My cultural background is Native American, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian; I have been taught a lot about our cultural background throughout my life. I have also been lucky in the area I grew up. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area. Many of my friends from elementary school through high school were from many different cultures. I grew up eating food at friends house that to this day I still cant pronounce.…
What has been mentioned before is the reciprocity extended families and kinship provides that are very important in African American culture. Reciprocity is essentially helping another family member through physical and emotional support in their daily lives. Nancy Franklin in her “Black Families in Thearpy: Understanding the African American Experience” claims that the extended family system is the backbone of strength in an African Family. Franklin states there are four different types of African American Extended Family Models, Subfamilies, Families with secondary members, Augmented families, and non-blood relatives (F. Nancy, 2003 page 58). Regardless of the type of family, the reciprocity from families member depends on the the emotional…
As a minority, immigrating from Korea to a wildly different country like the United States has been the most influential decision that my family made to live the possibility of the "American Dream". Moreover, growing up as an Asian-American wasn’t simple; I was faced with the challenge of malicious racial slurs, spiteful judgment, and condemnation. However, through these criticism, I’ve grown to understand that our response to those judgements is what builds character in which has made me more transparent, vulnerable, and empathetic.…
The mantra, "breathe in your nose and out your mouth," was the only thing running through my head as I attempted to complete the last half mile of my first cross-country meet, and at least it was running. I on the other hand, was not. I had started the race completely confident in my ability to run three miles, but after a grueling two and a half laps of tripping over tree roots, splashing through mud, and struggling over an enormous hill that marked the last quarter of the lap, I was just ready to go home and take a shower. When my feet crossed onto the threshold of the track where the finish line was positioned, I observed quite a few things. One, the conspicuous red timer was flashing numbers well into the mid-forties range. Two, at least half of the buses in the parking lot seemed long gone. My third and final realization did not occur to me until after I crossed the finish line. As I came to a stop near the water cooler, it finally dawned on me that I had concluded the race in last place.…
Miami became a perfect place to get away from Castro for many wealthy and educated Cubans including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and businesspeople. The government provided a lot of help for them and they fit into the south Florida seamlessly. In the 1980s, the second wave of Cubans came in, but they were more impoverished. Thus, black community became more difficult as some jobs were taken by Cubans. As Dorsey Fields said, blacks went from second class to third class citizens overnight. Also, Haitians came to Miami in a large number without any help from the federal government in 1970s. Although blacks treated Haitians in a way that white people treated blacks, blacks stood with Haitians in a way because of the similar situation of Haitians and Blacks in terms of social status, economy, and discrimination by both white people and…
let me introduce to my family the Garcia Family. what we like to do is go camping every summer and go to Madeline Island that's where we camp. we like to play board games together like monopoly so here we go I will introduce you to the Garcia Family.…
At around 10 years of age my family and I were coming out of a store when we heard an individual yell out, “Go back to Mexico, America houses no aliens!” At that moment, I felt as if this wouldn’t be the last time I would hear these words echo through my life, and I was right.…
That’s interesting you’ve mentioned not to attend the hospital and funeral for your grandmother. In my African American/Indian culture if a woman is pregnant she’s prohibited to attend anywhere the death angel may currently be around, and funerals are definitely off limits. My family used to say when a life is taken a new life is born and I don’t know if the pregnant thing was an old superstation by forbidden spirit in my family as well because they believed the death angel comes to take a life in three; therefore it permits the baby a chance at life. Nowadays, there’s wills and other things in place to carry out a person’s wishes. I believe she told you because she knew she could trust you to carry out her last wishes amongst the family accordingly.…
It was a beautiful day in April, 1963, and in a store downtown there was an argument going on.…
Coming from a low income Hispanic family, I’ve had to overcome different challenges. One thing I recall from my childhood, was enjoying myself from reality. Reality in which no child knows about life and death, bad news and good news, or right from wrong. I still remember when I was upset for quite some time for not celebrating my first birthday party at the age of 4. Instead, at 4 years old, I had to spent my birthday and week at a funeral praying up to two weeks. But then I was finally triggered at the age of 9 when I found out that the man I saw in his casket years ago was no stranger, it was my father. I grew up thinking my father had abandoned my mother and siblings, but never did I consider such thing. As time went by I did not think…
Looking back the narrator realized that he never felt any relationship to Jews. In school, each sibling was accustomed to being the only African American child. Furthermore, they were accustomed to teachers bringing down their grades, because of their race. Music arrived around this time in his life. As they grew up, the siblings commenced in breaking rules. This all started, because of Helen. She ran off a couple of years ago, but later arrived with a nursing degree. In addition, Richie was arrested for something he did not commit.…
Some said I talked country, proper, white-washed and cute. I never realized there was so much more diversity in a black culture than just in Vallejo. Everywhere I went I made a new friend. We traveled down south and through my hotels I stayed at I met people from other states like New Jersey, Chicago, and other places, they treated me like a celebrity. Since they are so far away when they hear California they only see LA, “Hollywood”, and San Francisco and think we’re all gay from what they had seen on TV. They had never heard many of our music artists and danced very different. Just as they believed everything on TV so did I. Visiting New Orleans I didn’t expect to see anymore damage since the disaster Katrina was so long ago. I was there for only 1 night and saw enough to affect me for life. Entering the freeway I noticed hundreds of tents full of people still affected from the disaster, they named that part of town “Tent…
What benefits does looking at a family provide for storytelling through films? When looking at a family there tends to be a lot of characters: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the close family friends who are not even blood related. Why would a filmmaker ever choose to work with such a large number of characters and people? The stories that can be told from a family tend to be universal such as, love, marriage, heartbreak, hardship and so on. These stories can only exist within a family do to one thing—generations. Family can have upwards of three generations or maybe even more. These generations have all experience different events in life which shapes their beliefs and morals. Filmmaker Mira Nair uses the family as the locus within…
It was August 28, 1963. Mom was yelling and holding up her “Martin Luther King, a liar, a troublemaker” sign. Next to her were my brother and my dad, they just mumbled and cursed. While everyone cheered and jumped for joy when Dr. King uttered the words, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood”, it was like my whole family rolled their eyes simultaneously. All but me, I was the only one who thought that every man should have equal rights regardless of their race, beliefs, gender (etc…). I sided with the rest of the people at the Lincoln Memorial who believed in equal rights.…
I was born a free African American on December 23, 1867. My parents Owen and Minerva and siblings Louvenia, Owen Jr., Alexander, and James had formerly been enslaved. I grew up as ordinary as possible considering I was an African American living in a white peoples world. When I was only six years old my parents contracted yellow fever and passed away in 1872. After the death of my parents, I moved in with my sister, Louvenia, in Vicksburg to work as a housemaid. I was considered extremely poor and was unable to receive and education. In order to escape the wrath of my eldest sisters husband, I married Moses McWilliams at fourteen. Four years later I gave birth to my beautiful daughter, Leila. In 1887 my husband, Moses died in an accident,…