My background as an immigrant from Gambia and being half Sierra Leonean; and growing up in Upstate, NY, and Nashville, TN was a struggle for me. Throughout my whole life, I faced an identity crisis. My father never came along with me and my family, when we moved to the U.S. than several years past my mother became a widow, because of the pass of my distant father. Moreover, throughout my adolescent life, I had trouble figuring out what I want to do. It was not until my senior year in high-school I felt I lost all hope. I, I didn’t apply to a single university, I decide not attend field trips, ball dance, and graduation. Merely, because I felt I underachieve. It was not until I became a voracious reader of Benjamin Graham that changed my life,
Hello reader, I’m about to tell you a story of some of my life. I am not normally one to volunteer details about myself, which I’ll remain somewhat reserved or completely leave some events out of this autobiography. Nonetheless, I believe I can still make my story interesting for the reader. I was born 1979, in Tampa, Florida; which, is also the same day my biological father decided to leave my mother and I. My mother isn’t a native Floridian, but had moved there with her family when she was still an infant, and had spent most of her life growing up in Florida. Needless to say, my father leaving was not an exciting time for my mother and I. Although she was employed Jimmy Cater was president and had taken the nation into
I was born here in Chicago but was raised in a small Illinois town near Iowa. I later returned to my roots as an adult and have raised my own family in the Chicagoland area in (South Suburban) Steger, Illinois. I am a wife, mother and recently became a grandmother.
From an early childhood, I was able to learn the values of hard work, discipline, humility, and determination. I learned this from my parents who would work in the hot sun slaving away in the orchards. Every night I would watch them come home from work exhausted. Their checkered shirts and ripped denim jeans drenched in pesticide chemicals. Their fingers would be chapped and their faces burnt from the long day in the sun. When I turned nine, I finally got to see the realities and the difficulty of field labor.
“Mom, will I ever be treated as a regular person? When will I be like the others without people look at me in a strange way and make fun of me, when mom? When?” Those were the questions I did to my mom almost every day after getting home from school. Fourteen years ago that my parents brought me to this country offering a better life with better opportunities than where I was born. I was seven years old when came to the United States, but I still remember the happiness I felt when I first step in this country. Throughout the years, I have realize that not everything is easy and simple as I imagined. My parents worked in the fields because of the lack of a social security and not knowing how to speak English. Many Americans do not know how hard it is the life of an immigrant, they should have a consideration for us and not just blame us for the deviance of the United States.
Immigrating to the United States in 1993 from the former Soviet Union, my parents were forced to escape from their war-ridden countries with no money or knowledge of English. Neither of them pursued a higher education since they needed to monetarily support our family after I was born a year later. Consequently, being the firstborn to two immigrant parents became my most challenging obstacle growing up. The language barrier was difficult to overcome since no one taught me English; I spoke strictly Russian at home and began my education in a Jewish school learning Hebrew. When the time came to apply to middle and high school, I recognized that I would also not be able to rely on my parents for advice about colleges since neither of them completed
It is not uncommon to hear one recount their latest family reunion or trip with their cousins, but being a first generation immigrant, I sacrificed the luxury of taking my relatives for granted for the security of building a life in America. My parents, my brother, and I are the only ones in my family who live in the United States, thus a trip to India to visit my extended family after 4 years was an exciting yet overwhelming experience. Throughout the trip, I felt like a stranger in the country where I was born as so many things were unfamiliar, but there were a few places that reminded me of my childhood.
As a passionate student, I have always had an enthusiastic and resilient approach to learning and a desire to broaden my knowledge across many disciplines. As a responsible individual, I have always been driven to forge my own path. I’m aware of what bolsters my spirit and what hinders it. I know that my opportunities for growth are amplified when I have access to the most challenging material and when I’m surrounded by the most productive people. I have noticed that collectivist cultures value shared points of view and discourage or reject highly individual behavior and opinions. I moved to the United States on my own at age 21. I knew there would be a long obstacle-ridden road ahead. For six years I have been working on my immigration status while raising my kid. Being a single mother is a course of domestic engineering (starting from changing the light bulb in the kitchen to making and managing time and money), especially when there is no family and old friends around who help when things get a little rocky. There are moments in my life when I’m faced with
I am an immigrant. I look and act like any other student at Reading High School, participating in class and school extracurricular activities. But, I live in constant fear. I am afraid that I may never be who I want to be. I worry that I may not get a job, go to college, or even get a driver's license. But what I worry most about is that my parents will be deported back to Mexico someday and I will lose my family, forever.
I never knew my dad was illegally in the United States until he was arrested by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Everything happened so fast, and before I knew it my whole life was changing. One day I was having a pizza date with my dad, and a few days later I was in the car on a 3 hour drive to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center to say goodbye to him as he awaited his deportation to Mexico. My father's deportation has been the hardest thing I have ever had to go through. It has brought on emotional hardships and financial struggles, which, has brought on challenges regarding my education.
I chose my immigrant participant from a personal perspective, yet not knowing much about him. Last year, my first year teaching, I had a little boy in my class that was Latino, very shy and quite. He struggled in reading and writing and after meeting with his parents and ESOL teacher several times, the decision was made to retain him in first grade. His parents, especially dad was hesitant about the decision, and began to tell small glimpses of how his son was very much like him, shy, and scared to reach out because of the language barrier. There was never much elaborated on, but I could tell that dad had possibly been in a similar situation before. This year, I was lucky enough to have this same child in my first grade class again. After receiving
One person can have the power to change a community’s perspective or sharpen it. As a Latina and an immigrant, my family’s experience has taught me about the process of entering the United States and the complications that follow. Still, my comprehension of social issues developed further the day I met my brother’s friend and classmate, who followed my brother home, unannounced, on the bus. I will call him Eric, my brother’s friend and his family are Salvadorian undocumented immigrants who seek political asylum. Eric’s family consists of a younger and an older sibling, and his mother. The only source of income is what his mother, who does not speak English very well, makes. Lately, this is what keeps me up at night. Thoughts of this child and his family consume my mind while I brainstorm ways of helping. At a young age when their biggest concerns
My father left my mother as a young immigrant, he left me at a young age, I only had my mother and my little sister. I couldn’t imagine the world without them, so when I discovered I could potentially lose my mother, I almost fell apart.
As I walked into the house, my parents were waiting for me in the living room. I did not know what was happening, but from the look in their eyes, I knew that was something wrong. My mother sat me down to tell me that my father had lost his business. The situation seemed so hectic; yet, the conversation felt like it lasted a lifetime. Finding out this news was detrimental to my family because my father had worked hard in America to build this business. I learned that my father had to give up his business and, as result my family had to start over, and find a new way to make a living.
I am an immigrant, originating from Ukraine. I moved here three years ago to take advantage of the “land of the free”. I had heard of the conscription under Russian imperial dictators, such as Tzar Nicolas, and Soviet despots, like Stalin. Fourcing an individual to perform a service, regardless of the cause, seems to be slavery to me. When I found that men in America must register for the draft, in my eyes, “the land of the free” became slightly less free. It is abhorrent that men may be required to enlist in the military, and equally so for women and therefore should not be tied to feredal grants.
The Importance of my Mentor in my Professional Life as an Immigrant in the US