This story is based on an interview and the real experiences of Diana Modica, who immigrated to Johnson City, Tennessee for her father’s job after living all around France and Italy for 17 years. The woman next to me kept knitting her blue-green sweater as I sat there in turmoil. The repetitive sound of her needles clacking grounded me as ... Read More »
My mom is only technically an immigrant. A newborn in 1962, her family moved to Upstate New York when she was only seven months old. During the interview with my mom, I asked her if she ever wanted to go back to the Philippines. I already knew the answer. The real story starts with my grandmother. When she was a ... Read More »
My father has always been an active man, always eager to learn something new and prepared for whatever was to come. Rogelio Sotelo was born on July 27, 1973 in the town of Jamay, Jalisco, into a middle class family of five girls and four boys. As a young child, through elementary school, he would wake up every morning and ... Read More »
Arturo Gonzalez was born in 2001, in Michoacan, Mexico. Growing up, he did not have many family members to help raise him. All he had was his mother and father, both living in separate homes far from each other. The only other family that he had previously immigrated to America and lived in California. The only member of his family ... Read More »
The story of Veronica Rodriguez and her immigration to the U.S. starts in Abatzingan, Mexico. Veronica described her childhood saying “it was kinda rough, we had many hard times.” She lived in a small house with her mother, father, three sisters and four brothers. Veronica came from generations of poverty-stricken families and told of how hard her father worked to ... Read More »
Filling the air of the living room with the unique smell of tobacco, James Larkin smokes his pipe as he reads the newspaper. His son-in-law, James Connors, asks him, “Want a whiskey Pops?” to which James Larkin nods in the affirmative. Wafting in from the kitchen is the smell of raisin bread, freshly baked by his daughter. This is 1940s ... Read More »
It was a sunny afternoon in Los Feliz, California when my great-grandfather Avram Yitzhak Lehrer, fondly called “Opi” by his children and grandchildren, sat in his garage smoothing out the figures of his latest sculpture, “L’dor Vador,” meaning from generation to generation. In the sculpture, 19 figures stand with their arms around each other, radiating from a Torah (the Jewish ... Read More »
“Honk!” The foghorns call fades as it slips through the ears, and feet clamber unsteadily up the swaying dock towards the ship waiting beyond. The weak wood, barely held together through the metal spikes impaling them, cries out as it’s stressed. The salty breeze stings the eyes and rips through the sails, whipping the air. The breath hitches in the ... Read More »
Taiwan, an island whose population is less than that of Shanghai, is the island where I grew up. I lived in the capital, Taipei, with my mom, father, and with my younger and older sisters. Life was enjoyable; my mom worked in the government and my father was a teacher, so financial issues were the least of my problems. I ... Read More »
On June 4th, 1989, Chinese troops stormed through Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing students protesting for democracy. An estimated 10,000 civilians died when the Chinese government used violent repression in response to peaceful protest. The Chinese government, however, still denies that this event ever happened, and an entire generation of Chinese children lives unaware of this incident known as the ... Read More »