A Polish son in the motherland : an American's journey home / Leonard Kniffel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kniffel, Leonard.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kniffel, Leonard--Travel--Poland.

Kniffel, Leonard.

Polish Americans.

Poland--Description and travel.

Poland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (247 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A & M University Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Searching for the remnants of his family, Leonard Kniffel left Chicago in 2000 to live in Poland. "A Polish Son in the Motherland" is the story of a search for roots and for the reasons why one family's ties were severed more than fifty years ago. Along the way, we see what half a century of communism did to Poland and how the residue of World War II lingers. The author's search begins inauspiciously, but he soon meets a local wine merchant and her son, who are eager to reveal the secrets of Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, the town near which his grandmother was born. After he moves in with Adam, a local entrepreneur who trades in everything from shoes and cosmetics to computers and jam, he begins to master his ancestral language and learn the ways of the community from Adam's mother, who loves long walks in the woods--and meals made from what she picks there. Kniffel's search for a connection to Poland is propelled by memories of the stories his grandmother told him about her emigration to Michigan in 1913. While his family eludes him, the adventure becomes an investigation into the relationship between mothers and the legacy they give their sons. Poles who emigrated to America, the author concludes, must have been particularly good at assimilating into American culture. Less than fifty years after his maternal grandparents arrived in the United States, barely a trace of their Polishness existed in their grandchildren. Through his grandparents' struggles, their children became American and created a new world for themselves and their descendants. In returning to Poland himself, Kniffel sought and found a bridge to the "Great Migration" that changed the lives of so many millions--and millions yet to come.

Contents:

Back in the old country

Her father's child

After the first people in the world

The four corners of Sugajno

The sign of the cross

Mothers and sons

Like Grandma in the back seat

Last train

Chiseled in stone

Castles in the air

Pieces of change

The land they love

To market

Holy days

Followed by water

The best days begin in ordinary ways

Property

The priest and the ledger

Temporary blindness

All those good-byes

The body of Christ

At night by the river

Dinner with Madame and her son

In the dark without the son

The underside of a mushroom

The hunt for hidden treasure

Women dancing in their slips

To Grandmother's house we go

What used to be Polish

Little mysteries unraveling

What took you so long?

A young man and his needlepoint

Pilgrims

The Nowe Miasto hillbillies

The other side of the family

A father and his daughter

Waiting

The vigil

Whether or not it's time

The last act

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

1-299-05352-1

1-60344-600-1

OCLC:

774385361