Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Best Ever You show.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Elizabeth Hamilton Garno, and I am here
Speaker 1: with author Caroline Topperman.
Speaker 2: How are you, Caroline, I'm.
Speaker 3: Good, Thank you. How are you right?
Speaker 1: It's so great to meet you, and congratulations on your
Speaker 1: book launch today. Tell us all about your new book.
Speaker 1: I'm excited for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I know it's been a very overwhelming morning
Speaker 3: with social media exploding a little bit, so it's been
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. So my book, Your Roots cast
Speaker 3: a shadow. I actually started writing this book probably in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen officially, so I guess that's ten years ago
Speaker 3: when right after I first moved to Poland, and it
Speaker 3: was started as a response to what I was seeing
Speaker 3: there and how I was reconnecting with my family roots
Speaker 3: and family that I didn't know, and family that I
Speaker 3: didn't know a lot about.
Speaker 2: And you are from where are you right now? You're
Speaker 2: in Canada?
Speaker 3: Right, yes, right now? I live in Toronto, Canada. But
Speaker 3: I was born in Sweden. My parents became political refugees
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight ish nineteen sixty nine from Poland,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, I was born in Sweden. And then
Speaker 3: we moved to Canada after that shortly after that.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting past. I was reading your bio.
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce.
Speaker 2: Some of the things in your bio. So I'm like, Caroline,
Speaker 2: can you read your bio for us?
Speaker 1: I won't make you do that, of course, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of funny, but you have such an interesting past
Speaker 1: and interesting history to you. I'm excited to present this
Speaker 1: book to the best ever you network. So the official
Speaker 1: book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow, One Family
Speaker 1: Search Across History for Belonging, Across History, for Belonging. It's
Speaker 1: published by HCI. Are great friends at HCI, and it
Speaker 1: is available officially today wherever books are sold. US authors
Speaker 1: love it when you go to Amazon. So many of
Speaker 1: the books are sold through Amazon these days. Giving us
Speaker 1: reviews and getting us to that fifty review mark is
Speaker 1: such a critical point in an author's life. And we
Speaker 1: also always love our folks at Books a Million and.
Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how grateful I am for all
Speaker 1: the bookstores here in Maine supporting me and my books
Speaker 1: and things like that. So Carolyn, I'm sure you'll have
Speaker 1: great fun around you locally as well. And then nationally
Speaker 1: as the book grows. So congratulations on the launch and
Speaker 1: it's a big day for you, and I'm thankful to
Speaker 1: be part of it. I want to go back and
Speaker 1: do actually read a little bit of your bio because.
Speaker 2: This is this your first book.
Speaker 3: This is my first when I say book book, so
Speaker 3: with lots of writing in it. I have another book
Speaker 3: that came out in twenty nineteen and it was it's
Speaker 3: a book of visual writing prompts. So the very quickly
Speaker 3: the story behind that one is I had moved back
Speaker 3: to Canada from living in Europe and I was having
Speaker 3: writer's block and I realized I was a very visual person,
Speaker 3: and I decided that I needed photography and images to
Speaker 3: help me write. And I actually use that a lot
Speaker 3: of those techniques for writing this book, and so I
Speaker 3: came up with this book, tell Me what You See?
Speaker 3: And that was the other one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so is it safe to say you're a photographer?
Speaker 3: I guess, although I don't really wait, I guess. You know,
Speaker 3: most of my pictures are taken with my phone right now.
Speaker 3: I do have nice fans cameras, but I just love
Speaker 3: experimenting with my phone. So I don't know if that
Speaker 3: makes me a photographer. Sure, I'll take that, let's call it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me about Okay, so tell me about
Speaker 1: the move to Poland, like what prompted that, why did
Speaker 1: you do that?
Speaker 2: And so forth.
