While I understand the value of First Generation programs, which are sweeping the academy, they often don't capture the complexity of socioeconomic class. My mother had a college degree, graduate credits, and specialized training in a professional position (medical technology), and I understood how college worked. I knew all the unspoken rules. My dad dropped out of college to join the Navy in WWII, and although he finished high school after the war, he didn't use the GI Bill to get a degree, like all of his working class Norwegian immigrant buddies did, and people's heads have always exploded when I tell them what my father did for a living (Roto-Rooter service). Then again, he had a white collar job when he met my mother (ship's purser). On my mom's side, my sister, currently obsessed with genealogy, has found out just how far back Brown University degrees go in my mom's paternal line, and yet her father dropped out of school early, seemingly a rebellious response to family rupture (parents divorced, mother died), even though his sister graduated from Brown. Then again, without even completing elementary school, he became a stock broker, basically apprenticing with his uncle, and that wealth bought our house and paid some of my for my Seven Sisters college education, and some was still left for me to inherit when my parents died.
Very interesting! Such a tangle of mystery and silence. You have much to chew on here.
As for the ending quote... how we tell our own stories while living do, I believe, impact how our stories are told when we’re gone. Most folks never think about the narrative of their life, however, and that perhaps has a profound impact on how their narrative is told.
Mar 21, 2023·edited Mar 21, 2023Liked by Joshua Doležal
My own Dutch grandfather wouldn't teach me Dutch because he felt it was unpatriotic to not speak English. And Bruce's German grandfather fled the country (to Hawaii) and changed his last name in the early 1900s because there was so much anti-German sentiment. He and his grandmother (who was English) even got divorced. I imagine your grandfather was ashamed to be a German professor and afraid for his family. We learned of some of this when a half-sister in Hawaii contacted Bruce's dad when he was on his 80s.
Also, adorable photo of your grandmother. She looks like your daughter, don't you think?
"But the greatest burden of my academic journey was a sense of isolation – from family members who either could not understand my intellectual life or actively disapproved of it and from my classmates, who seemed to feel more at home in academe than I did."
I had no idea I'd be a bona fide weirdo for getting an education that makes me care about public health, food health, mental health, and the environment. My husband and I get so many eye rolls and backhanded comments because we limit our kids' sugar intake, take covid precautions, and try not to use plastic, to name a few. I thought changing social classes was about money but it's so much more than that. There's nowhere to truly fit in except for with others who know this exact experience.
Fascinating. “even publishing his dissertation on Thomas Mann (Thomas Mann and the Genealogical Novel).” I would love to read that. I read The Magic Mountain with my parents last year. We listened to it on Audible, all 37 hours. Brilliant.
Very intriguing family history. Thanks for this. My family is German/English. I need to dig deeper into my own family history. I knew both grandparents on both sides but they died when I was a teen. My mom has told me a lot about her side, and she has documents, but my dad is harder to get talking about his father etc.
Fascinating! I wish you so much luck with your journey of discovery. With respect to academic pursuits, I am fortunate in that my family, on both sides, valued intellectual development and became educated people -some highly educated. Early on, many educated themselves less formally. And most certainly, less value was placed on higher education for women than men. This later fact directly lead to a response that even I didn't anticipate at the conclusion of doctoral defense. My advisor asked, what, after taking several years between my coursework and my dissertation, was the compelling reason I chose to finish. I surprised myself, and, I am sure, shocked my advisor, with a totally honest first response. I said I did it because my mother so desperately wanted to study and achieve. She was accepted to the University of Iowa, but bullied out of going by her grandfather who said her duty was to home and family. She had re-enrolled in college and finished several courses by the time she turned 60 and succumbed to cancer a year later. Certainly, I pursued my own passions as well through my studies but hers is a legacy I treasure. A reminder to listen to the interests and passions of our children and to guide them with an open mind and heart.
My own is somewhat similar, at least the idea that the family almost never talks about its history while simultaneously obsessing about its lineage. And then two generations back they retreated to the deep woods. My grandfather did it after a career in the navy. And my father did it after the Army. We're Scottish highlanders with some English Puritans.
