Family Interview | Gillian
My Grandma, Barbara Crossley, who my cousins and I affectionately call ‘Grammy,’ was born and raised in Connecticut. Her parents were Hungarian immigrants and they settled in a East Coast Hungarian community with their extended family where they attended a Hungarian church. Grammy grew up as a Hungarian-American, learning the language and customs of her ancestors while she went to a distinctly American grammar school. Later on, she went to university, but dropped out, deciding college was not for her. When she was older, she met my grandpa, Bob, a man from Massachusetts who worked for the U.S. Navy and the two got married soon after. Before having children, they took advantage of an opportunity the U.S. government offered my grandpa and they moved to Japan. They lived in Japan for three years from 1968-1970 and learned Japanese language and customs from the Japanese friends they made in the country. When they returned to America, they had twin girls in New Hampshire and moved around to various states due to my grandpa’s line of work with the government. A few years later, they settled in California, but ended up divorcing (though they are still good friends to this day). Grammy raised my mom and aunt by herself, though my grandpa was always available to help out and take the twins on road trips. She became an accountant for an Irvine based company and joined a local choir, then opera company. The interview I conducted with my grandma made it apparent to me that our family’s culture is unique which is evident in the gender equality, Hungarian-American traditions, and middle class socioeconomic level.
Despite being a woman and single mom in post-WWII America, my grandma never backed down to challenges. She was raised to take matters into her own hands and to not shrink in the face adversary. She is characteristically independent and believes in gender equality. She does not believe women should be confined to the home, in fact she has stated on numerous occasions that she loved her job as an accountant and worked for about 40 years at the same company. She takes after my great-grandma for sure, who when she found out she was being paid less than the men she worked with, “she walked straight up to her boss and talked him into giving her raise” which successfully granted her equal pay (Barbara Crossley, Interview, April 1, 2018). The women in my family are strong, defenders of their rights, who do not take no for an answer.
I have met very few Hungarian people in Southern California, so the traditions my family has brought with them are unique in our area. Though we may not wear traditional Hungarian garbs or celebrate Hungarian holidays, we still use Hungarian recipes and learn the language. My grandma loves to teach my cousins and me words and phrases she remembers in Hungarian. When she speaks about her Hungarian roots, her eyes light up and she moves animatedly as she tells her stories, showing how proud she is of her heritage.
Though there may be nothing special about coming from a middle class family, it’s afforded my family opportunities not many get. It’s allowed my family to travel and explore new places and cultures, like when my grandparents lived in Japan three years or when my grandma toured Europe with the choir she was a part of. They brought the different cultures home with them from the places they went and still tell their children and grandchildren stories of their overseas adventures during family gatherings.
When you boil it down, no two people are the same; every person has quirks or practices traditions that may be different from those around them, but that is what makes us individuals. The melting pot of America, while a myth, is rooted in truths that demonstrate how diverse “American culture” is. Just as Raymond Williams said in Culture is Ordinary, “every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, [and] its own meanings,” and what we perceive to be “American culture” is no different (Williams 93).