Saturday, October 19, 2019

In Search of a Cultural Identity


This past week, I read a blog post which embodies the exact opposite childhood experience to the one which propelled my frantic search for cultural roots. Ironically, the post centered on the very same ethnic background I now know I can claim: those Polish roots provided me by my paternal grandfather.

While I grew up knowing absolutely nothing of this past heritage, the writer of that post experienced a childhood infused with many tokens of her Polish ancestry. She, however—as did I—grew up with a surname (in her case, Roberts) which, having been changed from its original form, gave no hint of her true ethnic background. "The Polish-American traditions were so close to my heart that it felt problematic to have a surname which conveyed no hint of this heritage," Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz wrote in From Shepherds and Shoemakers.

In Julie's case, hers was a childhood filled with food, songs, and memories of cherished Polish traditions. In my childhood home, there was plenty of food and song, of course, but no one thought to tell us they were Polish traditions. In fact, our home seemed singularly stripped of any ethnic fingerprints whatsoever. We were like cultural air ferns.

Of course, that was not the initiating point of Julie's blog post; her intention was to follow the lead of another genealogy blogger, Jim Scobbie, and write about "Eight Surnames of my Own." Thankfully, despite my own time warped standoff with my reticent Polish grandparents, I can now state six of those eight greats' surnames. But the last two cost me dearly in research time and skeptical brain cells. I can't yet feel confident enough to add them to the eight-great lineup.

It is, in fact, that sense of cultural heritage which drives the curiosity to know—to finally find out: am I really Polish, too, or do I just believe the stories parroted to me as a child? I am not sure parents are aware of the unintended lure of evasive answers to inquisitive children's questions.

6 comments:

  1. Eight surnames of my own - I like that.
    One stumbling block in my current research is that all four grandparents were from Poland at the time they were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some records report them as from Poland; others as from Austria, sigh.
    I resolved it in my mind by thinking - India, British Empire.

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    1. That is a great comparison, Gayle. Research situations like yours certainly seem to drag us into learning the minutiae of politics, wars, and border changes involving an empire far, far from home.

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  2. I always thought that I was at least 50% German. My father's family was very proud of their German heritage and my community has deep German roots. I was sure my mother's family would include German ancestry, too - and we always celebrated St Patrick's Day for her Irish ancestry father. Thanks to DNA, I found that my father's family has lots of English, too - even marriages back in Germany. And my Irish grandfather's greats actually came from England, too. Where one generation changed Woodhall into O'Dell just to confuse us. My children were devastated by that one!

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    1. My brother was devastated to learn he wasn't really Irish, as well, Miss Merry. It is interesting to see what notions we form of our own identity, based on what we understand about our roots. When that understanding changes, it seems like bedrock has just shifted!

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  3. Well I am Italian, maybe. My mom's family - Italian, yes and yes and yes. Garibaldi's, and Bolognesi's except DNA says different..... DNA says French.... who to believe?

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    1. I think people--at least in America--assume that we are the only nation of immigrants, and before that great migration to a new world, people were sedentary and remained stuck in the same village for generations. While that may be true for some people, there have been centuries of migration history for almost every ethnicity on the face of the earth. It is a fascinating study to see how people groups have moved around. But don't forget that this is all an evolving science. Don't be surprised if we see any future recalibrations of those ethnicity calculations.

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