Speaker 1: Give us a little bit more insight, and then that'll
Speaker 1: kind of help unravel a book a little bit correct.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, absolutely. So I was living in Toronto, my
Speaker 3: husband and I he was my fiance at the time,
Speaker 3: but we moved to Vancouver, and Vancouver was a great city.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say bad things about that city,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't the city for me. So I in Vancouver,
Speaker 3: I actually owned a pilate studio that I ran, and
Speaker 3: I probably had, like I don't know, thirty million different
Speaker 3: jobs that I did there, and so it was a
Speaker 3: very it was a very exciting time in my life,
Speaker 3: but it didn't feed my soul. That's how I like
Speaker 3: to describe it, because it's such a sports town and
Speaker 3: I love sports. Like I said, I owned a pilate studio,
Speaker 3: but the arts were missing in my life. I trained
Speaker 3: in dance and my mom was a painter. My dad,
Speaker 3: even though he was an engineer, it was very visual work.
Speaker 3: It was very artistic work. He was an artist in
Speaker 3: his heart. He went in the theater, worked in the
Speaker 3: theater for many years. So I just started looking around
Speaker 3: for another place we could live. And probably about thirteen
Speaker 3: years or ten ten eleven years in of living in Vancouver,
Speaker 3: my husband and I went to visit Poland That's where
Speaker 3: my family is from, and he was born there and
Speaker 3: hadn't actually been back since he left, so it was
Speaker 3: a few decades for him, and we fell in love
Speaker 3: with the city. It was citing, sorry the city as
Speaker 3: in Warsaw is where we went. It was exciting. There
Speaker 3: were things happening. There was this atmosphere, this electric atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Restaurants were opening on every corner, little shops. It was
Speaker 3: really it was really great. And I was completely swept
Speaker 3: up in that romantic idea of moving to Europe. And
Speaker 3: I really wanted to live in Europe. I mean I
Speaker 3: had a very different image of it of what how
Speaker 3: I would be living than we did, you know, because TV.
Speaker 3: But I thought, you know what, why don't we just
Speaker 3: go for it, just try And so at this point
Speaker 3: in time there, you know, twenty two thousand and nine
Speaker 3: had already happened, so there had been that economic crash
Speaker 3: and he needed a change too, he was getting burnt
Speaker 3: out at his job. So I went and I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I have a right to a Polish passport.
Speaker 3: Took me a year and a half to get that done,
Speaker 3: and his was considerably easier since he was born there.
Speaker 3: And then we sold almost everything we owned and we
Speaker 3: packed everything up into eleven boxes that were placed on
Speaker 3: a boat. That was a really crazy experience bringing it
Speaker 3: to the yards where they transport things. And we bought
Speaker 3: one way tickets to Warsaw, Poland, and we landed it
Speaker 3: November twenty thirteen. November fourteenth, twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: And now take me to how a book becomes of that.
Speaker 3: So one day I started blogging quite a bit there.
Speaker 3: I was working for some companies writing in English, and
Speaker 3: I started, I thought, you know, I'll start a blog,
Speaker 3: as one did in those days. And I met a
Speaker 3: friend you're gonna laugh. So she's based out of Pittsburgh
Speaker 3: and we were both taking a blogging course that was
Speaker 3: based out of Australia.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And after that course ended, we stayed friends and we
Speaker 3: would do occasional talks. And sometime twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: maybe I said, you know what, I want to write
Speaker 3: a book because I was discovering all these things about
Speaker 3: my family. I met family that I didn't know, and
Speaker 3: I thought their stories are actually really interesting and I
Speaker 3: think they're important for the world. And at the time,
Speaker 3: the politics in Poland went from this very eager buzz
Speaker 3: and excitement to very I would say, the best version
Speaker 3: is like a socialist version of very very hard right politics.
Speaker 3: So the mood changed drastically and I started seeing alarming headlines.
Speaker 3: It wasn't quite what we're seeing in the world right
Speaker 3: now yet, but the headlines were starting to be a
Speaker 3: little bit too close for comfort of what I knew
Speaker 3: that my family had experienced in the late nineteen thirties
Speaker 3: nineteen forties in Europe, and so I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: what best way I can speak out really is to
Speaker 3: write a book. And that's how it started.
