December 17, 2024 • 36 mins
A narrative of cultural translation, identity, and belonging. The thrill of a new place fades quickly for Caroline Topperman when she moves from Vancouver to Poland in 2013. As she delves into her family’s history, tracing their migration through pre-WWII Poland, Afghanistan, Soviet Russia and beyond, she discovers the layers of their complex experiences mirror some of what she felt as she adapted to life in a new country. How does one balance honoring both one’s origins and new surroundings? Your Roots Cast a Shadow explores where personal history intersects with global events to shape a family’s identity. From the bustling markets of Baghdad to the quiet streets of Stockholm, Topperman navigates the murky waters of history as she toggles between present and past, investigating the relationship between migration, politics, identity, and home. Her family stories bring history into the present as her paternal grandmother becomes the first woman allowed to buy groceries at her local Afghan market while her husband is tasked with building the road from Kabul to Jalalabad. Topperman’s Jewish grandfather, a rising star in the Communist Party, flees Poland at the start of WWII one step ahead of the Nazis, returning later only to be rejected by the Party for his Jewish faith. Topperman herself struggles with new cultural expectations and reconciling with estranged relatives. Visit: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Your-Roots-Cast-a-Shadow/Caroline-Topperman/9780757325427
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Best Ever You show.
I'm your host Elizabeth Hamilton Garno, and I am here
with author Caroline Topperman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
How are you, Caroline, I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Good, Thank you. How are you right?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's so great to meet you, and congratulations on your
book launch today. Tell us all about your new book.
I'm excited for you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you. I know it's been a very overwhelming morning
with social media exploding a little bit, so it's been
a lot of fun. So my book, Your Roots cast
a shadow. I actually started writing this book probably in
twenty fourteen officially, so I guess that's ten years ago
(00:50):
when right after I first moved to Poland, and it
was started as a response to what I was seeing
there and how I was reconnecting with my family roots
and family that I didn't know, and family that I
didn't know a lot about.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And you are from where are you right now? You're
in Canada?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Right, yes, right now? I live in Toronto, Canada. But
I was born in Sweden. My parents became political refugees
in nineteen sixty eight ish nineteen sixty nine from Poland,
and so yeah, I was born in Sweden. And then
(01:33):
we moved to Canada after that shortly after that.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
That's an interesting past. I was reading your bio.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I can't pronounce.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Some of the things in your bio. So I'm like, Caroline,
can you read your bio for us?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I won't make you do that, of course, it's just
kind of funny, but you have such an interesting past
and interesting history to you. I'm excited to present this
book to the best ever you network. So the official
book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow, One Family
Search Across History for Belonging, Across History, for Belonging. It's
(02:07):
published by HCI. Are great friends at HCI, and it
is available officially today wherever books are sold. US authors
love it when you go to Amazon. So many of
the books are sold through Amazon these days. Giving us
reviews and getting us to that fifty review mark is
such a critical point in an author's life. And we
also always love our folks at Books a Million and.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I can't tell you how grateful I am for all
the bookstores here in Maine supporting me and my books
and things like that. So Carolyn, I'm sure you'll have
great fun around you locally as well. And then nationally
as the book grows. So congratulations on the launch and
it's a big day for you, and I'm thankful to
(02:52):
be part of it. I want to go back and
do actually read a little bit of your bio because.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
This is this your first book.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
This is my first when I say book book, so
with lots of writing in it. I have another book
that came out in twenty nineteen and it was it's
a book of visual writing prompts. So the very quickly
the story behind that one is I had moved back
(03:22):
to Canada from living in Europe and I was having
writer's block and I realized I was a very visual person,
and I decided that I needed photography and images to
help me write. And I actually use that a lot
of those techniques for writing this book, and so I
came up with this book, tell Me what You See?
(03:42):
And that was the other one.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, so is it safe to say you're a photographer?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I guess, although I don't really wait, I guess. You know,
most of my pictures are taken with my phone right now.
I do have nice fans cameras, but I just love
experimenting with my phone. So I don't know if that
makes me a photographer. Sure, I'll take that, let's call it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, So tell me about Okay, so tell me about
the move to Poland, like what prompted that, why did
you do that?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And so forth.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Give us a little bit more insight, and then that'll
kind of help unravel a book a little bit correct.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yes, yeah, absolutely. So I was living in Toronto, my
husband and I he was my fiance at the time,
but we moved to Vancouver, and Vancouver was a great city.
I don't want to say bad things about that city,
but it wasn't the city for me. So I in Vancouver,
(04:47):
I actually owned a pilate studio that I ran, and
I probably had, like I don't know, thirty million different
jobs that I did there, and so it was a
very it was a very exciting time in my life,
but it didn't feed my soul. That's how I like
to describe it, because it's such a sports town and
(05:08):
I love sports. Like I said, I owned a pilate studio,
but the arts were missing in my life. I trained
in dance and my mom was a painter. My dad,
even though he was an engineer, it was very visual work.
It was very artistic work. He was an artist in
(05:28):
his heart. He went in the theater, worked in the
theater for many years. So I just started looking around
for another place we could live. And probably about thirteen
years or ten ten eleven years in of living in Vancouver,
my husband and I went to visit Poland That's where
my family is from, and he was born there and
(05:50):
hadn't actually been back since he left, so it was
a few decades for him, and we fell in love
with the city. It was citing, sorry the city as
in Warsaw is where we went. It was exciting. There
were things happening. There was this atmosphere, this electric atmosphere.
(06:11):
Restaurants were opening on every corner, little shops. It was
really it was really great. And I was completely swept
up in that romantic idea of moving to Europe. And
I really wanted to live in Europe. I mean I
had a very different image of it of what how
I would be living than we did, you know, because TV.
(06:33):
But I thought, you know what, why don't we just
go for it, just try And so at this point
in time there, you know, twenty two thousand and nine
had already happened, so there had been that economic crash
and he needed a change too, he was getting burnt
(06:54):
out at his job. So I went and I thought,
you know, I have a right to a Polish passport.
Took me a year and a half to get that done,
and his was considerably easier since he was born there.
