I raise my shaking hand and unwillingly press my cold finger tip against the metal trigger and hear a faint bell inside. I then hear footsteps in the distance approaching the door and the handle begins to turn. The door squeaks open and I am greeted by a semi familiar face, blissfully saying “Hi!” It’s Sizdah Bedar, Nature’s Day, but ... Read More »
My Mother was born in Shanghai, China. Her childhood was not a particularly good one, at least by American standards, but in China children were taught to be modest and not complain about what they got. My mother lived in a small house with several siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Their house was part of a complex, with multiple other ... Read More »
While growing up in Turkey, the obvious pressing issue concerning Haluk Konuk was that he was not born into a socioeconomically well-off family. He always had to move around with his mother and older sister to live with various other family members in Istanbul. Basic necessities were hard to come by as he even recalled that “eating meat was like ... Read More »
Prologue: Battle of Caporetto, Italian military disaster during World War I in which Italian troops retreated before an Austro-German offensive on the Isonzo front in northeastern Italy, where the Italian and Austrian forces had been stalemated for two and a half years. October 1917 saw the Italian army’s disastrous defeat at Caporetto and its eventual retreat into the distant Piave ... Read More »
Jacqui can still remember when her brother Mark came home one day in June 1976 and told her parents that South Africa had no future and that the family should leave together. Jacqui was 8 at the time, but Mark was ten years older and had recently entered into the police force due to South Africa’s compulsory military service. It ... Read More »
Bombs falling from the sky, the walls and ceiling of the bunker shudder and rain dust onto the cowering citizens that line the floor. My grandmother is one of these people, bundled in a mass of shawls and elbows of her mother. For privacy reasons, my grandmother will be known as Jane for this retelling. Jane, my grandmother on my ... Read More »
Cham Yean grew up in a poor family in the small country of Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s. During this time, Cambodia was in the midst of a civil war, and bombs would drop frequently, without warning, and kill many people. Because of this, Cham had to live her daily life amidst the fear of whether she would make ... Read More »
My father has always loved puzzles, logic, and mathematics, winning many competitions in chess, math, and physics. Stuart Fiske was born in 1964. Because his father was both a lawyer and a farmer he grew up between an apartment in Montreal, Canada, where he went to school, and a beef farm in Ontario. An only son with 4 sisters, he ... Read More »
I was ten years old carrying a broken heart and tears that cover my eyes when I emigrated to the United States of America from El Salvador with the innocence feeling of only wanting to be reunited with my mother and father. At the instance, I was not chasing the American Dream. All I wanted was to be able to ... Read More »
My mother and her sister were born into a middle class family in Taichung, Taiwan. There, they lived a comfortable life, though one without many luxuries, like going on vacation or attending private school. She and her family believed that in order for her to get a well paying job, she needed a master’s degree from a university in America. ... Read More »