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The Reflection Of Interviewing With My Grandmother

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Throughout the final weeks of this course, we have been studying aspects of our culture and different cultures through topics such as class and inequality, global economy/immigration, politics and power, religion and health. One of the best ways to gain insight about any topic, the aforementioned topics in particular, as an anthropologist or just in general, is to interview someone about their own experiences and perceptions as to really learn from one another and share thoughts. I chose to interview my grandmother since I feel very close to her. During the process of interviewing, I realized that I actually do not know that much about her life before I became a part of it. For instance, I learned that she grew up very sheltered and only shopped in Damariscotta, Maine until she got her permit and was finally able to go to Rockland for the first time. My mother was also in the room when I was interviewing my grandmother, which was kind of nice because sometimes they would sit there and reminisce and tell stories, and it would actually be very insightful for me and I learned more interesting things.
The first things we talked about were power, prestige, wealth, and class position, and if any of those things played a part in her life chances. As many of us are seeing today, she believes that “money is power” but that it shouldn’t be. She says, “sometimes the people that have power take advantage of that power and they do bad things.” When she thought back about how she viewed prestige when she was younger, she thought about her teachers and other authority figures in her life that she looked up to and thought had prestige. But now, she believes that someone who does good for others, like volunteering, has prestige. She looks up to those people, rather than the people who “have the power” and she is more likely to listen to someone like that than someone who is in “power.” Wealth was not a word she heard too much, considering she grew up very poor, with no running water even. She felt a little ashamed for being poor so she never let anyone know and considered everyone better than her. She struggled coming up with a word for how she feels about wealth now, but she decided that “it’s sickening how much money some

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