Grandmother Case

March 5, 2013

As growing up, my family would always tell me that in life nothing ever comes easy. You need to strive in order for you to succeed. While growing up my family always taught me that you need to start from the bottom in order to get to the top. My grandmother was a major influence to this theory. I will emphasize my prime research on my grandmother's life; all the obstacles she had to overcome and challenges she had to face being born in a different time period.

My grandmother was born in 1935 in the Dominican Republic, an island from the Caribbean. My mother told me that my grandmother was born and raised in a very rural remote area of the Dominican Republic. There was no electricity or running water which made it difficult to complete household chores. Since there weren't any doctors or clinics nearby, whenever anyone became sick they had no other choice but to cure the illness with home remedies. As my mother relates to me, many people would be on their death beds since they couldn't afford medicine to cure their sicknesses. Therefore, the death rates would gradually increase.

As I started to look through old photos of my family, I found a much wrinkled up picture of my grandmother when she was about a teenager. She looked exactly like my mother and my aunts; there was a piece of my grandmother in all of them. It was quite frightening how much they all look alike. I wanted to know when exactly this photo was taking and the meaning behind it. So, I got into my car and drove all the way towards downtown Manhattan to get some answers. As I park my car in front of an enormous building, I get my cell phone to dial my aunts number, letting her know that I'm right out front. Meanwhile, as I sat down I couldn't just have a normal conversation with her. I just blared out why exactly I have come to her. I showed her my grandmother's picture and asked her when this photo was taken and about how old she was. My aunt told me that my grandmother was exactly sixteen years of age; this picture was taken in the year of 1951. However, I also asked my aunt what was the meaning behind this photo, why was my grandmother holding seeds in her hands. She told me that with those seeds she was getting ready to harvest some crops such as beans and squash.

My grandmother was about the age of fifteen when her mother passed away. Therefore, since she was the oldest out of ten siblings, she was to care for each and every one of them as if they were her very own. Just like in the novel "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Deborah Lacks mother died when she was very young so she had to take care of her siblings, in which my grandmother could relate to her as well. Since my grandmother had to play the role of a full time mother, she had to stop attending school. My grandmother didn't have a normal teenage life; she worked on a farm