Blog Post

Alyssa Bearse

Professor Santos

English 102-037

23 February 2018

Blog Post

            This week, when we discussed the importance of storytelling through our generations it made me think of my own family. I grew up with a very Italian family and we were together and had our weekly Sunday dinners. Nearly every time I see one of my family members, I hear a different story from there time when I wasn’t around. My mother’s side of the family grew up in Italy and I love hearing stories about there. There life was so different than it is in America. My favorite story is of my mother’s parents, my nonni and papa as I used to call them before they passed. They grew up in the same town as kids, and fell in love as teenagers. There love was so compatible and natural and that shaped who my aunts, and uncles are (including my mother.) They got married young, and had four children: Lucia, Angela, Patricia, and Anthony, and eventually due to my papas job they had to immigrate to America. Hearing the struggles my family faced when they first came to America was harsh. They moved to the North End an my mother told me a story of the school system back then. None of them spoke good English and were put in a school where they were bullied and made fun of. She also told me that if you disrespected your teacher or do something wrong they would slap you with a ruler. The teachers and faculty were not nice back then, and significantly more harsh than what the school system consists of today. Hearing how the times have changed and how we adjusted to new standards makes me thankful to hear the stories and makes me grateful to have what I grew up with, because my family grew up with much worse.