Speaker 2: Tell me more about the title. Why the title?
Speaker 3: So the title was actually the title of a chapter.
Speaker 3: And I would love to take full credit for this,
Speaker 3: but my husband came up with that title and it
Speaker 3: just worked for this and then it just worked, and
Speaker 3: interestingly enough, I had a few people say, well, that's
Speaker 3: a really intense title. Would you consider changing it? And
Speaker 3: I said yes, and I knew that going into traditional publishing,
Speaker 3: I might have to change it. So I was surprised
Speaker 3: when HCI did not change it. They just added the subtitle.
Speaker 3: But I realized that no matter where I went, what
Speaker 3: I did, the roots, my family roots, they were always there.
Speaker 3: They were always pulling me back. They were always a connection,
Speaker 3: and they they never left. My father at one point
Speaker 3: was disowned, which is why I am, which is why
Speaker 3: I didn't know that family and why I had to
Speaker 3: reconnect with that family. But somehow the reconnection was easy,
Speaker 3: and I think it's because of the roots.
Speaker 1: So tell tell the listeners what the reader, what the
Speaker 1: reader can expect, and what the book is about.
Speaker 3: So the book really spans my four and a half
Speaker 3: years living in Poland, because as we said, I'm back
Speaker 3: in Canada now, and it dives back and forth through history.
Speaker 3: It follows my mother's side of the family. They were
Speaker 3: they had to flee Poland, they were Jewish, had to
Speaker 3: flee Poland, and they traveled west to sorry west east
Speaker 3: to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and they survived the war there and
Speaker 3: then they came back to rebuild their country. My father's side,
Speaker 3: who actually survived the war, including my father in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: and they came back in nineteen forty four as well
Speaker 3: to help rebuild the country. And then my mother's side,
Speaker 3: which was basically kicked out of Poland in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: eight for being Jewish, and then my return. So it's
Speaker 3: this back and forth of looking at what they went through,
Speaker 3: looking at what I went through, and in by no
Speaker 3: means did anything I go through was anything as serious
Speaker 3: as what they went through. So just so we're clear,
Speaker 3: I know that, but just sort of looking at how
Speaker 3: migration affects us, what our responsibilities are I think is
Speaker 3: human beings, and I try to make fun of my
Speaker 3: experiences a little bit, just to keep it a little
Speaker 3: bit lighter, so it's not this very heavy, heavy book,
Speaker 3: I hope, And just to show us how important it
Speaker 3: is to start those conversations about how important it is
Speaker 3: to realize, you know, where we came from, who who are,
Speaker 3: where our roots are, what are where are traditions come from,
Speaker 3: and why they're important.
Speaker 1: If you're just joining us, we are having a book
Speaker 1: discussion with author Caroline Topperman. Her website is Caroline Tapperman
Speaker 1: dot com. I will put a link in the show
Speaker 1: title and bio to your website. And her new book,
Speaker 1: which came out today is called Your Roots Cast a Shadow.
Speaker 1: It's available wherever books are sold. And I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what your favorite part of the book is. Did
Speaker 1: you have a yeah, tell us, do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite part of the book?
Speaker 3: You know, I think that probably changes right now. So
Speaker 3: it's a little bit sad. So my father actually passed
Speaker 3: away this summer. She never got a chance to see
Speaker 3: this in its full final format. So I think right
Speaker 3: now probably my favorite parts are because I did a
Speaker 3: lot of interviews and I don't want to make this
Speaker 3: whole thing sound sad, but so my mother passed away
Speaker 3: many years ago, and a lot of this was written
Speaker 3: using my dad's memories and recordings, and so I think
Speaker 3: right now my favorite parts are the parts that are
Speaker 3: the most sentimental for me right now are the parts
Speaker 3: where I just transcribed his memories as a kid.
