My mother (her twin sister and her older sister) are Brazilian and grew up in Sao Paulo. Their mother was Portuguese Brazilian; their father's grandparents were plantation owners in Georgia, . That is, under General Sherman plowed their plantation under. My father grew up skittering around the streets of Washington Heights, New York -- his mother was second-generation Hungarian (peasant) and his father was an immigrant from eastern Slowakia (or, the Austro-Hungarian empire)-- he came straight from the trenches to a boat that would take him far away, to Ellis Island.