White Americans Fail to Address Their Family Histories

[Kaleva]

17. I only knew one great-grandparent and she talked about living in Finland as a young girl

Despite living in the US for decades, she never did learn English and my mom, grandmother or someone else would have to translate when I talked with her.


One story I remember is when she was still living in Finland, she and all the other people had to flee into the woods when Russian troops arrived (Finland was part of the Russian Empire at the time). The troops were there to ransack the village, taking what they could and burning the village down when they left.

Another story was about a great-grandfather whom I never met but this story was told to me by an aunt. When he was a boy living in Finland, his father died and his mother, unable or not wanting to care for her kids, sold him and his siblings to other families. My great-grandfather lived in a barn with the animals and was never allowed in the house. After he worked enough years, he was granted his freedom and doing other jobs, made enough to pay for passage to the US. Here, he became a successful businessman and paid for all of his siblings to come to the US but, according to my aunt, he never said a word about his mother.