Identity

Mustafa and his family left Somalia after the outbreak of civil war in 1991, when he was only a year old. In his video, Mustafa reflects on his life and identity as a “Somali in exile” who has never felt completely comfortable calling himself American.

Lina came to the United States with her family at age 14 from Cali, Colombia. She reflects on her struggles to fit into American society and how she realized that she could live her own life and not fit someone else's picture.

Nasser, who was born in the Oromia region of Ethiopia and grew up in Kenya, came to the United States in 2005. In his digital story, he talks about feeling like his previous identity was stripped away in the United States and replaced with the labels black, immigrant, Muslim, and refugee.

Shirley left Shanghai, China in 1997 to join her husband who had moved to the United States one year earlier for work. This story explains how she actively sought to preserve her, and her children’s, Chinese identity while living in a suburban New York neighborhood.