And then we sold almost everything we owned and we
packed everything up into eleven boxes that were placed on
(07:18):
a boat. That was a really crazy experience bringing it
to the yards where they transport things. And we bought
one way tickets to Warsaw, Poland, and we landed it
November twenty thirteen. November fourteenth, twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And now take me to how a book becomes of that.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So one day I started blogging quite a bit there.
I was working for some companies writing in English, and
I started, I thought, you know, I'll start a blog,
as one did in those days. And I met a
friend you're gonna laugh. So she's based out of Pittsburgh
and we were both taking a blogging course that was
(08:03):
based out of Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And after that course ended, we stayed friends and we
would do occasional talks. And sometime twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
maybe I said, you know what, I want to write
a book because I was discovering all these things about
my family. I met family that I didn't know, and
I thought their stories are actually really interesting and I
(08:28):
think they're important for the world. And at the time,
the politics in Poland went from this very eager buzz
and excitement to very I would say, the best version
is like a socialist version of very very hard right politics.
(08:48):
So the mood changed drastically and I started seeing alarming headlines.
It wasn't quite what we're seeing in the world right
now yet, but the headlines were starting to be a
little bit too close for comfort of what I knew
that my family had experienced in the late nineteen thirties
(09:09):
nineteen forties in Europe, and so I thought, you know,
what best way I can speak out really is to
write a book. And that's how it started.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Tell me more about the title. Why the title?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
So the title was actually the title of a chapter.
And I would love to take full credit for this,
but my husband came up with that title and it
just worked for this and then it just worked, and
interestingly enough, I had a few people say, well, that's
a really intense title. Would you consider changing it? And
(09:46):
I said yes, and I knew that going into traditional publishing,
I might have to change it. So I was surprised
when HCI did not change it. They just added the subtitle.
But I realized that no matter where I went, what
I did, the roots, my family roots, they were always there.
They were always pulling me back. They were always a connection,
(10:10):
and they they never left. My father at one point
was disowned, which is why I am, which is why
I didn't know that family and why I had to
reconnect with that family. But somehow the reconnection was easy,
and I think it's because of the roots.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So tell tell the listeners what the reader, what the
reader can expect, and what the book is about.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So the book really spans my four and a half
years living in Poland, because as we said, I'm back
in Canada now, and it dives back and forth through history.
It follows my mother's side of the family. They were
they had to flee Poland, they were Jewish, had to
flee Poland, and they traveled west to sorry west east
(11:01):
to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and they survived the war there and
then they came back to rebuild their country. My father's side,
who actually survived the war, including my father in Afghanistan,
and they came back in nineteen forty four as well
to help rebuild the country. And then my mother's side,
which was basically kicked out of Poland in nineteen sixty
(11:27):
eight for being Jewish, and then my return. So it's
this back and forth of looking at what they went through,
looking at what I went through, and in by no
means did anything I go through was anything as serious
as what they went through. So just so we're clear,
I know that, but just sort of looking at how
(11:51):
migration affects us, what our responsibilities are I think is
human beings, and I try to make fun of my
experiences a little bit, just to keep it a little
bit lighter, so it's not this very heavy, heavy book,
I hope, And just to show us how important it
(12:14):
is to start those conversations about how important it is
to realize, you know, where we came from, who who are,
where our roots are, what are where are traditions come from,
and why they're important.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
If you're just joining us, we are having a book
discussion with author Caroline Topperman. Her website is Caroline Tapperman
dot com. I will put a link in the show
title and bio to your website. And her new book,
which came out today is called Your Roots Cast a Shadow.
It's available wherever books are sold. And I'd love to
(12:52):
know what your favorite part of the book is. Did
you have a yeah, tell us, do you have a
favorite part of the book?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
You know, I think that probably changes right now. So
it's a little bit sad. So my father actually passed
away this summer. She never got a chance to see
this in its full final format. So I think right
now probably my favorite parts are because I did a
(13:21):
lot of interviews and I don't want to make this
whole thing sound sad, but so my mother passed away
many years ago, and a lot of this was written
using my dad's memories and recordings, and so I think
right now my favorite parts are the parts that are
the most sentimental for me right now are the parts
(13:42):
where I just transcribed his memories as a kid.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's so special. I'm sorry about your dad.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You you know, my dad passed way in twenty eighteen,
so I know that feeling.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's sorry.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So yeah, lot of my books have my dad in
them too, so I'm I'm kind of happy to hear
that that your.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Dad's there with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Is there anything that major nervous or scared about writing
a book like this, like putting a book out into
the world.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes and no. So of course I am writing about family,
and I didn't want I really didn't set out to
insult anyone. You know. I didn't agree with some of
the choices family made, or some of their politics and
ideals from way back. So I tried to present that
(14:39):
in the best way I could, you know, giving my opinion,
but also trying to understand their motivations. One family member
is still alive, my mother's brother, and I actually just
changed his name. We had a very odd relationship, so
that on that level, that made me a little bit
(15:01):
nervous doing that. And I, you know, I have a sister.
I didn't want to drag her through this either, but
I wanted to pay tribute without pulling them in. Wasn't
really for example, it's not really her story what I was.
I was laughing when when I originally wrote this book,
(15:21):
the politics in Poland were very different, and there was
this part of me that kept laughing, hoping that the
book would be banned there just for publicity's sake. But
so I am a little bit afraid of that. I
think a little bit, But I I because most of
the family members are now deceased. I'm not really worried
(15:41):
about any family coming back at me. I think I
did my best. I hope I did my best. Sure
I but yeah, I so so yes and yes and no.
But I'm not really afraid of too much because most
of the politics I do talk about are in the past.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and what are you working on now?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
So this book, if you ask me that question, for
this book, there will be a whole lot more so.
