Preeti's Story

My uncle was given an opportunity to teach Mathematics at a local college in NYC in the 70s. He was one of 14 children in his family from Bihar, India. He built a life in Queens and soon after was able to bring my father to the states so he can find opportunities for work. My mother soon came to the states after they got married. The cultural struggle was real. They found it hard to adjust beyond the language differences. I was born in Ny and raised in the states... but will never forget what my parents endured to live a stable life in the US.

Brian's Story

I moved back and forth between Mexico and the US several times. I have officially been in the states since I was 15. Now it’s been more than half of my life in a foreign country. Sometimes I can’t quite understand where I am from “ni de aqui ni de alla.” As I grow older I realize that my story and who I am is a nice combination of the two and I learn to embrace and champion both my American and Mexican cultures wherever I go.

Joann's Story

This is my grandpa’s story. My grandpa joined the KMT troop as a 14 year old kid during the Civil War in China, then as KMT lost the war, he exiled from China to Taiwan with the troop in the early 20th century. All these years KMT had the propaganda of claiming victory in China, and so my grandpa believed he will be able to return home soon. the Cold war between Taiwan and China persisted, and my grandpa remained in Taiwan, started a family, and not until 60 years later was he able to revisit his hometown in China. Most of his family in China has died or lost contact, only his sister was still there, they could still recognize each other.

Josh's Story

My grandmother, as of this writing in late 2019, is 94 years old and living alone in Florida. Sometime after the Nazis invaded Austria she, her brother and two sisters were sent to America. The kids could get visas because they were Austrian citizens. Her parents were immigrants to Austria, her mother from Hungary and father from Czechoslovakia. My grandmother’s parents could not get visas to the US and so had to send their children to America unaccompanied. My grandmother never saw her parents again. She met and married my grandfather in Brooklyn soon after the war. She had two children of her own. One of them is my mother. My grandmother rarely speaks of what happened to her when she was a child and when she does she cries. It wasn’t until I was an adult with children of my own that I came to recognize that the trauma my grandmother experienced, while rarely spoken of by her and never by my mother or her brother, reverberates through my family, from generation to generation. Perhaps it always will.

Clémence's Story

moved to the US four years ago when I was 21, believing I knew where home was, in France. But now four years after, despite the ups and downs of having to surround yourself with a new kind of family, looking for a job, feeling lonely, and seeing so many close friends geographically leave and break the family you tried so hard to build, I feel that the US is more of a home than France is supposed to. And it’s not easy to admit it specially as I have a great relation with my blood family. How can you be at peace with keeping yourself away from your family when nothing is technically bad there?

Chloe's Story

My grandparents left China for Taiwan in the late 1950s, in order to follow the Nationalist government and flee Communist rule. My mom and her three siblings were raised in Taiwan, living and identifying neither as Taiwanese nor Chinese, but something in between. My grandmother was the first in our family to leave Taiwan for the United States, and my mother eventually left as well. I am the only one in our family to have been more and raised in the United States, although most of our family has come to settle here in the years after my birth. My family’s story has been one of turmoil for two generations. To which country do we belong? China, where my grandparent’s grandparent’s grandparents and the generations before them lived and died? Taiwan, a country that my mother’s generation has retained ties to, but which most of them have left? The United States, a country with a cultural and a language that is both foreign and familiar for so many of my family members? All of the above? Or, only partly to each of those countries, and thus, really, to none of them at all?

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Lupe's Story

My parents and I migrated to the US in 2001. I was 4 years old. We came on the international lottery visa. We came at a difficult time, it was a month before 9/11. When it happened I was shocked and scared and this country didn’t feel safe anymore. My parents brought me here because we faced extreme financial hardships in my country. But I was young and didn’t understand that. I didn’t want to be here. I felt like I was brought against my will. Now I understand and am grateful for their sacrifices. I am pursuing my masters in Boston and am doing so without loans. I am really lucky. But the US has never felt like home, it hasn’t always been welcoming. The worst of it is that my home country doesn’t feel welcoming anymore either. Ni de aqui ni de alla. Neither from here or there. This quote really haunts me.

