Simple stories and the complex American dream

KENT — Storyteller Carol Birch explained to a rapt audience at Town Hall on Sunday evening, Sept. 18, that she has considered taking on many names. Birch is the surname she grew up with and that she has kept through two marriages, but it is also a last name her father invented. 

In “Searching for the American Dream: Stories of Immigrants,” hosted by the Kent Historical Society, Birch took to the stage by herself. She is a professional storyteller, which may sound slightly magical and fable-like, and it is, but Birch’s long, award-winning career as an author and recording artist has taken her to Good Morning, America, Nightline and the pages of The New York Times. She meditates on a theme effortlessly and crafts character in a instant, shifting between conversations from the past and her own narration in an artful blend without hesitation. 

Birch’s first story on immigration was about herself. She’s an American who was born in America, and that fact is key. 

“My father wanted to be an American. His parents came from Poland and the most important thing to him was that they not talk ‘foreign’ around us.” 

Birch described a incident not from her own childhood, but from that of her older brother — when a teacher asked each student in the class to say where his or her family was from. Birch’s brother knew that he could only say, “America.” 

“‘You’re not an Indian’ the teacher scolded him. ‘You go home and find out what you are,’” Birch recalled. Their father’s response that night was, “You tell the teacher you’re an American, and if you say anything else you’re going to get beaten when you get home.”

As an adult, Birch considered changing her name when she began her career as a storyteller. 

Her first husband was Norwegian and she loved his last name.

“Norwegians are tall and thin and beautiful. Maybe through marriage I was going to be tall and thin and beautiful!” she beamed, looking up. The audience laughed. 

But when her first marriage ended, she considered ditching Birch for her original Polish name. 

“When my father was a young man trying to find work, he changed our name from Buczkowski to Birch.” She asked her mother about taking back the Polish name, and she was met with her mother’s “characteristic” alarm: “You’ll kill your father!”

Birch wasn’t so sure it would have killed him. When her father was in a senior citizens group, he was part of a quiz team that appeared on the local cable channel, on a program resembling Trivial Pursuit. In a round where he hit the buzzer and responded correctly to a question with, “Piotrowski” the show’s young female emcee “sashayed over to him. She said, ‘Now Mr. Birch, you must be just a little bit Polish to know that answer.’ And my father,” Birch said, “who wouldn’t even cook cabbage in our house, who denied being Polish in so many ways, looked at that girl and said, ‘Honey, I’m all Polish!’”