Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/a-manner-of-speaking/5024396/
My grandparents came from Norway and Sweden to Minnesota, and spent their lives on small farms near each other. My parents were very proud of being Norwegian (my mother) and of being Swedish (my father). In their time and place, their union was cross-cultural and there were edges of pride and nudges of prejudice. My brother Bruce and I grew up in Colorado, away from the large families and small community and celebrated our Scandinavian heritage most fully at holidays, with lefse and lutefisk�"and delicious cookies. My grandchildren are (or will be) German, Italian, Indian, Swedish, Norwegian, with Sri Lankan influence; and who we are and how we live as family is a mixture of all of these cultures, but with the great loss of language and depth of culture that many families are blessed to be part of. We create our own rituals and choose bits of many cultures; sometimes we do wonder what our culture really is, where we truly belong.
The world is changing. Francis Wardle and I had fascinating conversations many years ago about bi-racial families and how parents were presented with dilemmas to navigate about how to include more than one culture authentically within their family structure. ...