There is a difference though. As a notable Scottish clan, we published a 500-page volume of genealogy about a century ago that is still in print on Amazon. So, we have so much storied history ... that disappears when it gets to specific individuals.
A personal note about family. I am the last of my line, the eldest of the eldest (in a clan where that still matters somewhat). I almost didn't have children, but aside from what my wife thought about it, my branch would die out. She is getting used to the idea of becoming a matriarch; we recently received a two century old lace hanging that practices the alphabet... There is a peculiar burden of being the last of the line of a large family, of having generations of history and artifacts trickling down going back centuries. We have a rack of military firearms going back centuries, as we are also a military dynasty, and back in the day you could legally take your weapon home.
I sometimes wonder what its' like for people, as in most Americans, to have to search for their immigrant status. We have had our family history to the person back a thousand years (when a church with vital records burned). There's a splendor to it, but also a kind of burden. It's been lightening with the recent generations, but some of that is because they are no longer conservative and they don't bear the family name.
And finally, like Josh, there are notable people in the family, but that wealth never persisted or was passed down. And with such large families, the wealth was split too many different ways to accumulate, especially since it was colonial land and not cash.
A very rich family story, I see the blueprint for a novel here. I don't think I could write about my family history with such freshness unless I fictionalized it. The end quote is very true as well, and probably the sole reason people write autobiographies, which in many cases are forms of "individual" propaganda.
Gonna up the subscription sometime in the near future so I can read about your Moravia pilgrimage: lived in the Czech Republic for awhile until recently, including Moravia for a time. Left a piece of my heart in that country, though I wish they weren't so indifferent to the fabulous modern literature they've created. Their indifference made me want to pull my hair out.
Beautiful I love this. I have engaged in a lifelong quest to find my family’s roots also. What I found was inspiring and stranger than fiction. And neither I nor my family knew this story in my formative years. And yes, very complicated - like a three dimensional game of GO.
While I understand the value of First Generation programs, which are sweeping the academy, they often don't capture the complexity of socioeconomic class. My mother had a college degree, graduate credits, and specialized training in a professional position (medical technology), and I understood how college worked. I knew all the unspoken rules. My dad dropped out of college to join the Navy in WWII, and although he finished high school after the war, he didn't use the GI Bill to get a degree, like all of his working class Norwegian immigrant buddies did, and people's heads have always exploded when I tell them what my father did for a living (Roto-Rooter service). Then again, he had a white collar job when he met my mother (ship's purser). On my mom's side, my sister, currently obsessed with genealogy, has found out just how far back Brown University degrees go in my mom's paternal line, and yet her father dropped out of school early, seemingly a rebellious response to family rupture (parents divorced, mother died), even though his sister graduated from Brown. Then again, without even completing elementary school, he became a stock broker, basically apprenticing with his uncle, and that wealth bought our house and paid some of my for my Seven Sisters college education, and some was still left for me to inherit when my parents died.
Very interesting! Such a tangle of mystery and silence. You have much to chew on here.
As for the ending quote... how we tell our own stories while living do, I believe, impact how our stories are told when we’re gone. Most folks never think about the narrative of their life, however, and that perhaps has a profound impact on how their narrative is told.
My own Dutch grandfather wouldn't teach me Dutch because he felt it was unpatriotic to not speak English. And Bruce's German grandfather fled the country (to Hawaii) and changed his last name in the early 1900s because there was so much anti-German sentiment. He and his grandmother (who was English) even got divorced. I imagine your grandfather was ashamed to be a German professor and afraid for his family. We learned of some of this when a half-sister in Hawaii contacted Bruce's dad when he was on his 80s.
Also, adorable photo of your grandmother. She looks like your daughter, don't you think?
This is so real:
"But the greatest burden of my academic journey was a sense of isolation – from family members who either could not understand my intellectual life or actively disapproved of it and from my classmates, who seemed to feel more at home in academe than I did."
