The hours had stacked up like plastic cups; countless hours had passed waiting in the airport after the ten-hour delay, and ten hours in the plane itself, during which I practiced my broken Spanish in my head. My brain would not stop having conversations with itself. I had just wished that my inner Latin American […]
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My parents fled the war turmoil in Eritrea, to seek a better life for our family. As a child I heard of the world’s superpowers and wondered what they must be like. At this early age I could not imagine what made other places so great. Later on as a student I learned about the […]
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My mother is a single parent and my sister, mom and I all live together. Even though my mom is alone with the two of us, she finds a way to provide us with the things we need at the end of the day. She works later hours sometimes at night. On nights like that […]
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What is someone that speaks two languages? Bilingual. What is someone that speaks many languages? A polyglot. What is someone that only speaks one language? Thus begins the joke that a teacher once told me. While I giggled at this joke, as time has gone on, jokes such as these have only made me feel […]
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We rode a small boat on that scorching day with an even smaller motor. The cool water sprayed my face as we passed scenery like I had never seen before. The forest played with my senses as our boat’s passengers marveled at the exotic life surrounding us. We passed villages, birds and trees that seemed […]
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I was born in the Bronx section of New York to parents who are only vague memories to me now. When I was about two or three years old my biological father and mother divorced and my biological mother took me to Korea, my “homeland.” For two years, I lived in a one-room house with […]
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For now my parents monitor my computer usage but soon I will be old enough to have my own Facebook and YouTube accounts. Many of my friends already have their own. Although it’s cool to read updates and see new things, I know that bullying online is a real problem. From my research, no school […]
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America is great. At least that’s what I try to convince myself of because sometimes I feel unsafe because of my religion. I’m Muslim and I feel like now the world is trying to destroy believers of my religion. Islam’s holy book, the Quran, states that a Muslim who harms themselves or others purposely is […]
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Long black clothes and long white beards symbolizing their length of ignorance and color of their opinions. It’s these minions that cause the shame, that ruin the name, that make us all look the same. It’s the fundamentalists that hold us to less, that tell us to bless but are blind to the mess they’ve […]
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Thousands of Ethiopians leave their home every year and many of them arrive in America. Like my family, they start their lives from scratch. My family’s story of global migration started a few years ago when my parents moved to the United States from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. An immigrant is a person who moves […]
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“Now, what you hear is not a test. I’m rappin’ to the beat, and me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet.” According to rapper Jay-Z, rap has changed America immensely to improve race relations and has done more than any leader or politician. In fact, the influence that rap […]
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The sugar cane fields of Los Cañaverales are acres upon acres of tall bamboo-like plants that create one of the sweetest tastes on earth. As we whizz past them on a narrow highway their vibrant green leaves lazily wave at me, trying to reach up and touch the cloudless blue sky. My family and I […]
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