She worked two jobs to keep us fed, clothed and with a place to live . Sanjuanita worked in the fields in the morning and took the night shift at Hunt’s Wesson Foods a tomato canning company…” Mom immigrated first to McAllen, Texas from Estación Aldamas Nuevo Leon, Mexico, where she worked as a maid. Due to poverty and your ... Read More »
Rebecca is an up-and-coming Chinese American author. Within three months of its publication, Rebecca’s first book Green Apple Red Book: A Trial and Errors: A Memoir of a Chinese-American has already won three awards at New York, San Francisco and Hollywood book festivals. This narrative non-fiction uses the author’s real-life experience to put the American and Chinese systems of values ... Read More »
From Hans Georg Mülli to George Mealy: Cabinetmaker to Computer Programmer In the year 1849, in the village of Schöfflisdorf, in the canton of Zürich, in Switzerland, Hans Georg Mülli was living with his wife, Anna, and three children—Heinrich, Johann Jakob, and Anna. He was a cabinetmaker. In that year he went to Zürich to apply for a passport for ... Read More »
When you’re a seven-year old girl whose knowledge of the English language consists of “hello,” “thank you,” and “peach,” you don’t really know how to react when your parents tell you that you are moving to America for one year. Perhaps it was because you didn’t need to know anything about America, living in a small city in Tokyo. Your ... Read More »
He hopped from one heat vent to another, over the ones that lay outside the school buildings. It was below zero degrees Celsius, and he had only worn a down jacket and jeans. He was freezing and needed to stay warm. Sam Chou was starting his second semester at the University of Wisconsin in the year of 1990. He ... Read More »
The first of five stories from our recent storytelling salon, “Foreign Correspondents: Immigrant Odysseys” is now online. Watch Alfred Kuhn tell his story, “Escape from Nazi Germany to a Landing on the Moon”: Read More »
In the steerage the family slept on a straw-covered plank bunk with barely enough room for four – let alone five. After much seasickness all of Guri’s children suffered from measles and her youngest son died. < Click Here to Listen to the Audio Version of the Story, as Read by Julie Buckley, the Great-Great Granddaughter of Guri. The greatest ... Read More »
Click Here to Listen to Audio Version – Written by Charles Drekmeier and Voiced by Peter Drekmeier, Former Mayor of Palo Alto. Grandpa Henry Drekmeier spent happy hours skating on the frozen estuaries of the Rhein near Bremerhaven where he was born. I suspect this may have been in the late 1860’s since he fathered the first of his five ... Read More »
Click here to listen to story as read by Francis’ great-granddaughter, Holly Brady, a resident of Palo Alto. Francis Squair (seated with his 3 brothers and 2 sisters) was my great-grandfather. He was born in the Scottish Highlands just east of Loch Ness in 1848. After studying pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh, he and his brothers immigrated to Chicago ... Read More »
Chike Nwoffiah was one of 8 featured storytellers at the Media Center’s salon called “Foreign Correspondents: Immigrant Odysseys.” His story, recorded in this 10 minute video, is “Reflections of a Nigerian American: A Third Identity.” Chike is an adjunct professor at Menlo College, director of plays and films, and founder of the Oriki Theater in Mountain View. Read More »