2: Choices Given, Choices Made
Nadine née Patricia: I Gave My Youth to Jesus Christ and My Old Age to Bob
3. What’s a Polish-American Girl to Do? Working-Class Girls in the Convent
Angela Helen: The Best Time in My Life, and the Worst Time
Mary Marcelia: I Thought I Was a Superwoman
5. The Importance of Being Mothers
Introduction: Agency and Resistance
Caroline Clarice: So I Learned to Fly
CONCLUSION A Grasinski Granddaughter
Appendix: Description of Research Methods
Illustrations
FIGURES
1. Caroline in front of her home, 1979
3. Nadine in front of her home, 1977
4. Angel in front of her home, 1967
5. Mary, Angel, and Gene at their home, 1952
6. The Grasinski Girls’ family tree
7. Gravestone in St. Stanislaus Cemetery, Hilliards, Michigan
8. Frances and Ladislaus, c. 1938
9. Helen and Joe on their wedding day, 1922
11. Mary, Angel, Fran, Gene, and Caroline, 1951
12. Fran and Albert Hrouda on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, 1998
14. Nadine, Joe, and Gene, 1949
15. Gene and Fran (holding Annette, Caroline’s daughter), 1947
16. Sister Nadine in her room at the convent, 1970
17. Nadine on her wedding day, 1975
18. Nadine and Marie Chantal, c. 1982
19. Nadine, Bob, and Marie Chantal at the opening of their winery, 1990
20. Final profession of vows for Sister Nadine, 1958
21. Angel, Jim, and daughter Mary in front of their home, 1967
22. The girls from Buzz’s Bar and Grill, 1954
23. Angel and Jim on their wedding day, 1956
24. Angel, Jim, and their six children, 1968
25. Mari during her college years, 1978
26. Mari and Raphael at the Chateau Chantal Winery, 1993
27. Nadine and Marie Chantal, 1980
28. Caroline in Florida, 1980
29. Caroline and Edmund in Macon, Georgia, 1943
30. Caroline, Edmund, and their three children, 1955
31. Angel and Nadine with their mother Helen, c. 1985
32. Nadine and Angel at Nadine’s home, 2001
MAPS
1. Development of the Polish corridor in Hilliards, Michigan, 1873–1935 34
2. Valley Avenue in the Sercowo neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1932 41
TABLE
1. Polish-American sisterhoods in the United States, 1957–1958 93
Series Editor’s Preface
HISTORIANS AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE studied the male-dominated public side of Polish immigrant and ethnic life that took
