An Essay about my Mother (click to download)
"Edgewood." In Kate Farrell, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter's Memories of Mother, Unlimited Publishing, 2011, 149-155.
Gypsy and the Bird Man (in process)
What happens when you realize you know almost nothing about your heritage? These photos of my dad and mom as toddlers aroused my curiosity. What were their childhoods like in Cleveland? I knew mom's parents were Hungarian, but was ignorant concerning my dad's ethnicity. Thanks to genealogy searches, family papers, and more, I have composed a narrative that begins in 1800s Central Europe, but I am about to completely rewrite the story. Sometimes this is necessary, no matter how appealing the draft!
It’s the story of Bohemian and Hungarian immigrants assimilating into a new culture in Cleveland while simultaneously struggling to retain their old one. It describes how a family moves from one world to another and weaves the common threads of disparate backgrounds into a new unified whole. It explores the sources of relative success among immigrants and their children. As the photographs suggest, one branch was economically more successful than the other.
Having finished what I thought was the book, I discovered a Jewish lineage, hidden purposely by part of the paternal family line in the early 1900s. This leads to the role of anti-immigrant stereotypes dominating the culture at that time.
Told through the lens of history and culture, this is also the layered story of a particular childhood and growing up in South Jersey during the 40’s and 50’s. It describes the complex family relationships, hidden agendas, deep anger and the intermittent yet surprising closeness that many troubled families experience. The arc of the history demonstrates how patterns pass through generations in unexpected ways.
It’s the story of Bohemian and Hungarian immigrants assimilating into a new culture in Cleveland while simultaneously struggling to retain their old one. It describes how a family moves from one world to another and weaves the common threads of disparate backgrounds into a new unified whole. It explores the sources of relative success among immigrants and their children. As the photographs suggest, one branch was economically more successful than the other.
Having finished what I thought was the book, I discovered a Jewish lineage, hidden purposely by part of the paternal family line in the early 1900s. This leads to the role of anti-immigrant stereotypes dominating the culture at that time.
Told through the lens of history and culture, this is also the layered story of a particular childhood and growing up in South Jersey during the 40’s and 50’s. It describes the complex family relationships, hidden agendas, deep anger and the intermittent yet surprising closeness that many troubled families experience. The arc of the history demonstrates how patterns pass through generations in unexpected ways.
