Mary Patrice Erdmans - The Grasinski Girls

Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series

Framing the Polish Home: Postwar Cultural Constructions of Hearth, Nation, and Self, edited by Boena Shallcross

Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 18801939, by Karen Majewski

Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 19451979, by Jonathan Huener

The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish-Americans, 19391956, by Anna D. Jaroszyska-Kirchmann

The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made, by Mary Patrice Erdmans

SERIES ADVISORY BOARD

M. B. B. Biskupski, Central Connecticut State University

Robert E. Blobaum, West Virginia University

Anthony Bukoski, University of WisconsinSuperior

Bogdana Carpenter, University of Michigan

Mary Patrice Erdmans, Central Connecticut State University

Thomas S. Gladsky, Central Missouri State University (ret.)

Padraic Kenney, University of Colorado at Boulder

John J. Kulczycki, University of Illinois at Chicago (ret.)

Ewa Morawska, University of Essex

Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University

Brian Porter, University of Michigan

James S. Pula, Purdue University North Central

Thaddeus C. Radzilowski, Piast Institute

Daniel Stone, University of Winnipeg

Adam Walaszek, Jagiellonian University

Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University

The Grasinski Girls

Mary Patrice Erdmans

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

2004 by Ohio University Press

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved

Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1

Vignette photograph of Angela Helen Grasinski Erdmans and figure 7 by Andrew Erdmans.

Cover: Top, left to right: Angel, Gene, and Mary at their home, Christmas 1956. Bottom, left to right: Fran, Caroline, Mari, Nadine, Angel, and Elaine (widow of Joe Grasinski), 1990.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Erdmans, Mary Patrice.

The Grasinski girls : the choices they had and the choices they made / Mary Patrice Erdmans.1st ed.

p. cm. (Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American studies series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8214-1581-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8214-1582-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Polish American familiesMichiganCase studies. 2. Women, WhiteMichiganCase studies. 3. Grasinski family. 4. Erdmans, Mary PatriceFamily. 5. MichiganSocial life and customs20th century. I. Title. II. Series.

F575.P7E73 2004

305.8'9185'073dc22

2004015018

ISBN 978-0-8214-4161-9 (e-book)

Polish American Historical Association, New Britain, Connecticut

Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish

American Studies, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut

Madonna University, Livonia, Michigan

The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, Inc., New York, New York

The Piast Institute: An Institute for Polish and Polish American Affairs, Detroit, Michigan

Illustrations

FIGURES

MAPS

TABLE

Series Editors Preface

HISTORIANS AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE studied the male-dominated public side of Polish immigrant and ethnic life that took place in the churches and organizations, in the shops and the factories, on the picket line, and at the ballot box. But few studies have peered into the homes to examine the hidden, inner social world of white ethnic families and communities like those of Polish America and, more specifically, the private lives of the white ethnic women of modest, working-class backgrounds who lived therein.

Through extensive interviews and interactions with five Polish-American sistersthe authors own aunts and mothersociologist Mary Patrice Erdmans enters this secret yet signally important world to tell the story of a generation of women who, for the most part, have remained voiceless in both the ethnic and womens history narratives. In The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made, Erdmans describes this world as seen through the womens own eyes, a world of small victories, silent hurts, ordinary pleasures, and, above all, the triumph of survival. Their world, to be sure, was bounded by the structures and strictures of patriarchal relations with their father, their husbands, and their employers, but men remain mostly offstage in this volume. This is, instead, the story of five women and the personal engagement of one Polish-American daughter and sociologist with the lives of these women, who, perhaps without their knowing it, nurtured her own professional ambitions and feminist consciousness.

Professor Erdmans, associate professor of sociology at Central Connecticut State University, also is the author of Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 19761990. In The Grasinski Girls, Erdmans has written a unique and pathbreaking study of gender, ethnicity, and class that will enlighten scholars, students, and general readers interested in womens studies, ethnic studies, and the Polish-American experience.

The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made is the fifth volume in the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series. The series revisits the historical and contemporary experience of one of Americas largest European ethnic groups and the history of a European homeland that has played a disproportionately important role in twentieth-century and contemporary world affairs. The series aims to publish innovative monographs and more general works that investigate under- or unexplored topics or themes that offer new, critical, revisionist, or comparative perspectives in the area of Polish and Polish-American Studies. Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in profile, the series seeks manuscripts on Polish immigration and ethnic communities, the country of origin, and its various peoples in history, anthropology, cultural studies, political economy, current politics, and related fields.

Publication of the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series marks a milestone in the maturation of the Polish Studies field and stands as a fitting tribute to the scholars and organizations whose efforts have brought it to fruition. Supported by a series advisory board of accomplished Polonists and Polish-Americanists, the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series has been made possible through generous financial assistance from the Polish American Historical Association, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, the Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies at Central Connecticut State University, Madonna University, and the Piast Institute, and through institutional support from Wayne State University and Ohio University Press. The series meanwhile has benefited from the warm encouragement of a number of persons, including Gillian Berchowitz, M. B. B. Biskupski, the late Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Thomas Gladsky, Thaddeus Gromada, Sister Rose Marie Kujawa, CSSF, James S. Pula, Thaddeus Radzilowski, and David Sanders. The moral and material support from all of these institutions and individuals is gratefully acknowledged.