To Bear Witness: Closure
On a journey to come to terms with their losses, a group of Holocaust survivors from Portland, OR, travel together to six of the locations where concentration camps
Category: Portland
A Different Kind of Inner Calling
Balamurali Balu, who goes by Bala, immigrated to the United States from Southern India. He completed his PhD at Georgia Tech.
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
I Create So It Cannot Be Erased
Portland artist Roberta Wong is the daughter and granddaughter of Chinese immigrants. She grew up partly in Chinatown, itself a product of segregation.
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
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 […]
The Art of Learning New Things
In Japan, Palmarin Pimentel Merges has taken to going for walks around Tokyo, and creating patterns for her art work from things she sees.
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 […]
I was a child of revolution
Sara Houranpay describes herself as a child of the revolution. She grew up during the Iranian Revolution. Her family fled to the United States,