ABSTRACT
Once upon a time, a little girl named Nell was assigned to prepare an oral report about her cultural background. Nell realised that she did not know very much about hers. What could she say that would give her report the flavor and color of ‘culture’? Nell felt a wave of panic as she thought about what to show and tell. ‘I'm not anything’, she thought, ‘I'm just an American’. Seeking to impress her teacher and classmates with at least some colorful details on her family's food, dress, and holidays, Nell asked her mother for help. But Nell was disappointed when, barely looking up from the vegetables she was preparing for dinner, her mother merely shrugged at the question, ‘What are we?’ She replied, ‘I don't know. Some mix of Irish and English, I guess. It was a long time ago’. When pressed her mother could summon none of the colorful details Nell hoped to include in her report. Frustrated and desperate for a story, Nell tells us, ‘I dreaded having to give that report’. So, she confesses, to make her cultural background interesting, ‘I faked being from Poland’.
