Image borrowed from A Genealogy of the Nye Family
Cultural Heritage?
What's your heritage? What's your family's background? Where are you from? I've never been able to answer these questions very satisfactorily. I remember the first time I realized this was some time between 1st and 3rd grade (I had the same teacher all three years so I'm not sure). Our homework was to draw a pie chart filling in our heritage. "Well, honey...just say mostly English with some Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Danish, Polish, German, etc." It seemed that most of my classmates could distinguish, for example, that one set of great-grandparents came from Portugal and the other from Ireland. All sides of my family have been here, here being the North American continent, for at least a few generations longer than that. The first Titus to arrive came in April of 1635, eleven generations before me. I have friends who claim their cultural heritage proudly: Chinese, Mexican, Polish, etc.I've always felt like absolutely nothing interesting.
In a class, we read several women poets, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Joy Harjo among them, wrote of claiming their ancestors, their heritage, their roots. A girl in my class shared how the women in her family have a long history of storytelling: they have been able to hold on to the stories of their past. Although I don't yet have a strong sense of heritage or roots, I have decided I have a choice in whether or not it remains that way. I have decided to go in search of my roots, as Alice Walker did "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." I take my first step by wading through my recoded genealogy and with that as my guide, setting as much story and context to it's bare bones as possible.