While I was writing Your Roots Cast a Shadow, I
uncovered papers that my other grandfather had written during his
time in Afghanistan. And I have these amazing stories fairy
(16:31):
tales or folk tales and just his time because he
was building the road that joins Kabul and Jalalabad. And
I have my dad's memories as well. So I'm just
at the beginning of forming all of that. But for
that book, I actually started working with a gentleman who
is living in exile in Canada. He is a writer
(16:54):
scholar from Afghanistan, and he put me in touch with
an underground school for Afghan girls and he and I
teach them every week, and it is so dangerous that
they don't show their faces on the screen. So we do,
(17:15):
we we talk over the internet, but they don't. They
don't show me their faces. And I'm not allowed to
be in their group because my name obviously does not
sound Muslim at all. And there is a very real
threat from the Taliban for these girls and by extension,
(17:36):
for me. Yeah, so that one. But I'm finding it
so fascinating and their stories are so so incredible that
you know, I'm not stepping away from that.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Isn't that scary?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We live at a time where people can't get educated
without the threat.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, and they're being actively silenced. They're not allowed to
speak on the streets, right, crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, who knew you'd be such a historian?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Huh Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Not me?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, yeah, but is you?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I know, very unexpectedly, I think, because I was interested
in stories and I started recording them. And then my
dad's brother he found out about all of this, so
he was very excited. He passed away actually during COVID,
but he was very excited about it. And he's the
one who sent me all of these amazing letters and
(18:32):
books and things. So yeah, it all fell into my lap.
So thanks family.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
What part of this intimidates you?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
So I do a lot of translations. That is definitely
a challenge. I want to make sure that I'm translating
it properly and then just getting the facts right. I
think I do a lot of research to make sure
that it's right, but you know, things sometimes escape you,
and so I think it's that it's just making sure
that I'm properly mixing the facts with an interesting stories.
(19:06):
I don't want any of this to be dry either.
I laughed at you know, I read a lot of
dry books that were very informative while I was writing
this book, but that were not They were not not
the book that you would sit down and just read
for enjoyment. And so it's it's combining the two and
keeping it light enough without making it silly.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
But also we're boring.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, you know, it's it's it's making that happen.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
What was the motivation to actually like write the book
and bring the family stories to light and things like that?
What was going on there with.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I mean? Why why did you want to write the book?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah? So it was really because in Poland that the
government had changed. I was suddenly I found myself literally
going to protests probably once a week in Poland as
their government changed and took hold and changes started happening,
and women, for example, lost reproductive rights, and then they
(20:15):
started really pushing the whole family, the traditional family and
quotation marks, and I thought, no, we cannot go back
into that kind of world. And I remember one day
I participated in it was essentially Pride parade, but it
(20:36):
was organized through my husband's work. The float, it's a big,
pretty big thing there, but they call it, I'll say
this in Polish, they call it parada nochi, which is
direct translation. It's like equality parade. And I remember going
to the first one and we had a fairly big
float and we were flanked by police in full like
(21:01):
full gear, two rows of police and probably about thirty
of those like big police trucks behind us, and a
lot of neo Nazis fascists were standing and yelling at us,
and I thought, no, no, this, No, we cannot go
(21:23):
back to this world. You don't have to like everything
about everybody, that's fine, but we can't have this. And
Poland their politics, they were allowing all the neo Nazis
and other groups like that into the country. So Independence
Day in Poland is not the same as Independence Day
(21:46):
in the US and or or Canada Day over here.
It's actually celebrated on November eleventh, which is Remembrance Day
in Canada. But there it becomes this very ugly nationalist
(22:07):
holiday with companies telling their foreign workers to stay home.
There are flare guns that come out. The whole the
air is just filled with heavy smoke, very ugly, ugly
slogans are chanted and it's ugly. The whole thing is
(22:27):
very ugly. And I thought, I just I need to
say something, I need to do something. And it's great,
you know, I'm more than happy to participate in protests
and sign my name to petitions. But I thought, you know,
another voice with a book like this out in the
world that is speaking out against the ugly. That's what
we need.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So when did you move back?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
We moved back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And were you relieved to move back?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yes? And no. There were things I didn't like. The
government is different now in Poland, and I do miss
my life in Poland. I do like more of that
European life style. But we moved back from my husband's work,
and just to be closer to family as well. My
dad had moved into a retirement home, and I thought, yeah,
it's probably time to be just a little bit closer.
(23:17):
I think our siblings were already wanting both of us
to move back so we could help with parents.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, if you were gonna, if you were going to
move anywhere again, would you and where would it be?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I would? I don't know. I would love to live
in the South of France for a little bit. I
always laugh that I'd like to live in the South
of France and make cheese. I don't know why, but yeah,
I think I get antsy. I like to I like
to move around.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
This would be hard to do.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Like, I'm a mom of four sons and now they're
in their twenty so now we could even now we
probably couldn't go because the roots are so tied and
they're back here and their families are here and things
like that.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I don't know how that would work.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Do you do you have children, family members near you
where you live things like that, or are you just
sort of portable and can go where you want to go?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
So no kids? I think we are portable. My husband
less so now because of his parents they're here, but
because the family's I mean his as well. But my
family was so fragmented after the war, in the Second
World War. You know, my family, my mother's side, most
(24:30):
of them are actually in Germany right now. My dad
has one or two people laughter, Like the closest family
is in Poland, in Warsaw. There's a little bit of
family in South Africa, actually, and that is kind of
it for me. There's some there are there is family
(24:51):
in in the US, but I don't know them very well.
They came much earlier to North America, so I like
I'm fairly portable. Of course, I have a wonderful nieces
and nephews here in Canada that I would always want
to keep in touch with. But you know, there's there
(25:12):
are planes, there are there are times to travel.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What about pets. Do you have pets?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So actually we didn't right now, No, because our little
Cairn terrier, Pixie, who features prominently in the book, and
she's on the very first page. She she passed away
after we moved back to Canada. But she actually we
got her when we lived in Vancouver and she just
traveled with us. She was a very portable, very portable
(25:37):
little dog in Yeah, she lived in Poland with us,
very happily. So languages did the dog speak? Yeah, don't
you speak three languages? Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, I know she did.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
She understood Polish English for sure. Actually, when we landed
in Poland, there was a randomly ran into a couple
from Australia or New Zealand and they were asking us
if this was an unfamiliar accent, and I laughed and
I said no because in Vancouver. Half of New Zealand
lives in Vancouver and teaches skiing up at Whistler during
(26:16):
the winter. So she's actually very used to the accent.
