Interesting. Must have been fun for you, studying Mandarin, since the "where are you from" question there (at least according to the way my university teaches it) is "where is your family."
I tend to get stiff and defensive and snarly about the question, because my family is close, but it's a very matriarchal family, to the point that I basically lop off the male side of the family tree all the way up to my great-great grandmother. I know who the men themselves were, but I know nothing about their families. (I just began learning anything whatsoever about my father's family a year ago.) And people notice and tend to react as if, I don't know, they accidentally said "Your mother got herself knocked up," and then they get either awkward or judgmental (or both). And, yeah, having gotten that one too many times means that I don't respond too generously to the question any more. Which has probably been a problem at some point, since nearly my entire family except for my mother now live in Tennessee and North Carolina. Hooray cultural differences.
Thank you for the explanation, though. It's interesting, and maybe I'll be a bit more patient the next time someone asks me at dinner.
(For practice: My mother grew up in Connecticut, where her mother and mother's mother also grew up, and that's really the family I think of as "mine". Family legend is that we're descended from the Vermont [surname]s, who were being thorns in British sides way back in the Revolutionary War. My favorite cousins live in Vermont. Everyone's moved away from Connecticut now (except for me; I'm the only one who didn't grow up here, and I'm the only one who's come back.) My mom splits her time between Maine and Florida, and my great-aunt and uncle are in Maine and North Carolina. Most of my cousins are in North Carolina, and my grandparents are now in Tennessee. My father's family is mostly from Chicago. So, I'm really from all over the place.)
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Date: 4 Apr 2011 12:09 am (UTC)I tend to get stiff and defensive and snarly about the question, because my family is close, but it's a very matriarchal family, to the point that I basically lop off the male side of the family tree all the way up to my great-great grandmother. I know who the men themselves were, but I know nothing about their families. (I just began learning anything whatsoever about my father's family a year ago.) And people notice and tend to react as if, I don't know, they accidentally said "Your mother got herself knocked up," and then they get either awkward or judgmental (or both). And, yeah, having gotten that one too many times means that I don't respond too generously to the question any more. Which has probably been a problem at some point, since nearly my entire family except for my mother now live in Tennessee and North Carolina. Hooray cultural differences.
Thank you for the explanation, though. It's interesting, and maybe I'll be a bit more patient the next time someone asks me at dinner.
(For practice: My mother grew up in Connecticut, where her mother and mother's mother also grew up, and that's really the family I think of as "mine". Family legend is that we're descended from the Vermont [surname]s, who were being thorns in British sides way back in the Revolutionary War. My favorite cousins live in Vermont. Everyone's moved away from Connecticut now (except for me; I'm the only one who didn't grow up here, and I'm the only one who's come back.) My mom splits her time between Maine and Florida, and my great-aunt and uncle are in Maine and North Carolina. Most of my cousins are in North Carolina, and my grandparents are now in Tennessee. My father's family is mostly from Chicago. So, I'm really from all over the place.)