Santiago's Story

Born in Colombia. Moved to Boston for grad school. It’s been 3 years now feeling like the sense of “home” has been shifting. It’s hard to know wheres home. It feels like home in more than one place, or for certain reasons- like being gay- what used to be home, starts not feeling welcoming any more.

Matt's Story

My family moved to East Boston in the early 1900s during a wave of Southern Italian immigration. Many members of our family still live here. You can almost see our houses from the museum's windows across the harbor.

Lunala's Story

I am 9 years old 😀 ........... anyway I love ❤️ to listen and or read Greek mythology and any other mythology wen I grow up I want to be a zoo keepers and or a fashion designer.👯‍♀️😎😈👻💀☠️😸💄💋🧑🏿‍🎤👩🏽‍🎤👩🏽‍🎤🦹🏽‍♀️🧛🏽‍♀️🧝🏽‍♀️🍧🍡🍢🦊🐨🧑🏿‍🎤🧑🏿‍🎤🧟‍♀️🧜🏽‍♀️💍🦇🦅🐆🐅🌹🌚🌑🌙🍰🧁🥧🍦🍨🍮🎂🍭🍬🍫🍿🍩🍯🍪🌰🥜🍷🌌💽🖥📱💻🔦🗡⚔️🔪

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Rachel's Story

My great grandparents left Austro-Hungary in the mid 1850s to escape the first round of anti-Semitic programs in Eastern Europe of the modern age. The settled in New York and built businesses, became lawyers, and psychologists. My own parents left tube society of New York for Vermont and I grew up with little understanding of my family’s story. Recently I have begun to hear The stories from my aunt who is now 95. I still have no idea of my family before the departure from Europe or if any of them survived the Holocaust. My family history begins on Ellis Island and I will likely never know of anything that came before then.

Nitya's Story

I moved to Boston from India to pursue higher studies in 2009. I loved Boston so much and also fell in love with a man who considered the city to be home and ended up staying here. I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to society here.

Darya's Story

I lived in Germany with my mom, dad, and brother. I was five at the time, I went to school at a small kindergarten. We were packing and I still didn’t know what was going on. My dad was a taxi driver and my mom wanted to get her second master’s degree, she was originally from America and my dad was from Iran. They had both gone to Germany for a different reason. I was born in America and my brother was born in Germany, he is four years older than me. We got our stuff and went to the airport. Once we got there we said our goodbyes and me, my mom, and my brother left for Massachusetts America. There was a lot of boarding flights and running and the announcers. We finally arrived after a long time. When we got there we saw my aunt and drove off with her. I remember when we got to America saying “ Hey you tricked me.”

Ki-Soo's Story

My parents spent their formative years outside of their native Korea in Japan and the United States (one has spent more of her life outside her homeland than there). Born to these parents, I absorbed their exposures via osmosis such that no one culture alone feels like home. Even my identity as a Korean leans upon the historical exchange of culture with China and Japan (is an omurice just an omurice?). As a 1.5-generation immigrant, I have learned to carve a niche I can call my own and to coalesce my surroundings into myself. Despite all the trappings of modern America, I cannot expect a home ready-made when self-expression comes with a price tag. In like manner, I cannot predict where I will be in ten years time, but perhaps I can return for another entry. 👌🏼🌺

Alina's Story

My parents came to the US to pursue better education separately before meeting here, getting married, and having my brother and me. Two different paths led them to our family; my dad had experienced the familial famine pressures of rural China and became a professor in Beijing while my mom was physician of urban and professional parents in Guangzhou. Sure, they came in the same wave, but class differences between countries and between each other were noticeable.

Now, they have unified through my brother and me. I am always grateful they sought to escape our tiny, noisy NY home into a beautiful diverse community of colors and mindful intellect. Both sets of grandparents moved in and out of our home to care for us, and my grandma remains close to home as a citizen too. Although there will always be separations of generational time and geography in our family, we never stop to thread gaps in our travels, phone calls/texts, foods, and culture. Migration never stays stagnant!