Michael Harris’s Migration Story

My family’s migration story to the United States starts in the 1870s, when my mother’s father’s grandmother came to New York City from Austria. This generation of my family grew up in Ridgewood and Bushwick section of Brooklyn. My family has been and still is Jewish, but my mother’s father’s family was largely secular because his neighborhood was mostly Italian, Polish, and Irish, according to my mother.

My grandfather’s family on my mother’s side contrasts strongly with my grandmother’s family, as my grandmother grew up in East New York, surrounded by first and second generation American Jewish families. My grandmother’s mother came to New York City through Ellis Island in 1900 when she was 16, leaving her family behind in Poland and escaping the anti-Semitism that would characterize much of Europe for years to come. My grandmother’s family is not exactly Polish, however – they lived on the border of Poland and Germany. The language that was spoken at home for this generation was Yiddish, indicating significant German influence on my family’s culture, although various family members from this generation were supposed to have known languages other than Yiddish (Polish, Russian, etc.).

My father’s side of the family is as Americanized as my mother’s father’s side. My father’s family grew up in Brooklyn and mixed with the cultures they encountered in their neighborhoods in New York City. Although some basic Jewish tradition was retained in my father’s family, they were not as religious as my grandmother’s family.

My mother’s parents met in the 1940s, married, had two daughters, and moved from Brooklyn to Cambria Heights, Queens in the 1960s, where my mother grew up around American Jewish families, later witnessing integration and racial tension and violence between whites and blacks in her middle and high school. My father’s parents met around this same period and had two sons in Brooklyn, where my father grew up around blacks, Italians, and Jews. My grandmother on my father’s side still lives in the same apartment that she has had for 50 years in Brooklyn, and my grandmother on my mother’s side has lived in Whitestone, Queens for the past 30 years. Most of my extended family now lives in Brooklyn or in several places around the United States.

My parents met in the 1980s, when my father was living in Brooklyn and my mother was living in Queens. They married and moved to what is now a largely Asian neighborhood in Flushing, Queens, where I have lived my whole life.