My Family’s History

          I began my conversation with my grandma over the phone as she explained her origin and many other interesting things that I was not aware of prior to speaking to her. She is from a small village outside of Tokyo, Japan where she grew up. Her original name was Kazuko Hosoya but she married a polish man(my grandfather) so she did not keep her last name and it was changed to “Stern”. She decided to move to America after WWII, and after she finished most of her schooling in Japan. She started her new life in New York City in the 60s. When she met my grandfather in New York, she connected with him because they both shared the experience of being minorities(Polish-Jewish and Japanese), and immigrants; even though they were from opposite ends of the world. My grandma had told me countless stories of her struggle when she came to America and even now. She was never taken seriously and no one would even speak to her at her first accounting job. She described feeling constantly judged and out of place because of her difficulty speaking English and her race. My mom also has stories of the difficulty of being Asian-American and growing up in the very conservative city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. She said that she almost considered herself an atheist—having a Japanese mom and a Jewish dad must have been confusing. This side of my family carries a wide range of different cultures and backgrounds but that only makes up one half of me.
         I decided to interview my dad to discover more about the other side of my family. My given last name is Elliott which is primarily of British origin. My given first name being Phoebe is after the Greek goddess of the moon’s light and Greek origin. It is a theme in my family to have names representing Greek mythological figures. This side of my family came to America as early Virginia settlers who later expanded to the lower Midwest and Texas during the gold rush. According to my dad and an ancestry DNA test that my sister took, his side of the family’s country of origin is England and Northwestern Europe. I even found out that my ancestors created the Elliott railroad company in Missouri in the late 1800s. We ended up coming to the Chicago area from Iowa and then from New York, so my family has never really stayed in one place.

         Personally, I identify as white mostly because that is externally what I look like and this doesn’t really affect my life because most people think the same. But there is a whole other side of me of different cultures that I have still yet to fully understand. My family is not labeled christian because I know that we do not all believe in god. It is a more broad and spiritual understanding of the world that is not depicted by a book or a person. For example, when we lived in the middle of Iowa, we attended a Hindu-practicing school that taught us about the importance of meditation but not necessarily religion. We have a small family and never do reunions or holidays with our limited extended family. It is definitely an interesting dynamic but it shows my families identity and how hundreds of years of history has connected us.