Speaker 2: That's so special. I'm sorry about your dad.
Speaker 1: You you know, my dad passed way in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: so I know that feeling.
Speaker 3: It's sorry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, lot of my books have my dad in
Speaker 1: them too, so I'm I'm kind of happy to hear
Speaker 1: that that your.
Speaker 2: Dad's there with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that major nervous or scared about writing
Speaker 1: a book like this, like putting a book out into
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: Yes and no. So of course I am writing about family,
Speaker 3: and I didn't want I really didn't set out to
Speaker 3: insult anyone. You know. I didn't agree with some of
Speaker 3: the choices family made, or some of their politics and
Speaker 3: ideals from way back. So I tried to present that
Speaker 3: in the best way I could, you know, giving my opinion,
Speaker 3: but also trying to understand their motivations. One family member
Speaker 3: is still alive, my mother's brother, and I actually just
Speaker 3: changed his name. We had a very odd relationship, so
Speaker 3: that on that level, that made me a little bit
Speaker 3: nervous doing that. And I, you know, I have a sister.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to drag her through this either, but
Speaker 3: I wanted to pay tribute without pulling them in. Wasn't
Speaker 3: really for example, it's not really her story what I was.
Speaker 3: I was laughing when when I originally wrote this book,
Speaker 3: the politics in Poland were very different, and there was
Speaker 3: this part of me that kept laughing, hoping that the
Speaker 3: book would be banned there just for publicity's sake. But
Speaker 3: so I am a little bit afraid of that. I
Speaker 3: think a little bit, But I I because most of
Speaker 3: the family members are now deceased. I'm not really worried
Speaker 3: about any family coming back at me. I think I
Speaker 3: did my best. I hope I did my best. Sure
Speaker 3: I but yeah, I so so yes and yes and no.
Speaker 3: But I'm not really afraid of too much because most
Speaker 3: of the politics I do talk about are in the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what are you working on now?
Speaker 3: So this book, if you ask me that question, for
Speaker 3: this book, there will be a whole lot more so.
Speaker 3: While I was writing Your Roots Cast a Shadow, I
Speaker 3: uncovered papers that my other grandfather had written during his
Speaker 3: time in Afghanistan. And I have these amazing stories fairy
Speaker 3: tales or folk tales and just his time because he
Speaker 3: was building the road that joins Kabul and Jalalabad. And
Speaker 3: I have my dad's memories as well. So I'm just
Speaker 3: at the beginning of forming all of that. But for
Speaker 3: that book, I actually started working with a gentleman who
Speaker 3: is living in exile in Canada. He is a writer
Speaker 3: scholar from Afghanistan, and he put me in touch with
Speaker 3: an underground school for Afghan girls and he and I
Speaker 3: teach them every week, and it is so dangerous that
Speaker 3: they don't show their faces on the screen. So we do,
Speaker 3: we we talk over the internet, but they don't. They
Speaker 3: don't show me their faces. And I'm not allowed to
Speaker 3: be in their group because my name obviously does not
Speaker 3: sound Muslim at all. And there is a very real
Speaker 3: threat from the Taliban for these girls and by extension,
Speaker 3: for me. Yeah, so that one. But I'm finding it
Speaker 3: so fascinating and their stories are so so incredible that
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not stepping away from that.
Speaker 2: Isn't that scary?
Speaker 1: We live at a time where people can't get educated
Speaker 1: without the threat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're being actively silenced. They're not allowed to
Speaker 3: speak on the streets, right, crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who knew you'd be such a historian?
Speaker 2: Huh Yeah?
Speaker 3: Not me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but is you?
Speaker 3: I know, very unexpectedly, I think, because I was interested
Speaker 3: in stories and I started recording them. And then my
Speaker 3: dad's brother he found out about all of this, so
Speaker 3: he was very excited. He passed away actually during COVID,
Speaker 3: but he was very excited about it. And he's the
Speaker 3: one who sent me all of these amazing letters and
Speaker 3: books and things. So yeah, it all fell into my lap.