And I think they may have been a little bit disappointed,
but she's it was multilingual.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I think, yeah, that's funny. Did she have this is
a dumb question, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Did you have different barks?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Like?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Could could she?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Would she speak in a different language or was it
always the same barks? So?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Same barks?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
However, she loved as we figured out unfixed male dogs.
And in Poland it's a lot rarer for people to
fix their pets than it is in North America. So
our dog like I think Poland was the best place
on earth for her. She loved it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Could talk to your generation of family members, now, what
would you say to them? And then the second part
of that, if you, I don't know how if you
want to answer that or not.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But the other part is, was.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
There anything that you uncovered that was just like jaw
dropping way like what or jaw dropping way peaceful like?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So? I mean, I knew my mother's grandparents, my mother's parents,
so I would have wanted to know their story, not
after the fact, but from them. And I realized that
(27:44):
my mom's parents, I mean, they were Holocaust survivors, and
I realized that that was not something that they ever
wanted to talk about. In fact, they dissuaded me from
ever asking questions or reading about it. But I wish
if I knew them when I was old, old right now,
that's something I would have wanted to know about my
(28:05):
dad's family. Uh yeah, maybe less nice things to say.
I would have wanted to know why they disowned him
for not coming back to Poland when he decided to
stay with my mother. But I also would have said,
you know you just to I would have actually thanked
them for keeping letters and for writing down their memories
(28:30):
because that is that's the way they are speaking to
me now and the way I can speak to the
next generations of the family. And as for what I uncovered,
So my grandfather's book, it's a it's it's a chronicle
(28:52):
of events. Trust me, it's very dry. He was an
engineer and it's written by an engineer when he tried
and he just wrote it for friends and family. And
it's actually in the archives at Stanford right now. That's
how I found it. So that was a shock. I
didn't that was a wow. I've actually been asked to
write forward for it, which is really cool. But I think,
(29:16):
I mean a lot of their stories were shocking, like
what because I didn't know any of this before I
read it, and it was all in Polish. So not
only am I translating, but I had to practice my
Polish and get my reading up to speed to be
good enough to be able to read these things, because
(29:38):
even ten years ago, I don't know that I would
have been able to get through these.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Were you were you raised speaking Polish or did you
learn that as an adult, because that takes forever to learn.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
I did. I was raised speaking Polish, but I didn't
know how to read till later I taught myself how
to read in Polish.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Actually, imagine like being and uncovering Polish letters and going, well,
I better teach myself some Polish to.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Be able to read that, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
No, yeah, I don't think I could have done that,
especially the ones written in cursive, because cursive is different, right, So.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, especially generational cursive too, Like Mike, nowadays, kids in
school aren't even taught cursive in the United States. No a, Yeah,
two kids who can't write cursive in their in their twenties,
we had to teach them just to sign their name.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
It's like, wow, no cursive taught. So yeah, pretty, that's
that's would be impossible for them. If I write anything
in cursive, they go, I can't read it. I'm like, oh,
come on, no really anyway, just a side note there.
So what do you think they say about today and
the moments we're living in now?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I mean, I'm I'm really hoping that so. Actually, Interestingly enough,
in Poland, through a lot of the protests, the people
who are coming out and protesting and getting carried away
physically by police quite often were my grandparents' age, and
I would really, really hope that my grandparents would be
(31:16):
among those protesters standing up and saying never again to
a whole lot of different things, but never again, because
they all lived through what is arguably, you know, one
of the worst moments in history, and I'm hoping that
(31:37):
they would be among the voices now speaking out to
say that, you know, we don't all have to agree
with each other, absolutely not, but some of what we're
seeing right now is scary and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Kind of the same question for you, what would you
have done back then?
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I hope I would have done what I'm doing now,
and I hope I would have oken up. You know,
I'd like to think that about myself. My grandfather ran
an underground press for a while in the nineteen thirties
in Poland, and I'm hoping I would be doing something
like that. And my dad's theater in nineteen fifties. In
(32:17):
nineteen fifties and sixties in Poland, they it was a
communist government, so very heavy handed. They had censors at
all of their plays, and in fact they had to
run the plays by the censors beforehand. But it was
a political theater, and I'm hoping that I would be
part of those kinds of groups and organizations and those voices.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Now, with that said, is that how you've always been?
Or did it taken covering all of this to become that?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Have you always been outspoken and challenging the status quo
and things like that, like go back to kindergarten?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
You?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Is that you?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Or were you more quiet and going to fit in
no matter what type and things like that?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Ah? Both, I was actually extremely shy. I would never
speak up earlier, and I actually wound up taking acting lessons.
One day I decided that I'd had enough and I
decided to take acting lessons to be able to speak up,
to learn how to feel more comfortable in this kind
(33:25):
of role. I did speak up a little bit here
and there, but not too much. And then there was
just a moment in university where I decided enough, I
can't keep being I can't keep being like this. And
that's when I started just pushing a lot harder for
things I wanted. That being said, it wasn't very political,
(33:49):
it wasn't life changing. It was mostly things about me
and for me and around me. But finding this book
or finding the material for this book, Sorry, and then
living in Poland and seeing with my just being part
of what happens if you don't speak up. That's when
(34:10):
that's when a lot of that changed.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, all right, well, you know it has been really
we have to go. We're short on time now, but
I'm so happy for you for the launch of your book. Congratulations.
And it's been delightful getting to know you and hearing
about your story and the stories of your family, and
I'm just I'm thankful that you're you're so open to
sharing everything, and I'm I'm excited to actually get I
(34:37):
already lent your book out to somebody.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I owned your.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Book out to to somebody already, So that's a good
sign for your book.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I think it'll make its way around and be quite popular.
So congratulations on your new book, and we all can't
wait to see your success and all the things that
that you do moving forward. So everybody listening, head on
over to Caroline's website. It's Caroline Topperman dot com. Her
book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow. Caroline, is
there anything that we missed that you wanted to say?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
I know, I mean, I think this was a really
great chat. Thank you for having me on your show.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, well, thank you for being here on the best
ever youth show. And to all you listeners out there.
We'll probably also do a video podcast with Caroline at
some point here in the short future, but in the meantime,
please enjoy this audio and as you do with all
of our guests, remember we're grassroots. We've got about almost
six million downloads now on the podcast, and so we
(35:37):
love you guys showing up for our guests, buying their books,
going to their website, telling somebody about them. I think
that's probably the most important thing, is that word of mouth.
