my dad’s side is majorly Catholic with some Christianity while my mom’s side of the family is mostly different denominations of Christianity.
The stories I remember being told about my family is how we have had very unlucky deaths in our family that have resulted in odd life lessons. For instance, don’t open up a screen door during a lightning storm and don’t run with ceramic/glass bowls- it just does not end up well. I also was once told that the reason my family came over from England on my mom’s side is because my relative punched a man in a bar and he didn’t get up. I have heard a lot of stories of how my ancestors dealt with poor times in their lives. Many of my relatives were farmers at one point, some still are today, and they often struggled with money. I have been told lots of stories about my dad’s crazy childhood growing up with his many siblings and cousins around. I have also heard about my mom and how she used to have to thaw out water in the winter time as she lived in the mountains of Colorado. Also I have heard the many stories of my grandpa on my mom’s side and his multiple escapes from death. Just to name a few, he was trampled by cows, got in a bad car accident, crashed a homemade plane, and had cancer as well.
Currently in my family my dad is still a practicing Catholic along with my sisters and brother. My mom and I have yet to associate ourselves with a specific religion but we are both some sort of denomination of Christianity. We do not have many cultural traditions or rituals that we take part in. We use recipes passed down for generations and pray before we eat but there are not many more everyday traditions that we take part in. Sure we have our ways that we celebrate holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving but those are more of traditions that were established in the last couple of generations that I will hopefully pass on to my own kids. Some core values we have continued to have however are honesty, kindness and generosity/ a willing to help those need.
There are many things that I have in common with my family. I believe in God and I have always had a desire to help those in need. I am an honest person and I am kind to others as well. I believe in doing what’s right and I also have really strong morals, much like my own parents. I believe having a hard work ethic is extremely important and I am very close to my family. I think a few things that are different about me from the rest of the family are that I do not have an established religion as well as, mostly compared to my mom’s side, I have strayed from taking part in a major that involves in math or science. My grandparents were science and math teachers while my mom is an accountant and my cousins are both becoming engineers while my aunt teaches science and my great uncle was a math teacher as well. Many of my relatives were teachers so we don have that in common but I am majoring in history/social sciences instead. I think the reasoning for some of these differences is my high level of curiosity. I constantly am trying to discover the answer to the “why” question in life as well expanding my knowledge in any way I can. I also am bored and struggle with numbers. History and literature have always just come easier to me.
Very good, Maddie! Check out the Amy Tan story for next class. Ask yourself, Have I felt any pressure from my family to be a certain way or accomplish certain life goals? How is my experience similar to or different from Tan's?
DeleteAbout a month before coming to the States, I went as I did every weekend to the local coffee store. Everyone knew my face but because I was always too shy to talk, no one knew anything about me. That Sunday though, an old guy named Giwrgos aka Tony Montana because he has a big scare on his face, decided to start a conversation with me. It was 10 am and his breath smelled like alcohol. When I told him about my family background, he shouted: “DUDE, THE QUITE BOY IS FROM ALL AROUND THE PLACE!” I was fortunate to have a multi cultural background which shocked the people in the coffee store, while no one besides one guy who was a sailor had traveled outside of the Balkan area.
ReplyDeleteTo start with, from my father’s side I am Greek- Albanian. My mother is from the Netherlands but her side has been spread in Spain, France and Czech Republic. My parents moved to the States for a better future and stayed for a couple of years. We moved back to Greece, the place where I and my brother were raised. To be honest, even though I was born in the States and have Dutch blood, I feel mostly Greek while the majority of my experiences took place there.
My father always loved telling us stories about our family. His favorite ones though were those of the Greek Civil war were people with left political views went against the right. The stories were harsh while as historians say, Civil wars are the most brutal. Some of the stories were too harsh to sound true for someone like me who has never witnessed a war zone. In movies the pictures depicted look allot less scary than the ones described by my father.
If one would meet my cousins and aunts, he would witness the pure traditional Greek family. Bouzouki blasting all day, people dancing and singing along, a smoke fog above our heads, visitors passing by to say hi, iced coffee mixed with alcohol, card playing and always something cooking in the kitchen. We always find a way to fit all the things I said above in our small apartment houses. It seems like all my family is outgoing, except of me and my cousin Costas. During all the rituals we sit in the corner watching everything happen. I suppose every family has one or two weird members. I am one of them.
That is a brief summary of my family’s history. I guess Giwrgos was right. I am kind of all around the Atlas.
In the past few generations my family has lived in the United States but both my mom and dad were born here in Ohio. My mom was born in Springfield, Ohio and grew up there all her life. My moms family originates from France and her great grandparents were the first ones to come here. My mom really has no connection to that. My dads family is from Hungry and his family came here around the same time as my moms. Both my mom and dad were both raised with christian beliefs but my mothers family was much more into the church part and she went to church every Sunday and attended a christian college while my dads family never went to church unless it was christmas or easter.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger I was told stories about how my dad would get in trouble for lying. One story is that when my dad was a freshman in high school he got caught lying about ditching class and he was punished by having to make his own meals for a month. The reasoning was that it made more work for him but it also taught him how to cook because he very quickly got tired or just having cereal 3 times a day. I remember this story so well because when I was a freshman it was told to me after i got in trouble for not telling the truth. My family puts a big emphasis on telling the truth and being open with each other. Me and my dad are very similar in the way that we both play the same sports and we have the same sense of humor. Me and my dad spent a lot of time together when i was playing hockey.