Speaker 3: So thanks family.
Speaker 2: What part of this intimidates you?
Speaker 3: So I do a lot of translations. That is definitely
Speaker 3: a challenge. I want to make sure that I'm translating
Speaker 3: it properly and then just getting the facts right. I
Speaker 3: think I do a lot of research to make sure
Speaker 3: that it's right, but you know, things sometimes escape you,
Speaker 3: and so I think it's that it's just making sure
Speaker 3: that I'm properly mixing the facts with an interesting stories.
Speaker 3: I don't want any of this to be dry either.
Speaker 3: I laughed at you know, I read a lot of
Speaker 3: dry books that were very informative while I was writing
Speaker 3: this book, but that were not They were not not
Speaker 3: the book that you would sit down and just read
Speaker 3: for enjoyment. And so it's it's combining the two and
Speaker 3: keeping it light enough without making it silly.
Speaker 2: But also we're boring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's it's it's making that happen.
Speaker 1: What was the motivation to actually like write the book
Speaker 1: and bring the family stories to light and things like that?
Speaker 1: What was going on there with.
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 2: I mean? Why why did you want to write the book?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So it was really because in Poland that the
Speaker 3: government had changed. I was suddenly I found myself literally
Speaker 3: going to protests probably once a week in Poland as
Speaker 3: their government changed and took hold and changes started happening,
Speaker 3: and women, for example, lost reproductive rights, and then they
Speaker 3: started really pushing the whole family, the traditional family and
Speaker 3: quotation marks, and I thought, no, we cannot go back
Speaker 3: into that kind of world. And I remember one day
Speaker 3: I participated in it was essentially Pride parade, but it
Speaker 3: was organized through my husband's work. The float, it's a big,
Speaker 3: pretty big thing there, but they call it, I'll say
Speaker 3: this in Polish, they call it parada nochi, which is
Speaker 3: direct translation. It's like equality parade. And I remember going
Speaker 3: to the first one and we had a fairly big
Speaker 3: float and we were flanked by police in full like
Speaker 3: full gear, two rows of police and probably about thirty
Speaker 3: of those like big police trucks behind us, and a
Speaker 3: lot of neo Nazis fascists were standing and yelling at us,
Speaker 3: and I thought, no, no, this, No, we cannot go
Speaker 3: back to this world. You don't have to like everything
Speaker 3: about everybody, that's fine, but we can't have this. And
Speaker 3: Poland their politics, they were allowing all the neo Nazis
Speaker 3: and other groups like that into the country. So Independence
Speaker 3: Day in Poland is not the same as Independence Day
Speaker 3: in the US and or or Canada Day over here.
Speaker 3: It's actually celebrated on November eleventh, which is Remembrance Day
Speaker 3: in Canada. But there it becomes this very ugly nationalist
Speaker 3: holiday with companies telling their foreign workers to stay home.
Speaker 3: There are flare guns that come out. The whole the
Speaker 3: air is just filled with heavy smoke, very ugly, ugly
Speaker 3: slogans are chanted and it's ugly. The whole thing is
Speaker 3: very ugly. And I thought, I just I need to
Speaker 3: say something, I need to do something. And it's great,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm more than happy to participate in protests
Speaker 3: and sign my name to petitions. But I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: another voice with a book like this out in the
Speaker 3: world that is speaking out against the ugly. That's what
Speaker 3: we need.
Speaker 2: So when did you move back?
Speaker 3: We moved back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: And were you relieved to move back?
Speaker 3: Yes? And no. There were things I didn't like. The
Speaker 3: government is different now in Poland, and I do miss
Speaker 3: my life in Poland. I do like more of that
Speaker 3: European life style. But we moved back from my husband's work,
Speaker 3: and just to be closer to family as well. My
Speaker 3: dad had moved into a retirement home, and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's probably time to be just a little bit closer.
