Mia’s American World: From Nebraska Immigrant to California Activist, 1949–1970

The Mia, Jan, Regina, and Andrew Truskier family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1949, sponsored by Jan’s uncle and aunt, Joseph and Heddi Lotto, who had come to the US decades earlier. Mia worked as a designer of shop windows and interiors for the Hovland-Swanson department store, and began to draw notice for her innovative paper sculptures and puppets. Peter was born in 1951. Jan obtained his architecture license and began his career. After five years they moved to Long Beach, California where Mia worked as an engineer’s assistant, and finished her college degree. Jan and a partner had an architecture firm. As homeowners and middle-class professionals with two children, the Truskiers fit the stereotypical suburbanite image of the postwar American family. Untypically for suburbanites they became active in the movements for civil rights, fair housing, against the War in Vietnam, and for refugee rights, transforming from passive progressives to more engaged activists.