My Family 's Ancestry Has Always Been An Open Discussion Among Us

Growing up in an area with a large Mexican community I never really understood how much my culture means to me. I grew up with the stories my dad and grandfather would tell me about my ancestors. My people were the raiders from the hills of Mexico City and that we were a family of warriors. I never held much weight to the warrior part of my grandfather’s stories but I did know that my great grandfather was a fighter. He left Mexico and rode the train up to Denton Texas and sold tamales on the square his entire life. He fought to give my grandfather a better life here. I don’t talk about my dad’s side of the family much, in this day in age being seen as white has more advantages than being seen as Mexican. This thought changed as I came to

My family comes from a humble background. My grandmother started working at the age of 13, with small jobs in order to feed her siblings. My grandfather worked many hard labor jobs in order to provide for our family. With my grandfather’s hard work, he was able to bring my grandmother, my two uncles, my father, my mother, my brother and I into the U.S. My grandparents decided to migrate to the U.S because in Mexico, they had nothing. They had enough to eat but they were still struggling to come out of poverty. When my grandparents migrated into the U.S my grandfather would still work a blue collar job, until he fractured his spine and couldn't work anymore. Nevertheless, that did not stop him from working. He began selling in swap meets, selling

As a first-generation American I’ve had to face certain challenges that people from non-immigrant families wouldn’t have to face. The most obvious challenge is subtle racism. I’ve had people, speaking directly to me, imitate the way other Indian people speak, make racist jokes (some people think racist jokes are validated if they’re speaking to someone from the race in question), justifying themselves by telling me things like “but you’re not like that.” I come from people who are “like that.” I may be an American but that doesn’t mean anyone can make comments about my family and where they come from. Another such challenge is that my parents often can’t help me navigate American life. But their experiences, the difficulties I’ve seen them face in their lives, and the values they’ve picked up and passed down to me have shaped how I approach life’s problems. Seeing their struggles to create a good life for our family in the US has taught me the importance of education, hard work, risk-taking, and optimism.

Education, or the lack thereof, has always been something that plagued my immediate family. I come from a background of immigrant parents—hard-working, yet unable to acquire academic achievements. My father did not graduate out of high school in Vietnam because he was drafted into the Vietnam War and escaped as a refugee thereafter. My mother, on the other hand, graduated from high school but was not able to pursue higher education due to the burdens she had working and raising me as a child.

In the 90’s, my parents immigrated to the United States. My father was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He escaped from a time of high level of recruitment for the nation's army. He eluded the government for years and eventually came to North Dakota as a student. My mother is from the Former Yugoslavia; more specifically she was born in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and grew up in what is now Slovenia. My mother came to America to escape the failing monarchy in Yugoslavia, which was a result of many wars

A important dilemma in my personal life is about my experience as a first generation immigrant in the United States. My parents take extra precaution to make sure I do not loose sight of where I came form and so, my parents drive to Mexico every year with my sister and I to see relatives who are living in conditions worse than ours so that we are grateful of our life in America. As I see my cousins and nieces/nephews grow up, I see realize that they have no real role model to look up to as no one has completed college when their parents exited high school and some not even that. So I want to help my family members to aspire to be something better in life and not a mailman or manual laborer like my father and uncles. I would like to instill

My maternal grandparents are JC Williams and Clara Goree and they were both born in 1910 and born and raised Sprotts (Marion), Alabama. My grandparents lived in segregated AL; JC ethnicity was black, southern Baptist, farmer, and Clara was combination of black and American Indian, homemaker, and farmer. Clara and JC wedded in 1926 and had their first child (Bobbie) shortly afterward. Subsequently, this union birth a total thirteen children and my mother (Mary) was number 11 of 13. The children worked well together to ensure their basic needs were met; however, once they became of age, the children all left to start their own careers and families.