Speaker 3: I think our siblings were already wanting both of us
Speaker 3: to move back so we could help with parents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you were gonna, if you were going to
Speaker 1: move anywhere again, would you and where would it be?
Speaker 3: I would? I don't know. I would love to live
Speaker 3: in the South of France for a little bit. I
Speaker 3: always laugh that I'd like to live in the South
Speaker 3: of France and make cheese. I don't know why, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I get antsy. I like to I like
Speaker 3: to move around.
Speaker 2: This would be hard to do.
Speaker 1: Like, I'm a mom of four sons and now they're
Speaker 1: in their twenty so now we could even now we
Speaker 1: probably couldn't go because the roots are so tied and
Speaker 1: they're back here and their families are here and things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that would work.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have children, family members near you
Speaker 1: where you live things like that, or are you just
Speaker 1: sort of portable and can go where you want to go?
Speaker 3: So no kids? I think we are portable. My husband
Speaker 3: less so now because of his parents they're here, but
Speaker 3: because the family's I mean his as well. But my
Speaker 3: family was so fragmented after the war, in the Second
Speaker 3: World War. You know, my family, my mother's side, most
Speaker 3: of them are actually in Germany right now. My dad
Speaker 3: has one or two people laughter, Like the closest family
Speaker 3: is in Poland, in Warsaw. There's a little bit of
Speaker 3: family in South Africa, actually, and that is kind of
Speaker 3: it for me. There's some there are there is family
Speaker 3: in in the US, but I don't know them very well.
Speaker 3: They came much earlier to North America, so I like
Speaker 3: I'm fairly portable. Of course, I have a wonderful nieces
Speaker 3: and nephews here in Canada that I would always want
Speaker 3: to keep in touch with. But you know, there's there
Speaker 3: are planes, there are there are times to travel.
Speaker 2: What about pets. Do you have pets?
Speaker 3: So actually we didn't right now, No, because our little
Speaker 3: Cairn terrier, Pixie, who features prominently in the book, and
Speaker 3: she's on the very first page. She she passed away
Speaker 3: after we moved back to Canada. But she actually we
Speaker 3: got her when we lived in Vancouver and she just
Speaker 3: traveled with us. She was a very portable, very portable
Speaker 3: little dog in Yeah, she lived in Poland with us,
Speaker 3: very happily. So languages did the dog speak? Yeah, don't
Speaker 3: you speak three languages? Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know she did.
Speaker 3: She understood Polish English for sure. Actually, when we landed
Speaker 3: in Poland, there was a randomly ran into a couple
Speaker 3: from Australia or New Zealand and they were asking us
Speaker 3: if this was an unfamiliar accent, and I laughed and
Speaker 3: I said no because in Vancouver. Half of New Zealand
Speaker 3: lives in Vancouver and teaches skiing up at Whistler during
Speaker 3: the winter. So she's actually very used to the accent.
Speaker 3: And I think they may have been a little bit disappointed,
Speaker 3: but she's it was multilingual.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that's funny. Did she have this is
Speaker 1: a dumb question, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2: Did you have different barks?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Could could she?
Speaker 1: Would she speak in a different language or was it
Speaker 1: always the same barks? So?
Speaker 2: Same barks?
Speaker 3: However, she loved as we figured out unfixed male dogs.
Speaker 3: And in Poland it's a lot rarer for people to
Speaker 3: fix their pets than it is in North America. So
Speaker 3: our dog like I think Poland was the best place
Speaker 3: on earth for her. She loved it.
Speaker 2: So if you.
Speaker 1: Could talk to your generation of family members, now, what
Speaker 1: would you say to them? And then the second part
Speaker 1: of that, if you, I don't know how if you
Speaker 1: want to answer that or not.
Speaker 2: But the other part is, was.
Speaker 1: There anything that you uncovered that was just like jaw
Speaker 1: dropping way like what or jaw dropping way peaceful like?
