Personal Narrative: My Heritage

I am a Native American born and raised in Jamestown, Virginia. It was always just my father and I, my mother passed away when I was an infant, so my father raised me to be an independent woman. My father is the head commander of the tribe. He only allowed me to go to the village near our tents. I never went further than the village, till this one day that I was feeling so curious about what was out there, so I decided to walk beyond the village to see what there is to explore.

The last big thing that comes along with my German heritage is our character traits. My mother, brother, sister, and I all have blonde hair and blue eyes. However my father doesn’t have these character traits because my German heritage came from my mother’s side of the family. Germans are almost always on time. It is a common character trait that I have inherited. Germans are also normally a little bit taller. Although I am not too tall my mother is fairly tall and my sister is supposed to be quite tall when she gets

My life experiences with different cultures began in my hometown, when Prairie Island Tribal Council members educated students about their culture through lectures, dance, and band performances. This allowed me to appreciate my Mdewakanton classmates’ culture. My exposure to different cultures expanded during an internship at a medical examiner’s office, because death is universal. I learned being culturally respectful and sensitive begins by listening to their stories and experiences before answering their questions honestly and reassuring them the deceased would be treated with respect. As I traveled to rural Honduras on a medical brigade and as a student studying abroad in Italy and Germany, I realized by listening and observing without judgement, I began to understand the cultures. In addition, I discovered generalizations of a culture give an incomplete view and I cannot assume I understand a culture. Instead, individuals are unique based on experiences as well as their culture.

My grandmother Lynne Murphy is who I chose to interview for my heritage project. This summer at a family birthday party I was speaking short phrases in Spanish while joking around with my dad. My grandmother, sitting beside us, joined in the conversation and starting speaking fluent Spanish. I had no idea she could speak Spanish, so I asked her, “How can you speak Spanish?” Before answering my question she laughed. She went on to tell me that she lived in South America for many years as a teenager. I didn’t have the chance to learn anymore about her childhood until this project was assigned. When I learned we were to focus on a family member’s experience growing up, I immediately thought about my grandmother and the interesting life she seemed

I was born and raised in the small but growing city of Perris, CA. This isn’t the best city out there but it tends to grow on you, and you begin to truly love it for what it is. The people, however, not so much. The community can vary from which part of the city you’re in. That’s because there’s diversity here in Perris. I’m a product of this diversity, being half Mexican and half African American. My parents fell in love after high school and later on began a family. I am the youngest of five. I have two older brothers, an older sister, and an older cousin who lives with us. The order is boy, girl, boy, boy, girl with my cousin being included in there too. We all live in the same house with my parents and are quite close with each other. They all seem to have raised me growing up due to the fact that my parents were busy trying to provide for us. This was a challenge by itself, resulting in lots of house moving and my father being unemployed for six years after losing his job. I never complained about moving because I knew that my parents were doing their absolute best and were working with all that they had and then some. This unquestionably made me adaptable to new environments and gave me a

My family’s Native American heritage has influenced me by encouraging me to assist the poverty-stricken Lumbee community that I grew up in, whether that be by volunteering my time, energy, or resources. Growing up as a member of the Lumbee community, I have witnessed firsthand the struggles that many Native American families face, including living paycheck to paycheck, being ridiculed for our heritage, and alcohol abuse in many households. My culture has instilled in me the desire to educate the youth to be proud of their heritage despite the derogatory stereotypes that people associate Native Americans with. Unlike many children I was raised with, I have the opportunity to go to college and become only the second person in my family to do

This is a narrative of one Mexican American woman’s experiences and her views on the importance of passing down the cultural beliefs of her ancestors. In the section of the country in which I live there is a large population within the community of Mexican American culture. Although I have frequent contact with people of Mexican American heritage either through employment or interaction out in the community, I have a limited understanding of their culture. For this reason, I chose to learn more about the population of people I have frequent contact with and as a professional work with as clients in the field of mental health counseling. The quest of finding someone knowledgeable to discuss the population, their cultural

The first time my writing was published in the Heritage newspaper, The Structure, was my eighth grade year. I was the only middle school student to be published in the high school paper that year. Since the day my first article was published, the journalism room has been my second home.

