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Cultural Sharing

Community Outreach of Our United Villages hosted an ongoing series of Cultural Sharing Conversations from April 09-June 09.  These conversations were an opportunity for community to come together and share stories, artifacts, or photographs about their cultural background, family traditions, or way of life.

Click to listen to excerpts from the stories shared at Cultural Sharing.
     April 9th and 16th Cultural Sharing Conversations
     June 11th Cultural Sharing Conversation
     June 18th Cultural Sharing Conversation

Each person shared a piece of themselves.  Below, you can read some of the stories shared at the Cultural Sharing Community Conversations. 

“I’m from Southeast Louisiana…my grandfather, Herbert Norman was a pure Cherokee and lived on a plantation in Mississippi.  He was the one who took me through the first parts of my rites of passage. I brought with me my harmonica. The way I was taught about music was once you learned a song it goes with you everywhere you need to go. When the elders were sick or shut in to their homes I was the one who would go to their homes and play music.”

“I’m a lot of things. I’m baked beans and cornbread and Texas sweet tea. I’m southern Baptist. I am the daughter of an artist. I’m a daughter, a sister. I’m the smells of the ocean. I’m the granddaughter of a very hot and angry Portuguese grandfather. I’m the granddaughter of pioneers who traveled on the Oregon trail and settled in Forest grove.”

“I brought some things from Hawaii, shells from Maui, the puka shell that you hear about. The kukui nut that only the royalty use to wear. My mother was Swedish and my father was born in Philippines, Spanish Filipino. He had the first Filipino newspaper on the West coast.”

“From the time I was a small child I always craved culture. My mother’s brother married a French Moroccan from Marrakesh. So I grew up with a very strong African based family who belly danced on the Jewish holidays.”

“I am a first generation immigrant from El Salvador. My family came to the U.S. when I was 7. I was born in San Salvador and my whole family has lived there their whole lives. My father’s family still lives there. In Latin American culture family is the most important thing you will ever have. Your life revolves around your family. Your family members are your friends.”

“In west Africa growing up we had compounds. Not only your mom, dad, and siblings, but you have your aunts, uncles, and grandparents and everyone lives in the same compound. Every female is a sister, every male is a brother. Even now when someone asks how many biological brothers and sisters I have, I still cannot tell them because I do not have those feelings of difference.”

“I’m Chinese. I was born here. My parents didn’t speak any English until they went to grade school because of that they didn’t really want us to speak Chinese because of what they had gone through. They wanted to make it easy on us. We really lost a lot of that cultural heritage. When I took my first trip to China I was like, where do I fit in?”

“I can remember when I was in the 7th grade and I went to Oklahoma, let’s say 1950…I went to Oklahoma and there would be a colored fountain and a white fountain. Every time I drank out of the white fountain and my cousin would say, “Don’t do that. You are going get in trouble; you’re going to get big Mama and Papa in trouble.” They couldn’t ride the bus home because I refused to go to the back of the bus. I was so rebellious it was pathetic.”

“When I was five [my parents] got talked into going to Haiti as missionaries at an agricultural center in a little tiny town in the north of Haiti. It was an experience that kind of opened up the world to me in a way that I didn’t realize probably even at the time because I was 5 or 6 years old…I was also hearing another language spoken for the first time and starting to learn some Creole. Even as a child I knew there are different ways of doing things, different ways of cooking food, different ways of raising families. Different possibilities.”

“When I arrived in this country from Finland at the age of 20, I could not speak a word of English and I didn’t have a nickel to my name. My only worldly possession in my suitcase was a plastic soap dish.”

“For years I felt kind of marked as an immigrant child. I wanted to eat Wonder Bread and salted butter…I did everything to try to deny that I was Jewish…I got my hair straightened and I tried to lose my accent. And then I moved to California and eventually to Oregon and there were hardly any Jews here and I started really feeling isolated and craving those Jewish people. I started realizing that there was something cultural going on and then I really started to crave my culture and to understand how I fit into it.”

“I am half Mexican and half American Indian, Creek from Oklahoma on my dad’s side. I can relate to the whole not speaking Spanish thing…My mom was born in San Bernardino, CA…but they were ridiculed for not speaking English and so she didn’t want to raise us like this. So consequently I have that deficit. I know a lot of street slang but I never went back to fully learn it or anything.”

“I’m from India…My mother’s father was a freedom fighter follower of Gandhi. I have four siblings and we grew up hearing constantly about the values of truth, courage and honesty and those kinds of things. That is the culture that we grew up in the family.”

“My father is African American and Creek Indian and so my grandmother also had a very beautiful red tone under her brown skin. That is something now that I am very proud of because my grandmothers are my namesake. The Native American culture is what I know the least about but I can see it strongly in the features of my family members.”

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