By: Donna Kaufman
One of my favorite programs is “Finding Your Roots” with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. aired on PBS. During each episode, Gates presents two influential people, often celebrities, with an album of family history after using all of the resources and tools available to help connect them with their past. A renowned Harvard scholar, Gates always delivers fascinating facts, unanticipated connections, and often some surprising family secrets.
While some of us may be fortunate to have had close relationships with grandparents, most of us may only have family history that goes back that far. Yet our DNA goes back generations and generations. People have migrated for many reasons. Famine, war, education, work have been reasons that people have moved away from family and their homeland.
My niece just returned from a trip to her birthplace in Liberia. Adopted at the age of eight after both of her parents died and no living family member was able to care for her, she came to the U.S. and began a brand new chapter in her life. For decades she has thought about her village, wondered about the lives of any remaining family and ultimately, after becoming a mother herself, returned to find the missing stories of her early life.
When I was a little girl, I remember asking my mother to tell me stories about when she was growing up. Since her parents both died before my birth and we were estranged from my father’s family, I never knew grandparents. Lost was the opportunity to hear their stories and be touched by their life experiences. Yet my mother told me stories — over and over again. She also left me just enough information about each of her parents that I could trace them back to the Polish village and farm of their births in the late 1800s. Walking that same land, learning the history of this region of the world, and seeing gravesites was a lesson on the continuation of life over many years and many generations.
Still, there are questions I wish I’d asked my mother before she died. That’s why we carry so many books and journals in our bookstore like “Grandma, Tell Me Your Story.” We can write our stories just for ourselves and we can write with the intent of sharing them with others. We’ll never know who will need inspiration, connection and a sense of belonging. At the very least, remembering and writing our life stories can be a tremendous exercise in self discovery. We are the collection of our stories.
Just as Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. opens up a national conversation about identity, we can explore the lives of the people and experiences that contribute to who and where we are. Through the many stories Dr. Gates has helped uncover, we expand the story of America itself. As we anticipate the country’s 250th birthday, we honor the broad variety of customs, traditions, beliefs, and stories that our ancestors brought. We can celebrate the growing richness in our country that continues to define who we are.
Donna Paz Kaufman is the co-founder of Story & Song Center for Arts & Culture on Amelia Island. Since 1992, she and her husband Mark have helped train new owners of bookstore start-ups across the country. Donna has served as the national president of the other WNBA, the Women’s National Book Association.
