"When I had a Fulbright in Warszawa..." Part 1

This is a segment I will be posting ever so often as a way of resurrecting and exploring the time I spent in Warszawa, Poland (2001-2002). This is something that I have actively avoided doing since my return to the States over 2 years ago. I am starting this project now because I find it a necessary mental exercise -- a way to help me process and digest my feelings about the entire mess and marvel that was Poland.

Warszawa flags

The stories, blurbs, items, pictures and any and all images posted will come from my Fulbright proposal/essay, my own journal entries, the e-mails sent to my family and friends, a variety of found and collected objects as well as pictures that I took. My observations will not be posted in any particular or chronological order because, like all memories and nostalgic recollections, reconstructions about the past do not occur in any orderly fashion. So, I won't force that artificial order on them either.

That said, allow me to begin at the beginning by posting select fragments from my personal essay - - part of the Fulbright application process.

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I am a Polish-American woman. Or, is it an American-Polish woman? The order of my hyphenated ethnic status may seem trivial to some, but the question of my "Polishness" weaves in and out of my life at a fairly constant pace leading me to ponder its meaning with necessary seriousness. My family emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1979, when I was three years old. As a result, my strongest connections to Poland are sensory. At a very young age, I learned how to unlatch the lock on the prickly green door of our small one bedroom Kosciuszko Street apartment. With my newly acquired skill, I would lead my younger sister on adventures to the cellar that began at the bottom of the stairwell. I remember a musty, stale cellar and the odor of stored coal. My mother worried as we involved ourselves in mischievous fun and youthful escapades. The rest of my memories of Poland are indistinct, colored by my family's retellings of pre-immigrant life and by timeworn black and white photographs.

Besides these memories, it is difficult for me to say what it is that makes me Polish other than I was born in Poland. I attained official United States citizenship in 1994, when I was a freshman at university. My connection to my Polish origins have been limited to family rituals, long distance phone calls to relatives still residing in Poland, attending Saturday Polish school, and taking part in the perfunctory Polish rituals. One of the most memorable traditions that has meaning to me is the Polish Christmas Celebration of Wigilia. This is a time when the bonds of the Polish community are felt through the sharing of stories, food, and oplatek (holy wafer). As newcomers to the United States, we were unaccustomed to and felt alienated from American behavior and society; celebrating Wigilia allowed us to maintain a sense of solidarity and identity in a new environment. Over the years, we have "Americanizied" our approach to Wigilia by tempering some of the religious undertones and dietary guidelines. However, we still celebrate the underlying essence of communal cohesion.

For a long time, my Polish identity was something that I wanted to hide. Poles in Chicago, especially newly arrived immigrants, were frequently taunted as being "stupid Polaks." Growing up it was something I learned to be embarrassed about. I took pride in people's appraisal of me as a Spaniard, Italian, or Grecian because it meant that I did not look and act Polish. However, being a first generation immigrant meant more than superficial adolescent frustrations surrounding peer acceptance. My ethnicity mattered to me but my immigrant status also located me within a specific social stratum of the "upwardly mobile" first generation white immigrant.

The immediacy of establishing stability and security for a family of four in a new country meant that my parents had to quickly gain a foothold in the States. At the time, they did not speak English and their social network was limited to my grandmother, who lived and worked in Chicago. With my grandmother's, help both of my parents found employment as janitors working the swing shift for the past twenty years in Chicago's high-rises. Occasionally, my mother would also take on "domki," that is, she would clean other people's houses on the side for extra income. During the week, exchanges with my parents were limited to a couple of hurried hours between pick up from school and their departure for work. It was only during the weekends when we were able to connect with the reduced frenetic trappings of domestic obligations and differing work schedules.

Our ultimate connections and tensions evolved around negotiating the American public educational system. It was a system that was bewildering to my parents with all of its liberal democratic trappings. After all, what did getting a "free" education mean when it was coupled with mediocre curricula, under funded resources, rundown buildings and concern for physical safety from local gangs? As immigrants, my parents guided and instructed me as best as they could with the linguistic obstacles of speaking a second language and their unawareness of how to participate effectively in my education. It was always the question of "what next" that puzzled us. This became excruciating evident when I approached graduation from high school. The process and politics of registering for standardized tests, researching higher education institutions, and applying for colleges were daunting. Learning to negotiate such an unfamiliar world was difficult, but ultimately proved rewarding.

As I mature and because of my experiences, I yearn to understand and relate to my Polishness on a more intimate level. Moreover, I seek to understand what it means to be a Polish woman in all of its contemporary permutations. After graduating from the Chicago public school system and after completing four years of university study, I have been drawn to the study of ethnicity, immigration, and gender identity across borders and within them. My identification as a first generation Polish immigrant woman growing up in Chicago and attending multiethnic schools has enhanced my own views of social issues. Moreover, it has guided my academic interests.