Smeared Type

My friend, Jian Ping, the author of the compelling Memoir of China – “Mulberry Child” – was devoted to her grandmother, who raised her during the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution, when her parents were detained and imprisoned and the family suffered persecution and deprivation.

She recently expressed some surprise at the level of interest and questions she receives about her grandmother, Nainai, from members of her audience during her many speaking engagements.  She had great love and admiration for her grandmother, who devoted her life first to her husband, then her children, and then the children of her son, who was Jian Ping’s father.  This old lady, who hobbled around with bound feet in the Chinese tradition, asked for little, had no personal agenda, and gave unconditional love and devotion to her charges. 

But I’m not surprised that Jian Ping receives much interest on this subject from her audience.  America is a nation of immigrants, and we all have grandparents, most of whom left their countries of their birth to escape war, pestilence, poverty, or persecution and seek a better life in the U.S., land of opportunity.

As we look back at our grandmothers, we are all amazed at their strength, love and devotion to their responsibilities, without complaint or reward while learning to adapt to their new home land, usually living in abject poverty as they struggled to create a family home for their many children.

My own grandmother falls into this category.  She was the second wife of my grandfather, whose first wife had produced four children and then died giving birth to the fifth.  He then married my grandmother who gave him six further children, and my grandmother thus had to bring up ten children, four of whom were not her own.  She however devoted her love and attention to all of them equally and throughout their lives, those children and their children looked on her with the utmost respect, admiration and love.

My grandfather died when his youngest child – my father – was seven years old.  He was fifty-years-old and left my grandmother with ten children to raise with no money and hardly a roof over their head.  She never remarried and spent the next forty-seven years as a widow until she died at the age of ninety-five.  She was a deeply religious woman, but one who did not push her beliefs on her children.  She cooked, sewed, cleaned, and scrubbed her whole life.  I remember her food as always being delicious all from her own special recipes, for which she had no written record, but complete judgment of the contributions to the contents. 

She spoke English with a thick Polish accent (sounding to me like the late Pope John – they both came from Krakow), and her English writing was poor to non-existent, as was her reading.  Nevertheless, she had patience, wisdom, strength, and old world remedies to overcome any obstacle or illness.

My parent’s generation and certainly my generation did not have to face anything like these hardships.  We are now grandparents.  I often wonder whether we will receive such admiration and respect from our children and grandchildren.  For the most part, we have had a privileged life in a modern society where our expectations are so much higher.  I truly believe we can never match the strength, character, and unselfish devotion of my grandmother or all the Nainai’s in the world.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

My wife and I attended a delightful dinner party over the weekend.  We didn’t know the hostess, but were taken, with her approval, by friends of ours with whom we had a long-standing date.

The home we visited was extremely picturesque, set on a slight hill overlooking a large pond surrounded by beautiful gardens and woods.  There were fourteen people for dinner.  After drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the garden, we retreated to the house and a beautifully set table in the dining room.  Sunflowers, Victorian silver condiments, blue Bristol water and wine glasses, half a dozen candles in their holders, and dark blue and gold china adorned the formal table.

The group were elderly, hence the formality of the evening, but I suppose my wife and I fall into that category as well.  The guests included a retired State Senator, a former Mayor of a local town, an eminent retired trial lawyer, and experts on model trains!

Conversation covered a wide range of subjects, but I must confess I took advantage of the opportunity to “plug” my recent novel, “Bear Any Burden.”  Explaining that my main character’s family had left the poverty and persecution of southern Poland in he 1890’s to start a new life in Dundee Scotland, a number of guests talked about their own family histories. 

A lady of Hungarian background spoke about her father, who had been in the Hungarian Army during the First World War, but with the collapse of Austro-Hungarian Empire and the economic disaster that had followed for both Austrians and Hungarians, he’d been encouraged to move to the United States by her grandparents who were not very keen on his courting her mother, believing he had no prospects. 

Her mother also had an elder brother who was a gambler and “man about town.”  He was considered to be the “black sheep” of the family and was also encouraged to go the United States.  They sailed to New York together, with the gambler insisting that he travel in First Class, and much to the horror of this lady’s father, he announced on arrival that he would stay at the Plaza Hotel along with some of the passengers, he had met on the journey.  This was too much for her father, who immediately moved to New Jersey where he got a job as a waiter.  The “black sheep” however, had met a Baltimore businessman who had taken a liking to him, and offered him a job.  He moved to Baltimore, eventually acquiring the business of his mentor, and became very successful and wealthy, achieving the true American dream.

She admitted that her father really never had much drive and ambition and said that one of his ideals that he oft quoted, would be to own a large apple orchard.  In the winter, there would be nothing to do, so he could read and listen to music.  For most of the spring and summer, the apples would grow.  He would spend a few weeks harvesting and packing and then go back to his books.  Maybe he was right.  Satisfaction and balance in one’s life is “success.”

Against the objections of her grandparents, her mother, followed him to the U.S. and at the age of 20, married the waiter.  Despite being more ambitious and pushy, her mother never succeeded in driving her father to reach for more ambitious goals.  She described her mother as a Hungarian beauty, flirtatious and charming, but very strict and cold to her children. 