I had no idea I'd be a bona fide weirdo for getting an education that makes me care about public health, food health, mental health, and the environment. My husband and I get so many eye rolls and backhanded comments because we limit our kids' sugar intake, take covid precautions, and try not to use plastic, to name a few. I thought changing social classes was about money but it's so much more than that. There's nowhere to truly fit in except for with others who know this exact experience.
Fascinating. “even publishing his dissertation on Thomas Mann (Thomas Mann and the Genealogical Novel).” I would love to read that. I read The Magic Mountain with my parents last year. We listened to it on Audible, all 37 hours. Brilliant.
Very intriguing family history. Thanks for this. My family is German/English. I need to dig deeper into my own family history. I knew both grandparents on both sides but they died when I was a teen. My mom has told me a lot about her side, and she has documents, but my dad is harder to get talking about his father etc.
Fascinating! I wish you so much luck with your journey of discovery. With respect to academic pursuits, I am fortunate in that my family, on both sides, valued intellectual development and became educated people -some highly educated. Early on, many educated themselves less formally. And most certainly, less value was placed on higher education for women than men. This later fact directly lead to a response that even I didn't anticipate at the conclusion of doctoral defense. My advisor asked, what, after taking several years between my coursework and my dissertation, was the compelling reason I chose to finish. I surprised myself, and, I am sure, shocked my advisor, with a totally honest first response. I said I did it because my mother so desperately wanted to study and achieve. She was accepted to the University of Iowa, but bullied out of going by her grandfather who said her duty was to home and family. She had re-enrolled in college and finished several courses by the time she turned 60 and succumbed to cancer a year later. Certainly, I pursued my own passions as well through my studies but hers is a legacy I treasure. A reminder to listen to the interests and passions of our children and to guide them with an open mind and heart.
Neither of my parents went to college. They met in the Army at Ft. Knox. But my maternal grandfather and all of his Alvarado brothers graduated.
It is a beautiful story.
My own is somewhat similar, at least the idea that the family almost never talks about its history while simultaneously obsessing about its lineage. And then two generations back they retreated to the deep woods. My grandfather did it after a career in the navy. And my father did it after the Army. We're Scottish highlanders with some English Puritans.
There is a difference though. As a notable Scottish clan, we published a 500-page volume of genealogy about a century ago that is still in print on Amazon. So, we have so much storied history ... that disappears when it gets to specific individuals.
A personal note about family. I am the last of my line, the eldest of the eldest (in a clan where that still matters somewhat). I almost didn't have children, but aside from what my wife thought about it, my branch would die out. She is getting used to the idea of becoming a matriarch; we recently received a two century old lace hanging that practices the alphabet... There is a peculiar burden of being the last of the line of a large family, of having generations of history and artifacts trickling down going back centuries. We have a rack of military firearms going back centuries, as we are also a military dynasty, and back in the day you could legally take your weapon home.
I sometimes wonder what its' like for people, as in most Americans, to have to search for their immigrant status. We have had our family history to the person back a thousand years (when a church with vital records burned). There's a splendor to it, but also a kind of burden. It's been lightening with the recent generations, but some of that is because they are no longer conservative and they don't bear the family name.
And finally, like Josh, there are notable people in the family, but that wealth never persisted or was passed down. And with such large families, the wealth was split too many different ways to accumulate, especially since it was colonial land and not cash.
A very rich family story, I see the blueprint for a novel here. I don't think I could write about my family history with such freshness unless I fictionalized it. The end quote is very true as well, and probably the sole reason people write autobiographies, which in many cases are forms of "individual" propaganda.
Gonna up the subscription sometime in the near future so I can read about your Moravia pilgrimage: lived in the Czech Republic for awhile until recently, including Moravia for a time. Left a piece of my heart in that country, though I wish they weren't so indifferent to the fabulous modern literature they've created. Their indifference made me want to pull my hair out.
Beautiful I love this. I have engaged in a lifelong quest to find my family’s roots also. What I found was inspiring and stranger than fiction. And neither I nor my family knew this story in my formative years. And yes, very complicated - like a three dimensional game of GO.