Personal Narrative: My Heritage Project

My legacy began when my family taught me to read. My mom and grandma took turns teaching me different letters and sounds out of an early reader. By the time I reached kindergarten, I read well enough to strengthen my skills on my own. My favorite author from kindergarten was Eric Carle. I brought home Brown Bear Brown Bear so many times that my mother told me I was not allowed to read it again.

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.

For the oral history project, I interviewed my grandmother. Her full name is Imelda Laborce, while she is known as “Meldy” to most family members. She was born in a small town called Calapacuan in the Zambales region of the Philippines. She was born in 1955 and is 61 years old. Like me, she was born in the Philippines but eventually moved to America sometime in her life. I believed she was a good candidate because I knew she was one of the earliest members of my family to travel to America. Hence, she must have good stories and have a rich background. I also never really knew anything about her past, so I just thought it would be interesting in general to learn about it. She currently lives in Union, New Jersey and works in a hospital as a nurse.

For this project I interviewed my mom, Lynn Pasko. During the course of doing this project and going through the questions, it made me realize how much I didn’t know about my mother. It never occurred to me how times have changed and how different things are now. I learned a lot about my mother that I did not know. Some of these include how my mother moved schools every year of her schooling up until her last half of junior year. I couldn’t imagine having to go to a new school every year. Not to mention how many friends she lost contact with and how hard it was to be the new kid every year. Another thing that had really surprised me was the hardest that she had to do. The hardest thing my mother had to do was after 9/11 happened, she had to write goodbye letters to my sister and I in case anything had happened to them on their way to Hawaii. Both my mother and father thought about taking different planes just incase if something happened to one of them, the other would still be there for me and my sister.

Sitting on the plane alone, I wondered what the next three weeks would bring. The light hum of the plane’s engines seemed to go on forever and the dry stale air began to scratch the inside of my throat. My destination was The Netherlands, where the entirety of my family lives. Throughout my youth seeing my family was a rare occasion, once a year if we were lucky, but after my parents divorced, we stopped going altogether. It had been over eight years since I had last visited them and because of the many years of separation, I felt uneasy about it all. Throughout the flight I couldn’t help but to think to myself several questions like: What I might be able to learn and experience from these next three weeks? How I would feel when I would first arrive? And how different everything would be. Having been there only a

It's quite astonishing to believe just a few years ago I was not content with my heritage, my culture. All throughout elementary school I remember being teased about the way I dressed, the way I acted, the way I didn't celebrate certain holidays, and the way that I brought some weird mysterious food to lunch every day. It is improbable to think I detached myself from my culture so completely. I just wanted to fit in. In elementary school I started to Watch less Bollywood movies, to bring a normal sandwich for lunch every day; but despite this I still didn't fit in. During junior high tried something different, I tried to appear as though I was white not brown. I would use heavy coats of foundation two shades to like intended as a mask, a mask

How does your heritage affect you today? My English heritage doesn’t effect me, but I would like to try some traditions.Those things I would like to try is traditional foods, sports known in England, and religious holidays.

When I think of the word legacy I think of how I will be remember and what I will leave behind for generations to come. I think of people like Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi, whose impact changes the lives of many and the world as it was known during that time. I don’t think that my impact will be received on such a big scale like Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and many other but hopefully I will be able to touch the people who were close to me during my lifetime.

One particular negative experience that relates to my cultural heritage happened about a year ago, when my school took us on a trip to Six Flags Great Adventure. Since I went to an Orthodox Jewish school we were required to wear our school uniform which consisted of a very long and modest skirt and our school shirt. As my friends and I were walking around six flags, a random girl yelled out to us, “Hey, Love your skirts!!! Where did you get them from?” To anybody else this would be a compliment, however, her expression showed otherwise. She said it in such a sarcastic way which made us realize that she was actually mocking us. Once my friends and I heard this, we immediately got offended that she was making fun of our Jewish heritage!

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

Think of what you would think of on your final day of life. Sitting in your hospital bed,

My cultural identity and heritage is something I cherish and admire dearly. I find the history and traditions sacred and I work to the best of my ability to preserve it. Unfortunately though, the Chickasaw culture and tradition are slowly disintergrating. Along with many other who are desperately fighting to defend centuries of traditions, I pledged to learn how to fluently speak my Native Chickasaw language.

Wrapped in the history and culture of East Asia. Unaware to me, I became enthralled by the language, art and culture of East Asia.  The colors are vibrant. Catching my attention, I can’t seem to look elsewhere. It took me awhile to find my fit. My parents since I a little kid had a dream for me to become a doctor. Coming to the last stages of high school I realized that was not the right choice for me because of different amount of reasons. An exceeding amount of arguments between my parents and myself. My mom came to me and told me of a major that she said would fit me. I did not know East Asian Studies was a subject until my mom researched it. At that moment I found the career to pursue. Now Even I have to admit mothers are always right.

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.

I am an African American female that learned my culture from my family. It was taught early on about slavery and what my ancestors went through. Majority of my family was born and raised in Georgia. My grandmother and my grandfather was from Americas, Georgia. My grandmother would tell me stories of how she had to take care of her siblings, cook and care for the farm. She was the true example of what a resilient woman looked like and she raised her children to be the same and it was passed down to their children and so on. My grandmother believe in family and supporting one another. She felt like a good home cooked meal should bring a family together and celebrate one another. That helps with building a strong bond within the family. We were