We survive as authors through the word of mouth. Hey,
did you tell somebody to read the Change Guidebook or
the Success Guidebook or your Roots, Cast a Shadow or
Percolate or the Very Lucky ladybook or whatever book it is.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
That's how we thrive and get to.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Continue writing books and be signed to write more books
as authors. So that's my I'll come down off my
author horse here and Caroline, thank you for being with us,
and thank you everybody so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Have a great day.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Thank you
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Best Ever You show.
I'm your host Elizabeth Hamilton Garno, and I am here
with author Caroline Topperman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
How are you, Caroline, I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Good, Thank you. How are you right?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's so great to meet you, and congratulations on your
book launch today. Tell us all about your new book.
I'm excited for you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you. I know it's been a very overwhelming morning
with social media exploding a little bit, so it's been
a lot of fun. So my book, Your Roots cast
a shadow. I actually started writing this book probably in
twenty fourteen officially, so I guess that's ten years ago
(00:50):
when right after I first moved to Poland, and it
was started as a response to what I was seeing
there and how I was reconnecting with my family roots
and family that I didn't know, and family that I
didn't know a lot about.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And you are from where are you right now? You're
in Canada?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Right, yes, right now? I live in Toronto, Canada. But
I was born in Sweden. My parents became political refugees
in nineteen sixty eight ish nineteen sixty nine from Poland,
and so yeah, I was born in Sweden. And then
(01:33):
we moved to Canada after that shortly after that.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
That's an interesting past. I was reading your bio.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I can't pronounce.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Some of the things in your bio. So I'm like, Caroline,
can you read your bio for us?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I won't make you do that, of course, it's just
kind of funny, but you have such an interesting past
and interesting history to you. I'm excited to present this
book to the best ever you network. So the official
book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow, One Family
Search Across History for Belonging, Across History, for Belonging. It's
(02:07):
published by HCI. Are great friends at HCI, and it
is available officially today wherever books are sold. US authors
love it when you go to Amazon. So many of
the books are sold through Amazon these days. Giving us
reviews and getting us to that fifty review mark is
such a critical point in an author's life. And we
also always love our folks at Books a Million and.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I can't tell you how grateful I am for all
the bookstores here in Maine supporting me and my books
and things like that. So Carolyn, I'm sure you'll have
great fun around you locally as well. And then nationally
as the book grows. So congratulations on the launch and
it's a big day for you, and I'm thankful to
(02:52):
be part of it. I want to go back and
do actually read a little bit of your bio because.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
This is this your first book.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
This is my first when I say book book, so
with lots of writing in it. I have another book
that came out in twenty nineteen and it was it's
a book of visual writing prompts. So the very quickly
the story behind that one is I had moved back
(03:22):
to Canada from living in Europe and I was having
writer's block and I realized I was a very visual person,
and I decided that I needed photography and images to
help me write. And I actually use that a lot
of those techniques for writing this book, and so I
came up with this book, tell Me what You See?
(03:42):
And that was the other one.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, so is it safe to say you're a photographer?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I guess, although I don't really wait, I guess. You know,
most of my pictures are taken with my phone right now.
I do have nice fans cameras, but I just love
experimenting with my phone. So I don't know if that
makes me a photographer. Sure, I'll take that, let's call it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, So tell me about Okay, so tell me about
the move to Poland, like what prompted that, why did
you do that?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And so forth.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Give us a little bit more insight, and then that'll
kind of help unravel a book a little bit correct.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yes, yeah, absolutely. So I was living in Toronto, my
husband and I he was my fiance at the time,
but we moved to Vancouver, and Vancouver was a great city.
I don't want to say bad things about that city,
but it wasn't the city for me. So I in Vancouver,
(04:47):
I actually owned a pilate studio that I ran, and
I probably had, like I don't know, thirty million different
jobs that I did there, and so it was a
very it was a very exciting time in my life,
but it didn't feed my soul. That's how I like
to describe it, because it's such a sports town and
(05:08):
I love sports. Like I said, I owned a pilate studio,
but the arts were missing in my life. I trained
in dance and my mom was a painter. My dad,
even though he was an engineer, it was very visual work.
It was very artistic work. He was an artist in
(05:28):
his heart. He went in the theater, worked in the
theater for many years. So I just started looking around
for another place we could live. And probably about thirteen
years or ten ten eleven years in of living in Vancouver,
my husband and I went to visit Poland That's where
my family is from, and he was born there and
(05:50):
hadn't actually been back since he left, so it was
a few decades for him, and we fell in love
with the city. It was citing, sorry the city as
in Warsaw is where we went. It was exciting. There
were things happening. There was this atmosphere, this electric atmosphere.
(06:11):
Restaurants were opening on every corner, little shops. It was
really it was really great. And I was completely swept
up in that romantic idea of moving to Europe. And
I really wanted to live in Europe. I mean I
had a very different image of it of what how
I would be living than we did, you know, because TV.
(06:33):
But I thought, you know what, why don't we just
go for it, just try And so at this point
in time there, you know, twenty two thousand and nine
had already happened, so there had been that economic crash
and he needed a change too, he was getting burnt
(06:54):
out at his job. So I went and I thought,
you know, I have a right to a Polish passport.
Took me a year and a half to get that done,
and his was considerably easier since he was born there.
And then we sold almost everything we owned and we
packed everything up into eleven boxes that were placed on
(07:18):
a boat. That was a really crazy experience bringing it
to the yards where they transport things. And we bought
one way tickets to Warsaw, Poland, and we landed it
November twenty thirteen. November fourteenth, twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And now take me to how a book becomes of that.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So one day I started blogging quite a bit there.
I was working for some companies writing in English, and
I started, I thought, you know, I'll start a blog,
as one did in those days. And I met a
friend you're gonna laugh. So she's based out of Pittsburgh
and we were both taking a blogging course that was
(08:03):
based out of Australia.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And after that course ended, we stayed friends and we
would do occasional talks. And sometime twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
maybe I said, you know what, I want to write
a book because I was discovering all these things about
my family. I met family that I didn't know, and
I thought their stories are actually really interesting and I
(08:28):
think they're important for the world. And at the time,
the politics in Poland went from this very eager buzz
and excitement to very I would say, the best version
is like a socialist version of very very hard right politics.