Together my family tree or Genogram and I see why it is important to know who we are and where we come from. I am an African American and both my parents are of African American decent. In the African American culture, many of our ancestors came to America by capture and not by choice. It is said that many African Americans were slaves and were a part of slave trade that was increased between the 15th and 19th centuries (Bennett, 2003; Van Sertima, 1976). Many African Americans were brought here to make their white or European owners money and cause them to be prosperous in areas of agriculture. There were white indentured servants, who could have worked to till the ground and make the harvest plentiful, but it wasn’t enough, so plantation owners saw it profitable to use African slaves as a solution to

My father is from Yugoslavia. I have very early memories in childhood of knowing that I was a first generation American. I am Croatian and this culture is huge on family. I remember being constantly at family functions that seldom involved people outside of the family and the neighbors (on the block we lived). I actually believed that all of my neighbors were family members and all were Croatian. I didn’t realize that the neighbors or other people had different nationality and/or backgrounds until I was a pre-teen. My neighborhood (the block) was diverse for the Southside of Chicago in 1960’s and 1970’s. I was exposed to Lebanese, Jordanian, Hispanic, German, Irish, and Korean culture from the time I was a small child but I didn’t know that the culture was different from being Croatian; I felt that it was the norm. I didn’t realize the difference until I entered high school.

My parents both came to this country at a very young age. My father was 16 when he first moved to the U.S. and my mother years later moved when she was 19. I am a child of immigrants and it was hard growing up. I consider myself a Mexican American or Chicana. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and later moved to Las Vegas. As I asked my father what he had to deal when he first moved he said “people would discriminate me just because I couldn’t speak well English and because of my brown skin”. “I was only 16 and wanted to live the American dream, but it was more like hell in America”. A lot of people are discriminated every day just because they aren’t Caucasian/white Americans, but they’re still American they live here and have a living here.

My family immigration story involves a lot of typical topics and a few hardships which people may not expect. By my generation, we have become accepted as White. However, both of my grandmothers had mixed ancestry.

Throughout my life, education was a big part of it, and according to my mother, the thing I needed to focus on the most. Like my own mom, McBride’s mother “had no model for raising us other than the experience of her own Orthodox Jewish family, which despite the seeming flaws- an unbending nature, a stridency, a focus on money, a deep distrust of all outsiders, not to mention her father’s tyranny- represented the best and worst of the immigrant mentality: hard work, no nonsense, quest for excellence, distrust of authority figures, and a deep belief in God and education… believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of

Our family history is rooted in Texas and Mexico. Discussing our family history with my parents and relatives I have found that my grand-parents and great grandparents were born and raised in Texas. They moved back and forth between Mexico and Texas for work. Both sides of our family always sought work and better opportunities for their families. Our families have been made up of strong men who worked mostly as laborers. My grandfathers and great-grand fathers worked in cotton fields, as ranch hands, migrant workers known as “Campesinos”, “Brazeros” or laborers, sheered sheep and have even been grave diggers. Working in many different manual labors in the Del Rio, Austin and Hill Country area of Brady and Seguin, always working hard for their families. During the depression in America, my

At a young age I departed from Mexico leaving all my friends, memories, and my father behind. Even though my father did not accompany us to the U.S. I hold no grudges or any type of negative thoughts because having heard both sides to why he stayed and why we left I understood that it was for the better. While he was growing career wise my family needed a change that would’ve been selfish to include him. This

When I was at the very innocent age of three, my parents decided to immigrate to the United States from Bolivia. We moved to Pasadena, TX, in hopes of pursuing the American dream. Growing up, my neighborhood was not the best environment to raise a family, however, this environment shaped me into the person I am today. My parents initially made the decision to move because my father got a job offer that was too good to decline. We were promised a house in a nice neighborhood as well as jobs for both of my parents. When we arrived after a 13-hour flight, all of the promises along with our hopes were shattered. We were taken to lower-income apartments in the middle of a sketchy neighborhood. My father’s promised job was on the night shift as a