Personal Narrative Essay

For the past seventeen years of my life minus a few months, I have lived in the United States. I grew up skiing and bicycling in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until my family decided to move all the way out west to Flagstaff, Arizona. Many eleven-year-olds might become stubborn and defensive in response to such a massive, life-changing move, but I remember embracing it because I was with my family, and I was ready to face any obstacle that unveiled itself to me because I knew that my late comedic father, my worrisome mother, and my troublesome brother would be right by my side. As we made the two-day drive from Michigan to Arizona in our SUV together, we watched the numbers on the odometer crawl up more and more until there were 2,000 more miles on the car than there were when we started, and we

Long, long ago, my sister and I were playing down in the basement. I was riding my bike and my sister was playing. I was tired of playing downstairs, so I went upstairs. I saw my mom cooking, and I went to play with my toys. My sister came up and played in her room.

My family has lived here in Oregon since the before the war between the states, and family tells us stories of the good times before all these japs started taking over. Around the turn of the century or so it started to seem like these people were everywhere. It all started with the building of the railroad. The companies brought in those people to build the railroad, and now that the railroad is completed they will not leave. To make matters even worse there is an effort by their leaders to get them to strike for the same pay as us white people that work for the railroad. There has been extremely little or no effort on their part to become like us Americans. I was walking through town the other day and what did I see, there was a huge Buddha statue in front of a new Buddhist temple. They can't even go to church like regular people.

My personal narrative has to do with my journey alongside my family in an event that we all faced. When I was in fourth grade my father got cancer. I am not over protective of the fact that he did, in fact I am quite open on the subject. If they haven’t forgotten, then my friends know, and classmates at the time did know. In this way it is very personal, but also a shared story. As I stated earlier, my father got cancer when I was in fourth grade. This can certainly be considered an unusual childhood. I do not think that many children have had their parents go through cancer when they were around this age. My family spent lots of time in this situation. We were open with this fact, and people had helped us. My fourth grade class

My brother, Jonathon, and my home life was different than Sonny’s and his brother. We grew up in a nice house in a safe neighborhood. Drugs or alcohol were never a part of our lives, our parents were divorced. We lived with my mom full time. She worked nights and slept during the day in order to pay the bills. Our mom always made sure we had what we needed, but not necessarily what we wanted. We played by ourselves most days, and were home alone at night a lot. The two of us spending most of our time together and alone grew the responsibility of me taking care of my younger brother. I taught him how to do laundry, I made him dinner, helped him with his homework, made sure he went to bed on time, and got him up for school in the morning. Taking care of my brother felt like a full time job most days. Just like in the book the responsibility of taking care of my younger brother for most of my life felt more like a burden than an honor,

History is defined as the study of the science of humanity in the past. It's a broad subject that spans over countless people groups throughout the years that the world has been around. Even before the times we have written word history was still being made, and it is still extremely important. We tend to forget that in our average day to day lives we are still making history. That all over the globe everyone is taking part in what might be in a history book someday.

At that time it was the most logical decision that one could have made. If it were you, would you have done the same? To protect his family and to give them the opportunity of a lifetime was one thing that he, my father Yong X. Vang, would never regret doing. He is a man who for the sake of the Americans, fought in the Secret War which then led him through many hardships and guided him and his family to where they are today.

After the world war 2 my family from turkey (my grandma's parents) decided that they are going to immigrate to Israel because in this time a lot of Jewish people started to immigrate to Israel. They had a really good chance to move to Israel. All the Jewish people knew that the big ship coming to Israel and that’s their chance to start new life. They went into the big ship and they already knew that the british people (Who ruled Israel) might catch them, but they decided to take a risk. When they arrived in Israel the british people caught them and all the other people in the ship and took them to a really big labor camp in Cyprus for eight months, from their stories it sounds like a jail. They

During the period of 2008 -2011 my family went through a strong period of turmoil. My father was working in a city that was declared by the United Nations the “most dangerous city in the world, not officially declared under war.” This had many effects on us, in terms of loss from loved ones to the danger my father was in at a daily basis. This relentless violence was the sole reason why we relocated. Further, switching colleges several times as we finally settled in Tennessee. This rollercoaster of emotions and events is what affected me, I struggled with depression from the situation. This period of hardship most definitely was an obstacle to my learning. The initial part of my college career was cluttered with distractions, which took away

My family legacy all started when my dad decided to immigrate to the United States. Life was tough back in China during the 1980’s. The government was corrupt and all the ideologies from the government failed resulting in a mass famine that was widespread throughout the country. Both of my grandparents died when my dad was only fifteen years old and was forced to work with his siblings to support the family. They worked for twelve hours a day with no sleep and barely any wage. Finally, my dad had enough of it and was ready to move to the land of opportunity. He was ready to bring his hard work and determination to the United States.

Time flies, and pieces of stories from a family vanishes in time. The best way to record those disappearing valuable history is to record them in writing. There are too many stories to tell and want I am going to write about is the key part of my family history, which makes my family a family. The story is about my great-grandfather Zhiyun, my grandfather Liangai.

Then the 134 arrived. I got on, showed my pass to the bus driver and

In terms of ancestry, I know very little about where I come from. On my father's side, much of my linage were African-American slaves. On my mother's side there little information to help me orient myself on a map other than being a mix of European which would include, Italian, Welsh, German, and Irish.

Family tales are a great way to pass the time in my family. Every time were at a family gathering my mother will always bring up some child hood memories of the family. Like the time when I was three years old I was basically toothless but only had my k-9 teeth. So, my cousins who were all between the ages 5-6 got together and told my mom that they should kill me because, he has fangs just like a vampire, and they were scared if I woke up in the middle of the night and suck there blood out. Another, family tale that my mom likes to bring is when my cousin had just finished his first communion (ceremony which a person receives Eucharist) they had a big party to celebrate everyone was outside partying and my aunt was changing my diaper when she then went to go ask my mother for where she kept the baby wipes and, as soon as she walked to the other room I ran outside butt naked and started dancing to the music. My last family tale that my mom likes to bring up is how accurate she is with the chancla, and let me tell you from experience she can throw that thing and hit both me and my brother and somehow, make the chancla boomerang back to her. The chancla to her was her weapon of choice almost all the time if she didn’t get you with the first one best believe that she already has the second one primed and ready to go, she would even threaten by saying “alright cabrones” and when you heard those words you better be at least a mile away from her, because she is not the type of

Growing up, I thought the normal was having two thanksgivings and christmases. I thought that having divorced parents was normal. I lived part of my life in Iowa and part of life in Nebraska. At a young age, I found out that a majority of my peers’ parents were still together. I found out they didn’t get the “luxury” that I had. I consider myself middle class. I don’t have the fanciest things but not all of my things are off brand either. We struggle sometimes but we’re never poor. We never had the money for new clothes. All of our money went to necessities first. That was something that got me made fun of quite often. Especially because some of my clothes were hand-me-downs from friends, as I was a smaller child. I got made fun of for not spending Christmas with both parents. We didn’t fit social norms like I thought we did. Everyone knew what traditions they had and I was completely clueless.