I can relate to your connection with your father, Max. For the next blog entry, you'll be writing about the Amy Tan story. Think about the similarities and differences in the relationship between Amy and her mother and yours with your father.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading over the assignment, I realized how much I didn't know about my mother. I've been trying to get information from her family for the past several days but since I'm not close to anyone in her family, I haven't gotten any response. That's the reason why this post is late but I'm just going to do it with the little information I know about her and the boatload of information I know about my father.
ReplyDeleteMy mother and her siblings grew up in Pennsylvania and most of them still live there to this day. My father, his siblings, his mother, her siblings and her parents all lived in Ohio, and and most of them, excluding my grandma's parents, were born there. My grandma was born in Youngstown, and my father and his siblings were born there too. My oldest sister, Angela, was born in Texas, while my sister Crystal and I were born in Cincinnati.
I consider myself to be Serbian first and foremost because of my grandma but I'm most German than Serbian and Irish. My mother was German, Irish and about a dozen other nationalities and my father was half Serbian and half German, hence why my last name is German. That's probably one of the most popular questions I get asked when I tell people I'm Serbian but my last name is German.
I don't really have many stories about my family in general but I have little anecdotes about my father at just about every age and my mother as an adult. My favorite story of my father is when he and my uncle went biking in some mountains nearby like they did a lot and my uncle injured himself on their ride back and my dad covered for him so he wouldn't get in trouble with my grandma for getting hurt, especially because he was fooling around when he got injured. Nobody would tell me what actually happened, probably because my uncle didn't want to admit what really happened, even to this day, but knowing my uncle, it would be something totally unexpected because he's so different from how he was as a kid.
That leads to values, since we didn't really have traditions in my family. One of the biggest values is family comes first, which is quite ironic because I don't get along with either one of my sisters that much, and one of my grandma's sisters doesn't get along with my grandma's other two siblings. Another personal value of mine that I learned from my life experiences is half of a quote by Lao Tzu "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength..." Love is an important thing to me because it really has given me strength. Whenever I am going through something that's painful, I find love even more than usual and it gives me strength to get through.
Personally, I'm different from my sisters in almost every way. My oldest sister made a bunch of stupid decisions, like marrying straight out of high school to someone who had been cheating on her for years, getting pregnant while they were still engaged at the same time that he got another woman pregnant and still marrying him, which resulted in a divorce a few short months later. Then she married another man a few years later, who turned to be a drug addict/alcoholic and abusive. She's still with him because she thinks he'll change and while he has his moments of being the man she fell in love with, he doesn't really change. My sister Crystal made a lot of mistakes in high school and after getting out of her own abusive relationship, she is now has a baby with a guy who cheats on her. I've always been the one who stays away from guys and if I do have a relationship with a guy, I am friends with them for years and I know what they are like first. I've always been very successful in school, even after my rough patch. Also, Crystal is athletic and artistic, while I am a logical, mathematical person.
My family comes from Mexico. My dad is from Ensenada Baja California and my mom is from Mexicali Baja California. My grandparents from my mom’s side come from Nayarit Mexico. They worked long hours in the fields picking crops and made just enough money to get by. They moved from place to place each season depending on the crops grown. I remember my mom telling me how she had to work with them during the weekend and how hard it was to put school as a priority. It was hard for her and her six siblings to finish middle school. Once they grew up my grandparents decided to move to Ensenada. This is where my mom met my father.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was born and raised in Ensenada Mexico. My grandpa is from Jalisco and my grandma is from Oaxaca Mexico. My grandma was 14 when she married my grandpa and started a family with him. They have two children.
After living in Ensenada for years my mom decided to come to the United States for a better future. We now have made Watsonville California what we call home. Most of my moms side of the family lives in California and I get to visit my dads side of the family during vacations when I go to Mexico. Some traditions I have with my dad's family is that each year in June we have a big family reunion and we camp together.
Since I was small my family has taught me the golden rule to treat others I would like to be treated. They have taught me to love God and to always put him first in what I do and the choices I make. We are Christian and we go to church every Sunday as a family. I have to say I am very similar to my family.
ReplyDeleteThe last few generations of my family have lived in Guatemala. My siblings and few cousins were born in United States. Most of family is still in Guatemala. Since I am Hispanic, I am influenced by the Guatemalan culture. Since most of my family was born in Guatemala they are considered Guatemalan. On my hand, I consider myself American. There has not been too much faith tradition in my family. I believe my mother’s side is Christian to some extent. I know I have picked up my own faith of a more practicing Christian.
My dad always told me to be proud of who I am. I come from a family of hard workers and dedicated people. I have a lot of uncles and aunts and I heard stories about them growing up. They were always there for each other because truly at the end of the day that is all they had. They grew up very differently than how I did.
I think I am the most different from my family, but I try to follow my father’s role as a strong individual. I have always tried my best in my studies, which is one thing my father really could not follow.
My family is from all over the country. My dad’s mother was born and raised in rural Iowa while her husband was raised in California. Somehow, the ended up in Ann Arbor, Michigan where they had my father. My mothers side is both from Michigan. I would consider myself mostly german with a little bit of English, Irish, and Swedish mixed in. With that, we are also christian. But I definitely wouldn't say myself or my family are practicing christians. We believe in the morals and values that go along with the religion but rarely go to church if ever. Some of our core values as a family do come from christianity. We believe in accepting everyone and not judging. We also believe that everyone is good in some way we just need to find it. We believe in the ten commandments and what they imply. My family hasn't really been one that is about tradition and rituals simply because we are extremely busy people and its hard to keep them going. We, of course, have little traditions like making homemade cinnamon rolls and my mom buying my father underwear for every holiday. I really believe that my family has shaped me heavily into the person I am today and I am very thankful for that. I truly believe in the principals they have taught me. I wont say that i always agree with every little opinion but I do agree about the big stuff.
ReplyDelete