Far Away From Home
My mother, Amna Pervaiz Bajwa, was born in 1978 and grew up in Pakistan. My whole life I have heard stories about her childhood but I never really asked how she moved to America or why she decided to. My mom received her American citizenship in 1995 after waiting for...
Masak Lemak
The first ever field trip we took was to Chinatown to try out Malaysian food. Unlike my friend who tried sesame chicken (no hate) I was determined to get something I had never had before. After a lot of indecisiveness I decided to order the Masak Lemak. As I...
Paterson, NJ
We went to a middle eastern restaurant in Paterson, NJ which had a variety of meats and sauces to try. We had pita bread laid out for us to try with hummus and baba ganoush while also having 3 other sauces, one of them had a savory minty taste to them, while the other...
Interview with my Grandma
My grandma was born in Romania in 1941. In 1959, due to the fear that the spread of communism would initiate another Holocaust-like experience, she and her family went from Italy to Israel. They left Romania very poor because they could only take 200 dollars with...
Refugee Poem Summary/Analysis: Mimesis by Fady Joudah (2013)
The poem Mimesis by Fady Joudah illustrates the way people become refugees. The spider is the refugee, the web is their home, and the bike is most likely the region that the refugee lived in. An example could be a Syrian refugee, who lived in their home in Syria but...
My Father – a Chinese Immigrant
Where are you from? Why did you choose to immigrate to America? What were some of your hopes that you believed you could achieve in America? My father was born and raised in Shanghai, China. During the cultural revolution, his family was classified as one of the "five...
Jewish Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union to Israel
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/tingting.luo/viz/JewishImmigrantsfromtheFSUtoIsrael/Sheet1?publish=yes This dual-line graph shows the total number of immigrants to Israel and the number of Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel. This graph not only shows the...
Internal Displacement in Myanmar
This bar graph shows the amount of new internally displaced people every year, caused by domestic conflict and violence, over the course of 13 years. It is important to align this graph with key moments of Burmese political history. In 2012, the Democratic Party won...
A Trip to Paterson
I didn’t think this Spring Intensive course could get much better, but our trip to Paterson on Wednesday definitely proved me wrong! Despite the seemingly apocalyptic weather that forced many of us to wear masks, the Refugee Stories group persevered and was able to...