For those of you unfamiliar with this silly slang, allow me to explain. You see, although I was born and raised in Chicagoland, my parents, their parents, and many generations before them were all born and raised in a humble European country bordering the Baltic Sea known as Poland. There, they led a rural lifestyle, living and working on their respective family farms with all their many siblings. Many polish citizens are poor and rely on their families and themselves to eek out an existence in the Polish countryside. They tend to have strong family values and deep respect for religion and tradition.

Thanks to the opportunities present in the Land of the Free, here, in the United States of America, there is a constant influx of immigrants from various countries, not excluding Poland. Polish governmental and economic status is less stable than in our country, and so many brave Polish citizens pack up and start a new life here.

Chicago has an especially large concentration of Polish-speaking residents. Chicago is even fabled to have a larger Polish population than that of the Polish capital city of Warsaw. The only reason I can come up with for the large number of Polish people in Chicago is that, like any group, especially one away from its homeland, Polish people like to stick together.

As a Chicagoan daughter of Polish immigrants living in their home away from home, so to speak, I grew up in sort of a twilight zone between the American culture I lived in, the Polish culture my parents brought from Poland, and the Chicago-Polish culture that evolved on its own. Chicago-Polish is more what I am. Not having grown up in the original Poland, I can’t rightfully consider myself the same kind of Polish that my parents are and my ancestors have been.

So, with my family speaking Polish at home and raising me with their Polish traditions and values, it was as if I’d been raised in a “Little Poland” of sorts.