I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Poland. It was the country my parents fled, the place whose oppressive regime and limited options drove them to immigrate to the United States before I was born. Poland was the wreck my family had swerved to avoid, the baseline used to discredit my teenage dramas (“You could have been born in Poland! Then you would have NO designer jeans!”). It was like an estranged relative, both conspicuously absent and undeniably present in my family.
