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My family traditions
Family rituals of celebration
My family tradition
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Narrative Paper Grandmas Quilt Events happen throughout every family’s life, from family members brawling in historical battles, to the gaining of one’s cultural identity, the reciting of family stories, and the handing down of a descendant’s precious heirloom. I have been told many stories about my family, and my culture through my eighteen years of life. My family has also preserved a few pieces of our legacy to hand down from generation to generation. My family has never taken any moment for granted. We have cherished and reminisced on many events that has happened even before my time. Recently my Mema has passed down to me a very cherished heirloom. I had just turned eighteen and she felt like it was time for me to carry on the most
Faith Ringgold, an artist from New York during the 70s, was known for her three and two-dimensional designs illustrating her analysis on racial relationships with a folksy type of art and traditional. She wanted to spread the life of African people, especially the African women. She used beaded and painted fabric, sculptures, and folksy African American art styles to tell her fictionalized stories about slavery. She specialed in quilting because in her words, “mixing art and ideas so that neither suffers” because she learned it from her grandmother who was a slave. From using styles and technique from her heritage, maybe she wanted to quilt her decade within the history of African Americans before her.
Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. "Family." Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. Student Resources in Context. Web. 6 Mar. 2014.
Her book also includes sections on the roles of gender, religion, birth order, and culture to show the importance these play in shaping family traditions and inherent beliefs over periods of time. On immigration, she says, “When you have access to details of family history, it makes a great difference why the family came, what it left behind, and what dreams or fears it brought with it (McGoldrick, 264). Indeed, traditional roles and strict cultural value sets can have a powerful and lasting influence over family
Since the beginning of time, mankind began to expand on traditions of life out of which family and societal life surfaced. These traditions of life have been passed down over generations and centuries. Some of these kin and their interdependent ways of life have been upheld among particular people, and are known to contain key pieces of some civilizations.
“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.” These words of Alex Haley truly expressed to me personally the imperative need and importance of my family history and heritage. As I believe, family is a gift often cherished, but few take the time to discover and thank those who planted the roots from which a family grows. To express gratitude to my ancestors who planted such roots I have travelled back to discover the past and configure the life of my great grandfather, August Baier.
At first glance, Waniek’s poem, “The Century Quilt” is about the love that the speaker and her sister shared for an Indian blanket that belonged to their Meema. However, she tells a story with a much deeper meaning and uses many different literary techniques to develop this underlying meaning. Waniek keenly structures her poem, her use of imagery and the tone conveyed to create pathos within her audience. This piece is centered on the idea of family and what a blessing it is to have an object that ties the people that you love, together.Notice how the poem is split into three stanzas. In the first, Waniek talks about the speaker’s love for the blanket recalls how her and her sister used it for entertainment as children. In the next stanza, she
Family stories are told to younger generations to show them important lessons from the life of the narrator, one such story that can be told is that of a love story. Love stories are told to lead the culture in which the narrator grew up with into another. In the passage “Family Stories” by Steven Zeitlin, Amy Kotkin, and Holly Baker, the authors explain that family stories are told as a means to pass on culture to the next generation. They point out, “It stimulates healthy family interaction, it provides a technique for influencing and managing family members, and it serves as a ‘family engineered canal’ through which culture flows from one generation to the next” (19). By “canal through which culture flows” the family stories represent the
Family traditions, values and treasures are priceless; they are one of a kind and cannot be replaced. In Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use”, the narrator, Mama, believes that the everyday use of her family items is perfectly acceptable. Her eldest daughter, Dee, believes that the items should be preserved. Preserving family treasures and passing them down from generation to generation are key to keeping them alive; however, it can be argued that passing on the skills to make your own family trinkets and treasures is more important.
Everyone in the world belongs to a subculture. Each subculture has its own sets of traditions, relics, and artifacts. Relics and artifacts are symbolic, material possessions important to one's subculture. Relics are from the past; artifacts are from the present. These traditions, relics, and artifacts help shape the personalities of individuals and how they relate with others. Individuals know about these items through storytelling in the subculture. Families are good examples of subcultures. My family, a middle-class suburban Detroit family of Eastern European heritage, has helped shape who I am through story telling about traditions, artifacts, and relics.
While many people around the world look to America and see a better life waiting for them and the American Dream waiting to be lived, often times this dream never comes to fruition, even if they do reach America. Such is the case in the short story Grandma’s Tales, by Andrew Lam in which a recently deceased Vietnamese grandmother becomes reborn as a much younger and improved version of herself ready to live life to the fullest. This rebirth symbolizes the life that she wishes she lived, however due to constant conflict and famine in Vietnam, and her deteriorating health in America, was never able to do so. Instead of mourning this fact, in her final days the grandmother chooses to live her life through her granddaughters,
Personal cultural heritage is a significant part of who we are. In this paper, I will discuss the cultural heritage of my own family, including topics such as, artifacts, familial ties, patterns, and the influences of our heritage on our family today.
On the weekends I stay at home to play my phone, read or hang out with friends. I have only recently released the lack of time I spend with my family and it has really struck me. Here on Christmas Island, we are very close to our relatives and we spend a lot of time with them. Or do we? How many of you actually spend quality time with them? Many of us would rather binge watch the entire eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries then go and learn something about your past. Passing on this heritage happens orally, through books, artefacts photographs, art, objects or spending time together and that is why the relationship is important. This history can hold a moral, an advice, a memory or it could even hold emotions. We don’t know how much time our parents or grandparents have so we should be spending a bit more than 34 minutes with them every day. As or elders grow older, this heritage slowly dies too. Studies have shown that heritage can bring people together and unify them. It gives you an understanding of where you come from, who you are and what previous generations must have felt like. This knowledge won’t only help others see who you are but it makes you see who you
The bond that exists among different generations is a permanent relation that can’t ever be destroyed. There is a certain metaphysical connection that holds us all together. Our past ancestors greatly determine our personalities, appearances, opinions; they influence our very existence. Some people feel very proud of their culture and ancestors, while others are ashamed of past generations and try to hide their relation with them. However, the connectivity between all generations remains the same for all, because the people before us shape our world and who we are. From older generations we learn the most important things in life, like the true value of family. This strong relation between generations is displayed in “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” by Walter Dean Myers and “The Medicine Bag” by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve. Both stories have central characters that initially reject their relatives because they are ashamed or upset with them only to discover how vital their relations with them actually are. Many things bring us closer to previous and future generations, such as lessons and memories.
These traditions have been passed down form generation to generation, with exception to the American generation of my family. This also meant my family had expectations of each succeeding generation.
The preservation of traditions and skills is an important part of our community and family history.