He answered my questions while eating his favorite Taiwanese Boroh bread from his favorite Taiwanese bakery. The story started at his age of 30. At the age of 30, my dad’s name was still Jyhgwo Chang, a traditional Taiwanese name. After he became a U.S. citizen, he added a middle name Benson and change his name to Jyhgwo Benson ... Read More »
My mother lived in Kerala, a region in South India. She talked about the luscious green trees and plants surrounding her house. The bumpy roads and noisy auto rickshaws passed by at night. She said, “I lived a normal life. I come from a middle-class family, which in India is just enough to live well.” She described her family ... Read More »
Where were you born, what was life like in your home country? ¨I was born in Usulutan, El Salvador, in my home we were very happy, with economic limitations but very happy, outside my house we face a social reality with a shortage of work, exaggeratedly high prices in terms of food, transportation, basic services, etc. We also lived ... Read More »
I am a plumber, and I am 54 years old, and I am born and raised in Guanajuato, Mexico. Why did you come to America? Interviewee: I came to America to give my wife and daughters better opportunities in life, I was determined to give them a life I did not have as ... Read More »
I began the interview by asking my mother something I have asked about many times before – about her life in El Salvador. “Well I grew up very poor, my family did not have much. However we were happy, what we had made us happy, and even though we lived in poverty we ... Read More »
“Did you ever wonder about living anywhere else outside your hometown?” I innocently asked my father. “Yes” he replied. A middle-class family would often visit his neighborhood every six months and they arrived in a pick-up truck. They came from San Antonio, Morelos Chihuahua located in the Western Sierra Madre. This family had a farm and my father always wanted ... Read More »
The first person who came to mind when this assignment was presented was my eldest Aunt on my mother’s side, “Betty.” Out of her 5 siblings she was the only one who was not born in America and wasn’t a citizen until her adult life. To protect anonymity, all names have been changed. She and I have never had ... Read More »
My mother is Amy Li (name changed), who grows up in China. She has immigrated to the United States in 1996 and started her new life in Boston. This is her American story. She told me that the experience of immigration led her to see the wider world and meet more kind people. In ... Read More »
We sat across from each other with some coffee and some appetizers. It was noon, I could tell she was nervous to speak about her life mostly since I had mentioned that I would be asking her about her traumatic experience. I let her know that if she was more comfortable doing this interview in Spanish we could. Most ... Read More »
I interviewed my step-grandfather, Juan Herrera. He came into my family’s life in the mid-90s by marrying my biological grandmother on my mother’s side; however, his journey before joining my family is quite inspiring. He came to the United States in the 1980s as an undocumented immigrant to create a better life for himself and escape the poverty he was ... Read More »