ZBIGNIEW?
I was born Zbigniew Guzlowski in a refugee camp in Germany after the war. My father loved that name Zbigniew. When he was a kid, there was some famous wrestler or soccer player who had that name, and my dad wanted me to have it.
When we came to the US, we discovered that no
one in the US could pronounce my name. I was a kid and kids liked to make fun
of my name. They called me big shoe and zigzag and bishop and zubby and on and
on. I put up with this for 18 years.
When I became a citizen, I legally changed my name to John. Every American can
say John. (Although most Americans have trouble with Guzlowski--but that's
another story.)
When I started writing
and publishing, I decided to use Zbigniew Guzlowski as my name. I thought it
would catch the eye of any editor. It was a time when Czeslaw Milosz and
Zbigniew Herbert and Wisława Szymborska and other great Eastern European
Writers were getting a lot of notice. You understand, I'm sure.
When my mom, a Polish immigrant, heard I
wanted to use Zbigniew, she blew a fuse and said I couldn't do it. I was 32 and
she was telling me I couldn't!
Of course, I listened.
I was an American now, my mom said, and had
to have an American name.
Okay, okay we like to listen to our moms. Perhaps you could have compromised? Johngniew or Zbgigjohn? :)
ReplyDeleteI love strong, ethnic names and always long for one. My Romanian grandmother had a very ethnic last name which became Schwartz. And then there's my mother-in-law who went from Smith to Jones. A tragedy!
Dear John,
ReplyDeleteYour experience reminds me of my Polish-American grandfather's perspective, and how palpable the need to assimilate was/is/can be. When I was quite young, I asked my grandfather on many occasions to teach me Polish and he always refused. "You're American - you speak English!" At the same time, he was deeply hurt when one of his kids changed his surname to sound very neutrally American, erasing the sea of consonants. While my grandfather drew a sense of pride from the astronomy of Copernicus, he served in the Marines during WWII and fought in the Pacific Theatre, and it always felt to me that he was acutely aware of and sensitive to being seen as not quite being American enough -- whatever that means.
About 2 years ago, I started sending out submissions of my poems and stories to journals and magazines under the name Zbigniew Guzlowski. I wanted to see if that name would get me more acceptances than the name John Guzlowski. It didn't. So gradually, I slipped back to using John as my nom de plume.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll try Zbigniew again.
Mark, I never feel like I'm fully American. I was an immigrant and a refugee for too long -- living in an area where we were always aware of ourselves as being different. I still feel it. I've been living in the south for the last 16 years (Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia) and people are always saying to me, you aint from around here are you?
ReplyDeleteI can relate to your experiences and used Jadzia a few times for submissions. I loved having an exotic name, but I went to St. Hedwig's Grammar School at St. Hedwig's Church so the name in our New Jersey Polish America community wasn't odd. However, I was the first in my family to be born a citizen of the US, and I felt the privilege of that as well among the immigrant community. Oddly, when I lived in Wroclaw during my Fulbtight tenure at the university, my name also confused them. The use of "i" for Gorski instead of the "a" used by women created confusion, even amongst the faculty members. I felt foreign, as foreign as I did when I moved to Texas and they called me
ReplyDeleteA Yankee. Even if my name was Polish, it was a less foreign feature to them than being a Yankee. All immigrants and first-generation folks are foreigners wherever they go outside their original childhood family immigrant societies. I'm used to being "different" wherever I am, except when I'm around you and other Polish American poets. Being a poet is yet another outsider identity, as is being a performance poet amongst the more traditional literati. I and my work have been dismissed, maybe misunderstood, continually. I suppose my true identity is about being a consummate malleable outsider in all ways. If one travels at all, even just outside the old neighborhood or returning back to it, even, the need for those exotic outsider skills becomes evident.
I can relate to your experiences and used Jadzia a few times for submissions. I loved having an exotic name, but I went to St. Hedwig's Grammar School at St. Hedwig's Church so the name in our New Jersey Polish America community wasn't odd. However, I was the first in my family to be born a citizen of the US, and I felt the privilege of that as well among the immigrant community. Oddly, when I lived in Wroclaw during my Fulbtight tenure at the university, my name also confused them. The use of "i" for Gorski instead of the "a" used by women created confusion, even amongst the faculty members. I felt foreign, as foreign as I did when I moved to Texas and they called me
ReplyDeleteA Yankee. Even if my name was Polish, it was a less foreign feature to them than being a Yankee. All immigrants and first-generation folks are foreigners wherever they go outside their original childhood family immigrant societies. I'm used to being "different" wherever I am, except when I'm around you and other Polish American poets. Being a poet is yet another outsider identity, as is being a performance poet amongst the more traditional literati. I and my work have been dismissed, maybe misunderstood, continually. I suppose my true identity is about being a consummate malleable outsider in all ways. If one travels at all, even just outside the old neighborhood or returning back to it, even, the need for those exotic outsider skills becomes evident.
My birth family had an unusual Polish name that has become a kind of joke in Poland today: ciulik (look it up.)
ReplyDeleteI was forever spelling it and answering "how do you say that?" Then I married a Polish American guy named Wisniewski, which takes longer to spell and write. I make people wait.
Although I grew up in a Polish American neighborhood in upstate New York, my parents taught us that we were looked down upon by people with English names. Not sure if I ever experienced that, but when my husband and I went to Poland in 2010, I loved seeing Pani Wisniewska on my luggage. Even though I didn't belong there, could speak only a few basic words of Polish, at least I didn't have to spell my name.