Speaker 3: So? I mean, I knew my mother's grandparents, my mother's parents,
Speaker 3: so I would have wanted to know their story, not
Speaker 3: after the fact, but from them. And I realized that
Speaker 3: my mom's parents, I mean, they were Holocaust survivors, and
Speaker 3: I realized that that was not something that they ever
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about. In fact, they dissuaded me from
Speaker 3: ever asking questions or reading about it. But I wish
Speaker 3: if I knew them when I was old, old right now,
Speaker 3: that's something I would have wanted to know about my
Speaker 3: dad's family. Uh yeah, maybe less nice things to say.
Speaker 3: I would have wanted to know why they disowned him
Speaker 3: for not coming back to Poland when he decided to
Speaker 3: stay with my mother. But I also would have said,
Speaker 3: you know you just to I would have actually thanked
Speaker 3: them for keeping letters and for writing down their memories
Speaker 3: because that is that's the way they are speaking to
Speaker 3: me now and the way I can speak to the
Speaker 3: next generations of the family. And as for what I uncovered,
Speaker 3: So my grandfather's book, it's a it's it's a chronicle
Speaker 3: of events. Trust me, it's very dry. He was an
Speaker 3: engineer and it's written by an engineer when he tried
Speaker 3: and he just wrote it for friends and family. And
Speaker 3: it's actually in the archives at Stanford right now. That's
Speaker 3: how I found it. So that was a shock. I
Speaker 3: didn't that was a wow. I've actually been asked to
Speaker 3: write forward for it, which is really cool. But I think,
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of their stories were shocking, like
Speaker 3: what because I didn't know any of this before I
Speaker 3: read it, and it was all in Polish. So not
Speaker 3: only am I translating, but I had to practice my
Speaker 3: Polish and get my reading up to speed to be
Speaker 3: good enough to be able to read these things, because
Speaker 3: even ten years ago, I don't know that I would
Speaker 3: have been able to get through these.
Speaker 1: Were you were you raised speaking Polish or did you
Speaker 1: learn that as an adult, because that takes forever to learn.
Speaker 3: I did. I was raised speaking Polish, but I didn't
Speaker 3: know how to read till later I taught myself how
Speaker 3: to read in Polish.
Speaker 1: Actually, imagine like being and uncovering Polish letters and going, well,
Speaker 1: I better teach myself some Polish to.
Speaker 2: Be able to read that, you know.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I don't think I could have done that,
Speaker 3: especially the ones written in cursive, because cursive is different, right, So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially generational cursive too, Like Mike, nowadays, kids in
Speaker 1: school aren't even taught cursive in the United States. No a, Yeah,
Speaker 1: two kids who can't write cursive in their in their twenties,
Speaker 1: we had to teach them just to sign their name.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, no cursive taught. So yeah, pretty, that's
Speaker 1: that's would be impossible for them. If I write anything
Speaker 1: in cursive, they go, I can't read it. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, no really anyway, just a side note there.
Speaker 1: So what do you think they say about today and
Speaker 1: the moments we're living in now?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm really hoping that so. Actually, Interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: in Poland, through a lot of the protests, the people
Speaker 3: who are coming out and protesting and getting carried away
Speaker 3: physically by police quite often were my grandparents' age, and
Speaker 3: I would really, really hope that my grandparents would be
Speaker 3: among those protesters standing up and saying never again to
Speaker 3: a whole lot of different things, but never again, because
Speaker 3: they all lived through what is arguably, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the worst moments in history, and I'm hoping that
Speaker 3: they would be among the voices now speaking out to
Speaker 3: say that, you know, we don't all have to agree
Speaker 3: with each other, absolutely not, but some of what we're
Speaker 3: seeing right now is scary and dangerous.
Speaker 1: Kind of the same question for you, what would you
Speaker 1: have done back then?