(08:48):
So the mood changed drastically and I started seeing alarming headlines.
It wasn't quite what we're seeing in the world right
now yet, but the headlines were starting to be a
little bit too close for comfort of what I knew
that my family had experienced in the late nineteen thirties
(09:09):
nineteen forties in Europe, and so I thought, you know,
what best way I can speak out really is to
write a book. And that's how it started.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Tell me more about the title. Why the title?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
So the title was actually the title of a chapter.
And I would love to take full credit for this,
but my husband came up with that title and it
just worked for this and then it just worked, and
interestingly enough, I had a few people say, well, that's
a really intense title. Would you consider changing it? And
(09:46):
I said yes, and I knew that going into traditional publishing,
I might have to change it. So I was surprised
when HCI did not change it. They just added the subtitle.
But I realized that no matter where I went, what
I did, the roots, my family roots, they were always there.
They were always pulling me back. They were always a connection,
(10:10):
and they they never left. My father at one point
was disowned, which is why I am, which is why
I didn't know that family and why I had to
reconnect with that family. But somehow the reconnection was easy,
and I think it's because of the roots.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So tell tell the listeners what the reader, what the
reader can expect, and what the book is about.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So the book really spans my four and a half
years living in Poland, because as we said, I'm back
in Canada now, and it dives back and forth through history.
It follows my mother's side of the family. They were
they had to flee Poland, they were Jewish, had to
flee Poland, and they traveled west to sorry west east
(11:01):
to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and they survived the war there and
then they came back to rebuild their country. My father's side,
who actually survived the war, including my father in Afghanistan,
and they came back in nineteen forty four as well
to help rebuild the country. And then my mother's side,
which was basically kicked out of Poland in nineteen sixty
(11:27):
eight for being Jewish, and then my return. So it's
this back and forth of looking at what they went through,
looking at what I went through, and in by no
means did anything I go through was anything as serious
as what they went through. So just so we're clear,
I know that, but just sort of looking at how
(11:51):
migration affects us, what our responsibilities are I think is
human beings, and I try to make fun of my
experiences a little bit, just to keep it a little
bit lighter, so it's not this very heavy, heavy book,
I hope, And just to show us how important it
(12:14):
is to start those conversations about how important it is
to realize, you know, where we came from, who who are,
where our roots are, what are where are traditions come from,
and why they're important.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
If you're just joining us, we are having a book
discussion with author Caroline Topperman. Her website is Caroline Tapperman
dot com. I will put a link in the show
title and bio to your website. And her new book,
which came out today is called Your Roots Cast a Shadow.
It's available wherever books are sold. And I'd love to
(12:52):
know what your favorite part of the book is. Did
you have a yeah, tell us, do you have a
favorite part of the book?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
You know, I think that probably changes right now. So
it's a little bit sad. So my father actually passed
away this summer. She never got a chance to see
this in its full final format. So I think right
now probably my favorite parts are because I did a
(13:21):
lot of interviews and I don't want to make this
whole thing sound sad, but so my mother passed away
many years ago, and a lot of this was written
using my dad's memories and recordings, and so I think
right now my favorite parts are the parts that are
the most sentimental for me right now are the parts
(13:42):
where I just transcribed his memories as a kid.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's so special. I'm sorry about your dad.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You you know, my dad passed way in twenty eighteen,
so I know that feeling.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's sorry.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So yeah, lot of my books have my dad in
them too, so I'm I'm kind of happy to hear
that that your.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Dad's there with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Is there anything that major nervous or scared about writing
a book like this, like putting a book out into
the world.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes and no. So of course I am writing about family,
and I didn't want I really didn't set out to
insult anyone. You know. I didn't agree with some of
the choices family made, or some of their politics and
ideals from way back. So I tried to present that
(14:39):
in the best way I could, you know, giving my opinion,
but also trying to understand their motivations. One family member
is still alive, my mother's brother, and I actually just
changed his name. We had a very odd relationship, so
that on that level, that made me a little bit
(15:01):
nervous doing that. And I, you know, I have a sister.
I didn't want to drag her through this either, but
I wanted to pay tribute without pulling them in. Wasn't
really for example, it's not really her story what I was.
I was laughing when when I originally wrote this book,
(15:21):
the politics in Poland were very different, and there was
this part of me that kept laughing, hoping that the
book would be banned there just for publicity's sake. But
so I am a little bit afraid of that. I
think a little bit, But I I because most of
the family members are now deceased. I'm not really worried
(15:41):
about any family coming back at me. I think I
did my best. I hope I did my best. Sure
I but yeah, I so so yes and yes and no.
But I'm not really afraid of too much because most
of the politics I do talk about are in the past.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and what are you working on now?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
So this book, if you ask me that question, for
this book, there will be a whole lot more so.
While I was writing Your Roots Cast a Shadow, I
uncovered papers that my other grandfather had written during his
time in Afghanistan. And I have these amazing stories fairy
(16:31):
tales or folk tales and just his time because he
was building the road that joins Kabul and Jalalabad. And
I have my dad's memories as well. So I'm just
at the beginning of forming all of that. But for
that book, I actually started working with a gentleman who
is living in exile in Canada. He is a writer
(16:54):
scholar from Afghanistan, and he put me in touch with
an underground school for Afghan girls and he and I
teach them every week, and it is so dangerous that
they don't show their faces on the screen. So we do,
(17:15):
we we talk over the internet, but they don't. They
don't show me their faces. And I'm not allowed to
be in their group because my name obviously does not
sound Muslim at all. And there is a very real
threat from the Taliban for these girls and by extension,
(17:36):
for me. Yeah, so that one. But I'm finding it
so fascinating and their stories are so so incredible that
you know, I'm not stepping away from that.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Isn't that scary?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We live at a time where people can't get educated
without the threat.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, and they're being actively silenced. They're not allowed to
speak on the streets, right, crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, who knew you'd be such a historian?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Huh Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Not me?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, yeah, but is you?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I know, very unexpectedly, I think, because I was interested
in stories and I started recording them. And then my
dad's brother he found out about all of this, so
he was very excited. He passed away actually during COVID,
but he was very excited about it. And he's the
one who sent me all of these amazing letters and
(18:32):
books and things. So yeah, it all fell into my lap.
