Michelle Sweeten
O’Fallon, IL
I grew up in an average small American town in the Midwest. I remember the first black family to move to my town, and then the first Asian family. As a child, it didn’t mean much, though I think the town had a harder time accepting them than I and my young friends did. In Middle School I moved to a suburb and learned that Americans were more colorful than I knew, but still, it was nothing mind-blowing.
At the end of high school / beginning of college, I began to wonder about my heritage. Sure, I’m white, but not all white people are from the same place- where did I come from and why did I not have a rich cultural background such as my African, Indian, and Vietnamese friends had? Turns out my family comes from various Western and Northern European countries, mostly centered around Scandinavia, England, and France. But the part I had the hardest time swallowing is that when they all immigrated, they left everything behind from their past lives- they did not share their cultures or even their languages with their first-generation American children. They wiped their histories out, cleared the slate. My family doesn’t have a single contact from our families still in those countries. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins. They are there, but they are lost to me.
I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with this. I know that my ancestors were brave men and women who wanted a better life, and I am grateful that their sacrifices allowed me to be born in one of the greatest countries in the world, but I feel like I’m missing something. If I could meet them, I would beg them to not give up their culture just to be American. They were afraid they would not be accepted if they continued in the old ways, but America was (and still is) a melting pot- it gets better the more you add, not the more you hide or pretend. I think that is why I have spent so long learning about another culture (I got my Bachelor’s in French)- because I don’t have a cultural heritage of my own. I promise to change this for my children. I cannot give them the Scandinavian culture that I don’t have, but I will teach them everything I can about myself, my parents, my grandparents so that their great great grandchildren can someday say “My great great great grandmother was a true American and live like this….”
