Family Interview Research Paper
For This project we had to interview someone who has migrated to the United States from another country. I decided to interview my grandmother, Saffiya Woodard. Saffiya was born in the year of 1953 in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Her and her family emigrated when she was fifteen years old in 1968. I decided to interview my grandmother because she is the center of why the family migrated to the United States and she could finally tell me the whole story.
Many years prior to her birth, her mother was arranged to marry someone that was from a family close to her own. Women in their tribe would get married as early as the age of ten depending on the time the parents think it’s time to see their daughters off. Her mother, Ayane, didn’t like the …show more content…
Back in her village, there were no rooms, no running water or plumbing, and no electricity but now she had all of that. In America, she got to taste food and drink beverages she never knew existed. She mostly ate meat and drank milk. Where she lived, there wasn’t a lot of water and now all she had to do was turn on the sink. She was grateful beyond words. Even with the amount of happiness that came with the move there were challenges. The biggest one being she had to learn how to read and write in English. She knew some English words her father would say now and then but her mother tongue is the Afar language. It took years for her to fluently speak and understand English completely. She thought life in America would be easier but she learned that you have to work hard because nothing is handed to you no matter where you …show more content…
The push factors were obviously the family tension and wanting for a better life. The pull factors being that America provided a distance between families and had the better life. I can also relate the word chain migration because years later Ayane’s cousins followed her to America along with their families. Lastly, the word kinship links. Saffiya’s father already had family living here so it just made it that much easier to make the move. In conclusion, this was the story of why my grandmother came to the United States of America and how it changed her
Many years prior to her birth, her mother was arranged to marry someone that was from a family close to her own. Women in their tribe would get married as early as the age of ten depending on the time the parents think it’s time to see their daughters off. Her mother, Ayane, didn’t like the …show more content…
Back in her village, there were no rooms, no running water or plumbing, and no electricity but now she had all of that. In America, she got to taste food and drink beverages she never knew existed. She mostly ate meat and drank milk. Where she lived, there wasn’t a lot of water and now all she had to do was turn on the sink. She was grateful beyond words. Even with the amount of happiness that came with the move there were challenges. The biggest one being she had to learn how to read and write in English. She knew some English words her father would say now and then but her mother tongue is the Afar language. It took years for her to fluently speak and understand English completely. She thought life in America would be easier but she learned that you have to work hard because nothing is handed to you no matter where you …show more content…
The push factors were obviously the family tension and wanting for a better life. The pull factors being that America provided a distance between families and had the better life. I can also relate the word chain migration because years later Ayane’s cousins followed her to America along with their families. Lastly, the word kinship links. Saffiya’s father already had family living here so it just made it that much easier to make the move. In conclusion, this was the story of why my grandmother came to the United States of America and how it changed her