No, I don't speak Persian at all. I just have one Iranian friend who has taught me to swear. And I'm good at using Google Translate. And some other web sites.
As though, the people they were talking about were fictional - part of a story. Or people that he wasn't connected to. Rather than being HIS actual ancestors.
But he is saying that something happened between his grandparents' generation and his parents' generation, that meant there was no land ownership any more.
So his grandparents owned land, and his parents didn't, and he doesn't understand why.
And he's saying that "the sense of worth that land ownership brings" also died out, so that his grandparents had it and his parents didn't.
So when the old people told him about all the land that his family used to have, he didn't respond as if it were real - as if it were really his grandparents and great grandparents who had the land. He responded as if it were all just a fictional story.
He didn't get emotionally involved in the story the way people expected him to. That's what the whole paragraph is saying.
He remembers his own childhood, when the land was all owned by white people, so he can't imagine it being owned by black people.
And that's why he feels dissociated from the stories.
The way he's talking suggests that later in the book, we will learn what happened - how the white people came to own land that had previously belonged to black people.
The land wasn't always farm land. Maybe there were wild grasses growing there, or maybe it was swampy, or whatever. The black people worked hard to turn it into good farm land, so they could grow their cotton, (or whatever else they grew there).
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room topic changed to English Language Learners: A room where our astute members sardonically vivisect English sentences, discuss linguistics and talk about anything they want. But remember this is a public room: do not give out personal contact information here. (no tags)
