Max Jack-Monroe
Preparing to co-facilitate a group discussion on the connection between ethnicity and language brought up a lot for me. The readings helped me to think about how I situate myself in terms of ethnicity and language and how these intersecting forces have impacted my life.
I begin with my family history, specifically on my mother’s side. My mother was perhaps the first person in centuries on either side of her family to be born outside of the state of Louisiana (my grandfather’s side was from New Orleans proper and my grandmother’s side from the neighboring countryside). Before my mother’s birth, my maternal grandparents had moved to Nashville, Tennessee so my grandfather (Pop-Pop) could complete his medical residency at Meharry Medical College. A couple of years after my mother was born in Nashville, the family moved to a place, coincidentally, not too far from Montreal–Buffalo, New York. By the time the family made their way to Harford County, Maryland both of my aunts had been born. My grandmother (Meman) still lives in that house, which, despite going through many changes, still seems, in many ways, untouched by time.
