ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the significance of geographical sites as second- or late-generation European Americans negotiate their ethnic subjectivity, emphasizing and interpreting location where particular events happened to them or their ancestors. The narrative analysis of selected samples of intergenerational memory experiences builds on the concepts of the “homeland” and the “sense of place” as individual approaches to geographically recognizable locations. The term “site” is understood as the topographically recognizable place of ethnic identification to which individuals gravitate emotionally and psychologically. Four types of ethnic subjectivity-related sites have emerged from the interviews: 1) the ancestral homeland, 2) the roots trip, 3) the ethnic neighborhood or enclave, and what I term 4) the ethnic heritage site. The family memory narratives shed light on how the linguistic and narrative representation of places and place-related activities prompt agency construction. In many stories, the intergenerational memory and the person’ own memory narratives intersect and modify traditional Labovian story structures to ensure telling rights and add new meaning to the places. Code-switching between English and a heritage language becomes a platform for constructing the narrators’ sense of place as the use of different codes enhances the boundaries between the cultures that express the ethnic subjectivity.
