Grandpa Lachman came to America from India as one of 6,000 Asian Indians to enter the U.S. between 1947 and 1965.
During the Yom Kippur War, Grandpa Jonathan removed shrapnel out of the eyes of soldiers, Palestinian and Israeli alike.
Grandma Carol documented the stories of Holocaust survivors.
Nani counseled mothers who fed their infants McDonald's in order to keep them from starving.
Mom listens to Somali girls in Faribault, who have spent lunch dodging the bacon and pepperoni thrown at them.
Aba did not stop protesting confederate statues until they were removed, and pressures McConnell to address the plight of the Rohingya.
Culture and identity aren't synonymous, but the connotations they illicit in my mind are inextricably intertwined, in large part because of my grandparents and parents. When I think about where I’ve been and where I haven’t been, I also think about why. How we name the places—maybe I should chronicle every school I’ve been to, based on what the students said, or every city by dust, or art, or food.
I probably felt just as uncomfortable with my positionality in Ciro, Jeserlum, Bethlehem, and Hevron, as in Heart County, Franklin, Salyersville, and Ames.
I go to have conversations, in which I merely understand sentence fragments, to absorb and observe life.
I call Lexington, Minneapolis, and Berkely home, but I’m not privy to most of the cultures they encompass either. That’s bizarre and overwhelming. It speaks to how much we remain siloed, but it's also kind of cool to be surrounded by limitless unknowns.
nice
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