Blue Unit: Computational Tinkering
4A: Sharing Our Counterstories
Background Knowledge Probe
- What is the first thing that comes to mind when you read or hear the word community?
- The word culture and/or ethnicity?
- The word wealth?
- What is the first thing that you say when someone asks you about yourself in relation to one or more of these terms?
A Self-Reflection on Sociotechnical Systems
My mother and my father’s parents came to the United States in their 20s. Each of their journeys began in Eastern Europe, where they were a part of Volhynian German communities. My family’s roots in the Volhynia region go back to the 1850s. Of those family members who lived through destruction of lands, forced starvation, and deportation to Siberia, some of my relatives have remained there, while others of my close family moved to Germany, the United States, and Canada. Some moved before World War I, including a great grandfather, some moved between the wars, including my father’s parents, and some only moved at the end of World War II, including my mother. Some participated as soldiers in the German military, some the Russian military, some the American military; some were soldiers, some interpreters, some medics. Some were early Eastern European participants and leaders of a Midwestern American Christian religion with a commitment to pacifism. Others claimed to be 13 generations “pure” — a racist concept of purity that does not have a scientific basis — and so were allowed by government officials to become members of the Nazi party. All made great sacrifices to protect other family members directly and indirectly. But always we sang, played instruments, and celebrated life to its fullest.
I was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in the same hospital as my father. My grandfather, grandmother, and all my uncles and aunts on my father’s side lived within a one-mile radius. Much of my grandmother’s family, including my uncle, lived a few miles away in another nearby community. Later in life, I learned that my father faced challenges in elementary school because of his health issues, immediate connection to German immigrants, and the associated name-calling based on these. The region where I grew up was one of the areas where the Volhynian Germans found the needed support to immigrate. And they remained together to provide essential community cultural support, just as they had in the Volhynian region before they fled violence, forced recruitment, and civil wars. I am a child and grandchild of immigrants, and I am ethnically of this culture.
My middle and high school days, and my junior college days as well, brought me from the farming community into spaces primarily attended by students of color. And I thrived, participating in a range of in-class and extracurricular music and acting events. I am from a family of tinkers, although recent generations are not the formally-defined tinkers: people within itinerant communities who travel from place to place to mend