A Ticket To Opportunity
Alicia Alvarez-Mon found the sense of freedom she was looking for as she gazed over the roofs of Paris from her small attic room. She had just started her first […]
Tag: Immigrant Story
When the War Comes
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, everything changed for Natalia Dychko. As a child in Kyiv, she had never imagined that her country, Ukraine, would not always
The Immigrant Story Live Podcast
Introducing, The Immigrant Story Live, our new series that brings you voices from the stage. In 2019, the Immigrant Story began hosting live storytelling events
History Keeps People Thinking
Jack Boas counts his career as historian as beginning at conception. “Or maybe even before,” he suggests. “I could not avoid it, as a child of
A Rebellion Against Silence
Sindy Avila-Gutierrez looks back undaunted on her life as an undocumented immigrant. “I’ve always been a rebel in that way,” she says. “You tell me
Struggling to Stay in the U.S. of A.
Sometimes persistence pays off–especially when wending one’s way through the morass of the U.S. immigration system. Zhou Fang learned this lesson first-hand
East-West Encounters
The first time Susan Chan saw snow was also the first time she spent a winter in the United States, away from her childhood home in Hong Kong.
Choosing the Road Less Traveled
From the start, Barbie Wu was determined to forge her own path. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1986, she comes from a family of scientists.
Art and Life: Trusting the Process
Mauricio Villarreal, co-founder of the design firm PLACE, takes a pragmatic approach to daily existence. “Life just happens,” he reasons
A Lifetime of Listening
One of Margaret Stewart Clark’s earliest memories is of sitting, at age two or three, with her sister, who was blind, as the older girl taught Clark how to
To Bear Witness: Even in Chaos
Teenagers when they met and fell in love, Abdullah and Hatidza did not let war stop them. After Abdullah joined the Bosnian army to fight for his country,
Finding Identity in Resilience
Looking back on the many changes in her life, Sara Houranpay likes to quote her father’s advice: “When life throws you down, you get up,
Past Passions, New Horizons
For Ningshu Fang, the lessons that her grandmother taught her as a child are an invaluable part of who she has been, and who she has become. “She was a […]
Using Identity to Live Out Loud
In elementary school Osvaldo Gonzalez felt sure that he was destined to be an outsider. “I felt like it was not OK to be me,” he remembers. “I would sit […]
Spreading Love Through Coffee
When Hector Mejia Zamora lost his father, he made a bargain with God. “I was only fourteen,” he says, “But I told God that if he gave me my dad […]