The project that I did with my group was a newspaper article that we called the Ancestral Times.
We decided to do this because we thought it would be a great opportunity to share some of our family stories. The three of us come from very different cultural backgrounds– Allie is Japanese, Mexican, and Spanish, Petros is Greek, and I am Spanish andGuatemalan. What we had in common is that we all had stories that related to things we discussed in class. Allie’s story was related to Mexican labor in the mid-20th century, specifically the Braceros program, about which we watched videos and we also discussed them in class. Her grandfather was part of one of those programs and she wrote about his experience and life. Petros’ story was related to labor rights, which we delved into during our simulation about the boy who broke his arm working on a dairy farm. Petros discussed how his father worked painting bridges and he was injured at work. I talked about my mother’s education. She did her undergraduate studies in Guatemala and came to the U.S. to do an MBA. I wrote about how she struggled to adjust to the vastlydifferent life she found here. It reminded me of the conversation we had just before Thanksgiving after reading an article about someone who felt culturally isolated in higher education
These stories are all related to topics we covered in class in different ways. I thought it was an excellent way to take different things we talked about and tie them together. We found a sense of community in these different stories even thoughthey don’t have much in common at face value. Another great part of this project was the way we got the information to write our stories. We all had conversations, essentially interviews, with our parents so we could learn about what we should write. In this process, I learned a lot about my mom’s college experience that I’d never heard about before. I had assumed that she would have felt out of place, since she went from Guatemala to Minnesota of all places, but listening to her share her story wasdefinitely enlightening. It made me wish that I had asked her about it before. I think it would have given me a different perspective before I started at Cornell. Even though her experience was much more difficult than mine, given that she struggled with things I don’t such as language, there are similarities. To a certain degree, I also feel the kind of “otherness” that she did. I can feel how my ethnic/cultural background has shaped me differently than a lot of the people I have met here. However, it makes it even better when I find people who have that in common with me. I know that’s how my mom felt too. After all, seeking out a group of spanish-speaking friends she could spend time with was how she met my dad.
Overall, this project helped us all learn a little bit more about our own backgrounds, which supplemented things wediscussed in class, and helped us tie different topics from the course together. I had a lot of fun doing this project and thought it was an educational and substantive experience.
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