So thanks family.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
What part of this intimidates you?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
So I do a lot of translations. That is definitely
a challenge. I want to make sure that I'm translating
it properly and then just getting the facts right. I
think I do a lot of research to make sure
that it's right, but you know, things sometimes escape you,
and so I think it's that it's just making sure
that I'm properly mixing the facts with an interesting stories.
(19:06):
I don't want any of this to be dry either.
I laughed at you know, I read a lot of
dry books that were very informative while I was writing
this book, but that were not They were not not
the book that you would sit down and just read
for enjoyment. And so it's it's combining the two and
keeping it light enough without making it silly.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
But also we're boring.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, you know, it's it's it's making that happen.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
What was the motivation to actually like write the book
and bring the family stories to light and things like that?
What was going on there with.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I mean? Why why did you want to write the book?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah? So it was really because in Poland that the
government had changed. I was suddenly I found myself literally
going to protests probably once a week in Poland as
their government changed and took hold and changes started happening,
and women, for example, lost reproductive rights, and then they
(20:15):
started really pushing the whole family, the traditional family and
quotation marks, and I thought, no, we cannot go back
into that kind of world. And I remember one day
I participated in it was essentially Pride parade, but it
(20:36):
was organized through my husband's work. The float, it's a big,
pretty big thing there, but they call it, I'll say
this in Polish, they call it parada nochi, which is
direct translation. It's like equality parade. And I remember going
to the first one and we had a fairly big
float and we were flanked by police in full like
(21:01):
full gear, two rows of police and probably about thirty
of those like big police trucks behind us, and a
lot of neo Nazis fascists were standing and yelling at us,
and I thought, no, no, this, No, we cannot go
(21:23):
back to this world. You don't have to like everything
about everybody, that's fine, but we can't have this. And
Poland their politics, they were allowing all the neo Nazis
and other groups like that into the country. So Independence
Day in Poland is not the same as Independence Day
(21:46):
in the US and or or Canada Day over here.
It's actually celebrated on November eleventh, which is Remembrance Day
in Canada. But there it becomes this very ugly nationalist
(22:07):
holiday with companies telling their foreign workers to stay home.
There are flare guns that come out. The whole the
air is just filled with heavy smoke, very ugly, ugly
slogans are chanted and it's ugly. The whole thing is
(22:27):
very ugly. And I thought, I just I need to
say something, I need to do something. And it's great,
you know, I'm more than happy to participate in protests
and sign my name to petitions. But I thought, you know,
another voice with a book like this out in the
world that is speaking out against the ugly. That's what
we need.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So when did you move back?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
We moved back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And were you relieved to move back?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yes? And no. There were things I didn't like. The
government is different now in Poland, and I do miss
my life in Poland. I do like more of that
European life style. But we moved back from my husband's work,
and just to be closer to family as well. My
dad had moved into a retirement home, and I thought, yeah,
it's probably time to be just a little bit closer.
(23:17):
I think our siblings were already wanting both of us
to move back so we could help with parents.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, if you were gonna, if you were going to
move anywhere again, would you and where would it be?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I would? I don't know. I would love to live
in the South of France for a little bit. I
always laugh that I'd like to live in the South
of France and make cheese. I don't know why, but yeah,
I think I get antsy. I like to I like
to move around.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
This would be hard to do.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Like, I'm a mom of four sons and now they're
in their twenty so now we could even now we
probably couldn't go because the roots are so tied and
they're back here and their families are here and things
like that.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I don't know how that would work.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Do you do you have children, family members near you
where you live things like that, or are you just
sort of portable and can go where you want to go?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
So no kids? I think we are portable. My husband
less so now because of his parents they're here, but
because the family's I mean his as well. But my
family was so fragmented after the war, in the Second
World War. You know, my family, my mother's side, most
(24:30):
of them are actually in Germany right now. My dad
has one or two people laughter, Like the closest family
is in Poland, in Warsaw. There's a little bit of
family in South Africa, actually, and that is kind of
it for me. There's some there are there is family
(24:51):
in in the US, but I don't know them very well.
They came much earlier to North America, so I like
I'm fairly portable. Of course, I have a wonderful nieces
and nephews here in Canada that I would always want
to keep in touch with. But you know, there's there
(25:12):
are planes, there are there are times to travel.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What about pets. Do you have pets?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So actually we didn't right now, No, because our little
Cairn terrier, Pixie, who features prominently in the book, and
she's on the very first page. She she passed away
after we moved back to Canada. But she actually we
got her when we lived in Vancouver and she just
traveled with us. She was a very portable, very portable
(25:37):
little dog in Yeah, she lived in Poland with us,
very happily. So languages did the dog speak? Yeah, don't
you speak three languages? Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, I know she did.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
She understood Polish English for sure. Actually, when we landed
in Poland, there was a randomly ran into a couple
from Australia or New Zealand and they were asking us
if this was an unfamiliar accent, and I laughed and
I said no because in Vancouver. Half of New Zealand
lives in Vancouver and teaches skiing up at Whistler during
(26:16):
the winter. So she's actually very used to the accent.
And I think they may have been a little bit disappointed,
but she's it was multilingual.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I think, yeah, that's funny. Did she have this is
a dumb question, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Did you have different barks?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Like?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Could could she?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Would she speak in a different language or was it
always the same barks? So?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Same barks?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
However, she loved as we figured out unfixed male dogs.
And in Poland it's a lot rarer for people to
fix their pets than it is in North America. So
our dog like I think Poland was the best place
on earth for her. She loved it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Could talk to your generation of family members, now, what
would you say to them? And then the second part
of that, if you, I don't know how if you
want to answer that or not.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But the other part is, was.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
There anything that you uncovered that was just like jaw
dropping way like what or jaw dropping way peaceful like?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So? I mean, I knew my mother's grandparents, my mother's parents,
so I would have wanted to know their story, not
after the fact, but from them. And I realized that
(27:44):
my mom's parents, I mean, they were Holocaust survivors, and
I realized that that was not something that they ever
wanted to talk about. In fact, they dissuaded me from
ever asking questions or reading about it. But I wish
if I knew them when I was old, old right now,
that's something I would have wanted to know about my
(28:05):
dad's family. Uh yeah, maybe less nice things to say.
