'Keep It In the Family' Casting Sociological Lights on the Secrets of My Life (2009)

There are many things in my life that can reflect on and many questions have as why do things do. Sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and relations between two within society (Wallace and Wolf, 108). If use my sociological imagination, can explore deeper and try analyze my self in relation larger picture. After all, I'm just another girl in world. have closed many doors from my past because not want deal with issues. was even scared sit down and write about them. In Writing As A Way of Healing, Louise DeSalvo writes I was stopping myself from writing my own life story. feared would find it unbearable (19). I'm hoping that during this process can find answers some of questions have, like how my family affected me growing up. Sociologist Robert Merton's concept of dysfunctions suggests that the item may have consequences which lessen adaptation or adjustment of system (Wallace and Wolf, 48). In my case, my dysfunctional family may have disturbed my adaptation world. This story begins with my father, who migrated here from Korea after his sister married an American partly so that she could bring her poverty stricken siblings out of Inchon. They had lost both their parents from illness at a very young age and another two brothers died along way. The four of them won a ticket America because of their older sister's sacrifice. My mother, who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with her parents and brother, met my father at a college dance. My father courted my mother until she proposed marriage him. Little he know that she really wasn't in love with him, but using him for payback towards an old fling. They soon married and gave birth my older brother. followed a year later. couldn't agree more with SUNY Oneonta Ira Omid (pseudonym) in her article in Human Architecture, Links in Chain: Untangling Dysfunctional Family Ties. felt as though we had a similar family background and sympathize with her statement, Is there such thing as a normal family? would like think so after having grown up way did (Omid, 10). Ira grew up in a hostile atmosphere because of siblings that not accept her father marrying their mother. Even though my story is not same as hers in details we could relate a few things that has happened us in our dysfunctional upbringing. would like say that had a perfectly happy childhood, but that is so far from truth. My warm, loving, safe, stable environment was at a minimum and not have close relatives or family vacations. was deprived of typical childhood norms of interacting. Sociologist James Coleman suggests that these norms sometimes involve fundamental conceptions of (Wallace and Wolf, 370). Deprived of such norms, there were rights that was entitled but never received. Instead, suffered from physical, mental, sexual, and verbal abuse in course of both my primary and secondary socializations. These socializations involved were my family and my peers. remember so vividly day that went downstairs into kitchen of our home and sat down on a chair holding a pamphlet book about a frog. It said tell a parent if you are ever uncomfortable with someone. It was just like McGruff Crime Dog's ad 'Take a Bite out of Crime,' except it was about sexual abuse and a frog. My mother was cooking dinner and, being only five years old, tried gather up nerve bring up topic. So handed her pamphlet and she looked at it and said yeah? told her was uncomfortable around grandpa. My mother immediately turned off stove and rushed me up my room. learned then and there that was not alone. My grandfather same things my mother when she was growing up, except that my grandmother never believed her. Instead, she made excuses for him. …