Speaker 3: I hope I would have done what I'm doing now,
Speaker 3: and I hope I would have oken up. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd like to think that about myself. My grandfather ran
Speaker 3: an underground press for a while in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 3: in Poland, and I'm hoping I would be doing something
Speaker 3: like that. And my dad's theater in nineteen fifties. In
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and sixties in Poland, they it was a
Speaker 3: communist government, so very heavy handed. They had censors at
Speaker 3: all of their plays, and in fact they had to
Speaker 3: run the plays by the censors beforehand. But it was
Speaker 3: a political theater, and I'm hoping that I would be
Speaker 3: part of those kinds of groups and organizations and those voices.
Speaker 1: Now, with that said, is that how you've always been?
Speaker 1: Or did it taken covering all of this to become that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Have you always been outspoken and challenging the status quo
Speaker 1: and things like that, like go back to kindergarten?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 2: Is that you?
Speaker 1: Or were you more quiet and going to fit in
Speaker 1: no matter what type and things like that?
Speaker 3: Ah? Both, I was actually extremely shy. I would never
Speaker 3: speak up earlier, and I actually wound up taking acting lessons.
Speaker 3: One day I decided that I'd had enough and I
Speaker 3: decided to take acting lessons to be able to speak up,
Speaker 3: to learn how to feel more comfortable in this kind
Speaker 3: of role. I did speak up a little bit here
Speaker 3: and there, but not too much. And then there was
Speaker 3: just a moment in university where I decided enough, I
Speaker 3: can't keep being I can't keep being like this. And
Speaker 3: that's when I started just pushing a lot harder for
Speaker 3: things I wanted. That being said, it wasn't very political,
Speaker 3: it wasn't life changing. It was mostly things about me
Speaker 3: and for me and around me. But finding this book
Speaker 3: or finding the material for this book, Sorry, and then
Speaker 3: living in Poland and seeing with my just being part
Speaker 3: of what happens if you don't speak up. That's when
Speaker 3: that's when a lot of that changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, you know it has been really
Speaker 1: we have to go. We're short on time now, but
Speaker 1: I'm so happy for you for the launch of your book. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: And it's been delightful getting to know you and hearing
Speaker 1: about your story and the stories of your family, and
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm thankful that you're you're so open to
Speaker 1: sharing everything, and I'm I'm excited to actually get I
Speaker 1: already lent your book out to somebody.
Speaker 2: I owned your.
Speaker 1: Book out to to somebody already, So that's a good
Speaker 1: sign for your book.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 1: I think it'll make its way around and be quite popular.
Speaker 1: So congratulations on your new book, and we all can't
Speaker 1: wait to see your success and all the things that
Speaker 1: that you do moving forward. So everybody listening, head on
Speaker 1: over to Caroline's website. It's Caroline Topperman dot com. Her
Speaker 1: book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow. Caroline, is
Speaker 1: there anything that we missed that you wanted to say?
Speaker 3: I know, I mean, I think this was a really
Speaker 3: great chat. Thank you for having me on your show.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you for being here on the best
Speaker 1: ever youth show. And to all you listeners out there.
Speaker 1: We'll probably also do a video podcast with Caroline at
Speaker 1: some point here in the short future, but in the meantime,
Speaker 1: please enjoy this audio and as you do with all
Speaker 1: of our guests, remember we're grassroots. We've got about almost
Speaker 1: six million downloads now on the podcast, and so we
Speaker 1: love you guys showing up for our guests, buying their books,
Speaker 1: going to their website, telling somebody about them. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably the most important thing, is that word of mouth.
Speaker 1: We survive as authors through the word of mouth. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you tell somebody to read the Change Guidebook or
Speaker 1: the Success Guidebook or your Roots, Cast a Shadow or
Speaker 1: Percolate or the Very Lucky ladybook or whatever book it is.
Speaker 2: That's how we thrive and get to.
Speaker 1: Continue writing books and be signed to write more books
Speaker 1: as authors. So that's my I'll come down off my
Speaker 1: author horse here and Caroline, thank you for being with us,
Speaker 1: and thank you everybody so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Have a great day.
Speaker 3: Thank you