I would have wanted to know why they disowned him
for not coming back to Poland when he decided to
stay with my mother. But I also would have said,
you know you just to I would have actually thanked
them for keeping letters and for writing down their memories
(28:30):
because that is that's the way they are speaking to
me now and the way I can speak to the
next generations of the family. And as for what I uncovered,
So my grandfather's book, it's a it's it's a chronicle
(28:52):
of events. Trust me, it's very dry. He was an
engineer and it's written by an engineer when he tried
and he just wrote it for friends and family. And
it's actually in the archives at Stanford right now. That's
how I found it. So that was a shock. I
didn't that was a wow. I've actually been asked to
write forward for it, which is really cool. But I think,
(29:16):
I mean a lot of their stories were shocking, like
what because I didn't know any of this before I
read it, and it was all in Polish. So not
only am I translating, but I had to practice my
Polish and get my reading up to speed to be
good enough to be able to read these things, because
(29:38):
even ten years ago, I don't know that I would
have been able to get through these.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Were you were you raised speaking Polish or did you
learn that as an adult, because that takes forever to learn.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
I did. I was raised speaking Polish, but I didn't
know how to read till later I taught myself how
to read in Polish.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Actually, imagine like being and uncovering Polish letters and going, well,
I better teach myself some Polish to.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Be able to read that, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
No, yeah, I don't think I could have done that,
especially the ones written in cursive, because cursive is different, right, So.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, especially generational cursive too, Like Mike, nowadays, kids in
school aren't even taught cursive in the United States. No a, Yeah,
two kids who can't write cursive in their in their twenties,
we had to teach them just to sign their name.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
It's like, wow, no cursive taught. So yeah, pretty, that's
that's would be impossible for them. If I write anything
in cursive, they go, I can't read it. I'm like, oh,
come on, no really anyway, just a side note there.
So what do you think they say about today and
the moments we're living in now?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I mean, I'm I'm really hoping that so. Actually, Interestingly enough,
in Poland, through a lot of the protests, the people
who are coming out and protesting and getting carried away
physically by police quite often were my grandparents' age, and
I would really, really hope that my grandparents would be
(31:16):
among those protesters standing up and saying never again to
a whole lot of different things, but never again, because
they all lived through what is arguably, you know, one
of the worst moments in history, and I'm hoping that
(31:37):
they would be among the voices now speaking out to
say that, you know, we don't all have to agree
with each other, absolutely not, but some of what we're
seeing right now is scary and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Kind of the same question for you, what would you
have done back then?
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I hope I would have done what I'm doing now,
and I hope I would have oken up. You know,
I'd like to think that about myself. My grandfather ran
an underground press for a while in the nineteen thirties
in Poland, and I'm hoping I would be doing something
like that. And my dad's theater in nineteen fifties. In
(32:17):
nineteen fifties and sixties in Poland, they it was a
communist government, so very heavy handed. They had censors at
all of their plays, and in fact they had to
run the plays by the censors beforehand. But it was
a political theater, and I'm hoping that I would be
part of those kinds of groups and organizations and those voices.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Now, with that said, is that how you've always been?
Or did it taken covering all of this to become that?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Have you always been outspoken and challenging the status quo
and things like that, like go back to kindergarten?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
You?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Is that you?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Or were you more quiet and going to fit in
no matter what type and things like that?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Ah? Both, I was actually extremely shy. I would never
speak up earlier, and I actually wound up taking acting lessons.
One day I decided that I'd had enough and I
decided to take acting lessons to be able to speak up,
to learn how to feel more comfortable in this kind
(33:25):
of role. I did speak up a little bit here
and there, but not too much. And then there was
just a moment in university where I decided enough, I
can't keep being I can't keep being like this. And
that's when I started just pushing a lot harder for
things I wanted. That being said, it wasn't very political,
(33:49):
it wasn't life changing. It was mostly things about me
and for me and around me. But finding this book
or finding the material for this book, Sorry, and then
living in Poland and seeing with my just being part
of what happens if you don't speak up. That's when
(34:10):
that's when a lot of that changed.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, all right, well, you know it has been really
we have to go. We're short on time now, but
I'm so happy for you for the launch of your book. Congratulations.
And it's been delightful getting to know you and hearing
about your story and the stories of your family, and
I'm just I'm thankful that you're you're so open to
sharing everything, and I'm I'm excited to actually get I
(34:37):
already lent your book out to somebody.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I owned your.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Book out to to somebody already, So that's a good
sign for your book.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I think it'll make its way around and be quite popular.
So congratulations on your new book, and we all can't
wait to see your success and all the things that
that you do moving forward. So everybody listening, head on
over to Caroline's website. It's Caroline Topperman dot com. Her
book is called Your Roots, Cast a Shadow. Caroline, is
there anything that we missed that you wanted to say?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
I know, I mean, I think this was a really
great chat. Thank you for having me on your show.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, well, thank you for being here on the best
ever youth show. And to all you listeners out there.
We'll probably also do a video podcast with Caroline at
some point here in the short future, but in the meantime,
please enjoy this audio and as you do with all
of our guests, remember we're grassroots. We've got about almost
six million downloads now on the podcast, and so we
(35:37):
love you guys showing up for our guests, buying their books,
going to their website, telling somebody about them. I think
that's probably the most important thing, is that word of mouth.
We survive as authors through the word of mouth. Hey,
did you tell somebody to read the Change Guidebook or
the Success Guidebook or your Roots, Cast a Shadow or
Percolate or the Very Lucky ladybook or whatever book it is.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
That's how we thrive and get to.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Continue writing books and be signed to write more books
as authors. So that's my I'll come down off my
author horse here and Caroline, thank you for being with us,
and thank you everybody so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Have a great day.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Thank you
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