The Grandma Stazi Project: A Multimedia Documentary (Patreon)

I've hinted at and referred to this project many times. A formal announcement and synopsis has been long overdue.

Over the past year, I have been researching my ancestry above and beyond the norms of joining Ancestry.com. I've been teaching myself Czech, pouring over 19th and early 20th Century newspapers, and slowly making my way through old Central European parish records, which are written in a basically obsolete alphabet. It's been the largest research project of my life, so I've decided to do the smart thing, and turn that research into writing.

Last fall, I wrote for The Statesman, Stony Brook University's undergraduate newspaper, an article about a visit to Battery Park changed my relationship to my family history. In that piece, I shared the history of my second great-grandmother Anastazie Urbanová, who at the age of 16 immigrated to America without her family. She was then joined in Cleveland by five of her twelve siblings, married another Czech immigrant, had five children and fostered two orphaned nieces while running a grocery store on the outskirts of Cleveland.

That article won an award for the Stony Brook Media Council for Best Original Work. I'm immensely proud of it, but that piece was the tip of the iceberg. So I followed it up with this installment of An American's Guide to Czech Movies, where I talked about Anastazie's adventures as a representative of Czech-American athletes in New York and Prague. It's a fun piece, entirely sourced from old Czech-language newspapers and The New York Times' archives, and I'm happy about it.

But even that doesn't begin to capture the breadth of this project. While Grandma Stazi was never famous -- she was born a farmer's daughter in a small Slavic country and she died a grocer in the Industrial American Midwest -- she lived a massive life, and witnessed the transformation of the world. Two weeks after Anastazie was born, Austria-Hungary was ratified, and took control of her homeland. Months before her death, Berlin fell to Allied forces. Empires fell and evolved in her time. Immigration to America morphed drastically. The Cuyahoga River was set aflame by Rockefeller's oil not two miles from Anastazie's house. And she witnessed all of it.

I can't capture Anastazie's entire world and little society in just one or two articles and blog posts. Nor can her story be confined to prose -- it's far too transatlantic for that. I'm going to tell Stazi's story through a collection of essays and videos. Maybe a full-blown film and book at some point. Time will tell, as will resources: I absolutely need money for filming equipment and travel expenses, and any Patreon support you can give me will bring me closer to this goal. This project is the story of a life, and it deserves to capture that life in its entirety.

Four years ago, I came out as transgender, left my home state, and slowly shed my birth family. Since then, I've gained a new family, but the loss of a family never leaves you. So Anastazie Urbanová's story has never moving me. She left family behind, and she found it again, and lived a full and amazing life on two continents, without losing sight of her past or her future.

I can't wait to share Grandma Stazi's story with you.