This intriguing little story was quickly matched by some others.  The grandfather who had moved from Lithuania to the U.S., bringing with him his knowledge of printing.  Realizing that all Hebrew prayer books were expensively printed in Europe and shipped to the U.S., he saw an opportunity for U.S. printing and production and created the first and most successful printing business of Jewish prayer and other books.

Or the story of the grandfather from Poland, who couldn’t speak a word of English, arrived in New York, where a ticket to Boston awaited him so as he could meet up with family cousins.  He took the train which stopped at Falls River, Massachusetts; and, for some reason, he got off at that station, found himself a job, and stayed there for the rest of his life.

There are of course a million immigrant stories – each one of hope, courage, success, and sometimes tragedy.

These stories and the people behind them are part of the great quilt of diversity of the United States.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

It’s interesting to read Ellis’s observation of the mixed races in London and note the statistics that 50% of the population in the city is consisted of immigrants. The same can be said about the US. There are 33 million immigrants in the country who are foreign born and 20% of school children are those of immigrants. In large cities like New York and Los Angeles, immigrants are more than half of the population.

The US is a country of immigrants and for the longest time, is known as a “melting pot.” Despite the hardships, and in many cases, discrimination that most immigrants, especially the first-generation, face, this country provides abundance of opportunities for the newcomers. I am a beneficiary among them. With the composition of population drastically changing and the white is projected to become minorities soon, another term has emerged to describe the complexities of the population: “salad bowl.” The “melting pot” indicates a process of assimilation into the mainstream society, the white culture. “Salad Bowl” is coined to describe a mix, with each ingredient maintaining its own ethnicity.  

The faces of the developed countries that draw immigrants from developing countries are fast changing. Technology and fast transportation make it easier for immigrants to be connected with their country of origins.  As they adapt to the new country they call home, they can also be linked to their heritage and culture and be proud of them. It is more of acculturation in which immigrants both absorb and impact the culture of their adopted country. Of course, many other factors come into play, economic situation, education, social barriers, skills, and discrimination, to name a few. It makes harder that most of the immigrants start at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. Despite the difficulties, or maybe because of them, they strive to overcome and succeed. There is still a long way for the US or any other Western country to truly become a “salad bowl.” But the intermingle and acceptance of children regardless of their color and race, as described in Ellis’s posting, give us hope for a better future.

Jian Ping, author of Mulberry Child: A Memoir of China. www.mulberrychild.com

I went to visit an elderly cousin of mine, who lives in Wembley Park about 7 1/2 miles from the center of London.  On the way back, I got caught in major traffic congestion, possibly because that is the time that all the schools get out.  It was a hot and sweltering afternoon, and there was nothing I could do but sit and wait for the gridlock to break up and watch the world go by.

I was stuck in an area called Willesden, where there is a very ethnic mix of newer immigrants.  Sitting in the car, I saw black West African ladies in highly decorated dresses, Muslim women in black Burkas, many scarf-covered women – some of them young and in jeans – a couple coming out of a internet café – tall, slim, handsome black faces swathed in long white and blue patterned garments, strikingly beautiful – possibly Ethiopian or Somali – and many men with full beards and caps on their heads, some in long kaftans, and some with western jackets over knee-length white shirts and baggy pants.

The stores advertise their wares in many languages and the restaurants promote African, Bangladesh, Pakistani, and Indian food.  I even saw a pizza bar advertising Indian and Italian pizza.  That’s a first! There are also stores selling traditional Muslim clothing and others advertising Hallal meats.  Some cafés have low seats or cushions with Shisha Pipes. 

Recent statistics indicate that more than 50% of the population in London was not born in the United Kingdom.  Britain has always had very liberal policies with regard to immigrants.  Since the Second World War, there has been an explosion of immigrants, mostly from former British Commonwealth countries – Afro-Caribbean primarily from Jamaica who came in the 50’s, Pakistanis who came to work in the textile mills throughout the 60’s, and a large Indian population that moved from East Africa after many of those countries, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, achieved their independence and became particularly aggressive towards their Indian population that primarily ran most of the commerce and public government services.

More recently, there have been an increasing number of immigrants from other parts of Asia; and, with the expansion of the European Union, an influx of Polish and Romanian plumbers, roofers, etc.  There is also a large floating student population, particularly from countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and other Balkan states, who are employed as waiters and waitresses in most of London’s restaurants and cafés.

These liberal policies do not mean that immigrants are easily accepted by the British population.  In fact, racism and prejudice is rampant in many parts of the country.  Immigrants are tolerated but are often considered, even by the media, as “not truly Brits.”

To their eternal shame, recent elections to the European Parliament sent two representatives to Brussels from the British National Party – a right-wing neo Fascist organization that campaigned on anti-immigrant policies.  The recession, disaffection with the current government and leadership often brings out the worst of these prejudices.

After finally being released from my gridlock, I continued on my way, passing a couple of primary schools where the children were being met and being picked up by their parents. These happy screaming little kids were of all shapes and sizes, and ethnic backgrounds:  Asian, European, Middle Eastern, African – all happily mingling, screaming and shouting with glee and, I believe, totally indifferent to their ethnic backgrounds.  At that age, children are colorblind and perhaps that is a lesson and hope for us all.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com