In pursuit of a better life, Ramon Martinez migrated to the U.S. from Cañadas de Obregon, Jalisco when he was only 15 years old. He went from living on a small ranch, where everyone knew each other and he worked on a farm with his father, to abandoning that life in pursuit of the American Dream. Ramon remembers life in ... Read More »
Geert Dijkstra, born on November 16, 1911, spent his early years living in the Dutch countryside just outside Leeuwarden, a city in the province of Friesland. As a boy, Geert enjoyed a fairytale-like Dutch childhood, playing rugby, fishing in the dykes near his home, and frog-hunting in local meadows and bogs. At the age of 18, with his education completed, ... Read More »
People think when you reach the age of 30, you should have built up your own business, in order to have a position in society, to have the response from others you want. But the age of 40 can be the best age in life. Sometimes having high pay, even though you are losing control of health, is all for ... Read More »
My uncle is a dreamer. He came to the U.S. for his education and had a hope to settle in the U.S. He came from Hong Kong, a world city in China. It’s really crowded and extremely different from the U.S. He first came to the U.S. in 2001, at the age of the beginning of his undergraduate school. He ... Read More »
When the idea of a personal artistic experience comes to mind, the first thing that jumped in my mind is Miao Sun. He was born in April 1972 in North China and came to America in 2015. His last name goes by his father, who worked in a reservoir, so his first name has a meaning of water in Chinese. ... Read More »
Where in Ireland was Mary from? Having been there what did you think of the town? How does it compare to America? Mary was born in 1914 and was from a small town in Ireland called Leitrim. She was the oldest of 10 children in an extremely poor family who made their income by rolling and selling peat bog. Her ... Read More »
My father’s father was middle class and from a small village in India. His parents died in a fatal accident, and he was brought up as an only child by relatives. Through hard work and labor, he managed to find a wife and support his only child, my father. The drive and work ethic of my grandfather was passed down ... Read More »
Gunnar Rebne immigrated to the United States from Stor-Elvdal, Norway, a small town of nearly 1,000 where most parents started to teach their children to ski at the age of five. Rebne was a young man who wanted to see what the American Dream was all about, so at the age of 20 he decided to take a boat to ... Read More »
By 1920, almost two million Italians immigrated to the United States in search of the American Dream. My great-grandfather, Cecil and his family were five of the thousands coming from Southern Italy. To learn more about my family’s introduction to America, I went to my grandma, Tomasina Flora. She is Cecil’s oldest daughter and has always enjoyed telling all of ... Read More »
My father started his life in a small town in Mexico named San Joaquin. It was there where he grew up with his 6 brothers and 5 sisters, everyone different from the last. It was a poor town where he and his family lived. There were no paved roads, everything was just mud, dirt or rocks. There was trash everywhere, ... Read More »