You could ask anyone who knows me personally to tell you one thing about me and I know they will all answer with the same thing. Allison is Irish. Really, really Irish. My Irish heritage is what makes me who I am. From my curly hair to my pale skin and all the freckles in between. Being Irish has always been something that I am proud of. Throughout my life, I have continuously been interested in foreign languages and the history of European countries. I have even begun trying to learn some conversational Gaelic in my spare time. This trip would be the adventure of a lifetime for someone like me who enjoys travel and learning about the world around them.

Recently I took a trip to Nashville, and YES it was so much fun, I learned a lot about my business, met some of my AWESOME business partners, but most of all I got back my Country Roots !

It became normal. I started to believe these names. If somebody called out, Tree, I would look around. In the barn scene, Kunta was getting ready to escape, and Fiddler was helping him after he was singing that lullaby. Kunta had asked Fiddler his name, his real name, and I have to admit, that moment was really emotional. Fiddler seemed to come to an understanding of how unbreaking Kunta was. I feel Kunta wasn’t built for a slave, his roots, his mindset, and his resilience wouldn’t allow it. This leads to him escaping, or trying to escape, many times. The first time he was bought by Samson, and the other times, he was caught by dogs. A very disappointing moment for me, because my nerves had built up while he was running, so when he was caught, I was extremely disappointed. It seemed to me, when he was escaping the second time, he was doing it not only for himself, but to Fiddler, and his family. Maybe even Jinna. At the end, where he was losing contact with his parents, was absolutely heartbreaking to me, because he is giving up. He was giving into his new identity, losing his

I am Colton Jones and I am the interviewer. The person I am interviewing for my oral history project is my grandmother on my mother’s side of the family. Her name is Deborah Newman. She is not the individual who was an immigrant, but it was her grandfather who was. I chose her because I knew of no one else in my immediate network that I could interview. I went to her house in Galloway, New Jersey to interview her on February 12th 2017. I went around the middle of the day, roughly noon, and the interview took about a half hour. A lot of the questions went smoothly, although there was a significant amount of information she couldn’t provide because all the information she knew was stories passed on from her parents. Her grandfather, my great-great grandfather, immigrated from Scotland around the time of World War I. So, the year was a little before 1914 because he was enlisted in the military for a few years. My main goal of the interview is to discover more about my own past and where I came from. I find this information very interesting knowing where my family originates from, and the personal stories of my ancestors. My grandmother loves to talk about older stories like this because they are so pleasant for her, that is one of the main reasons I chose to

I would contribute to diversity on the NC State campus because I identify as a lesbian and have been out to my community for many years now due to the love and support I have received from my hometown of Wilmington, NC. I try to give back to this wonderful community in whatever way I can, I attend meetings at our local Gay Straight Alliance and Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. I have also scheduled many events that are LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) inclusive such as a Pride Prom and a transgender visibility Potluck in light of the horrors of House Bill 2. I also consider myself to be a feminist, someone who believes in the equal rights of all genders and I do a lot in the sense of advocacy for gender equality.

My dad says “what’s on the table is what you eat or you don’t eat at all” if we didn’t want what was on the table then we would either have to make our own food or don’t eat at all. My dad thought that if we tried something new we might like it, if we didn’t like it and we tried it my mom or dad would make us something else as long as we tried something new, but if we didn’t try it they would tell us we would have to make our own food or we don’t get to eat at all my grandma and grandpa also say it too.

was important to my parents that I knew my heritage language. Therefore, Spanish was the primary language spoken at home in my adolescent years. English was taught to me as secondary language at an older age. I am able to speak and write in both English and Spanish. But my challenge has been that I speak English with a slight Spanish accent. Throughout the years I been asked; in numerous occasions “Where are you from?”, “Are you from Mexico?”, “How long have you been in this country?” Even been spoken to in Spanish because they assume I can’t speak the language. It can be upsetting and discouraging at times until today. For many years I would practice what I needed when conversing with professors, coworkers, and even friends. I was afraid that