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Grazy's Story Grazy discusses how her family's immigration to the United States impacted her upbringing and her values and experiences in the U.S. Scroll to listen Grazy's Story 00:00 / 05:10 “I wanted to start my story off with my Dad immigrating from Brazil to the United States. He did this in 1989. At first he came to the U.S. to send money back to my mom and my sister that were back in Brazil, and he was just here working, and he thought he might as well just immigrate our family over to the States. They came over in 99’ and that’s when I was born too in the U.S. I think their experience of being immigrants here was definitely one that had an impact on me growing up. I think that they had a lot of troubles with just being in a new place in general. I think moving, period, is hard, I can’t imagine having to move from one country to another where it’s hard to get used to new people around you, new surroundings. Growing up I always had that in the back of my mind of the sacrifices my parents made to come over here and just their story of pushing forward just to better my future, my sister future, my brothers future by being here. I think their pushing through in this country definitely motivated me, I feel like it adds pressure for you to feel like you always have to succeed, you always feel like you have to do good, you always have to hit different milestones and always work your way up and I would always feel pressure, not because my parents would necessarily put it on me but, I would always think back to them sacrificing their whole life to come to the U.S., and the U.S. is seen as like the land of opportunity, there’s this overall message of if you immigrated to the U.S. you are lucky, you are allowed in the borders. I think today it is definitely a lot harder to immigrate here than when my parents did it, but I think that there’s this message of immigrants are sort of second class citizens almost, because goes Americans just have a leg over everyone. I think being born here, I just thought “Oh ok I have to succeed, I have to make my parents trip here worthwhile.” and it was a lot of pressure growing up and it felt, it felt like I was never reaching that finish line of “Ok I made it.” It was always something else, and I feel like growing up now I can look back and say that all that I have accomplished, it was the best I could do at that time and, my parents were always proud of me and whatever I did, every milestone I hit, every little award that I got, I knew my parents knew that I pushed myself. Especially with them seeing me struggle in school, every grade I got I know they knew it was my best. But it’s hard to feel like youre never enough and, if anything, growing up here made me appreciate things more. I feel like one of the gifts they’ve given me is empathizing with others and having more sympathy for others. I think it’s something that of course if you’re not from a family of people that immigrated, of course you can feel for others, you sort of, view immigration issues differently, you see how the countries government works differently in a way, I just feel like you view people differently. I would never think of someone as an alien to this country, and so many people are so ok with saying that term in referring to people and their stories that way. The majority of my dad’s life has been spent in the U.S., and for someone to look at him and think “Oh he doesn’t belong here”, he’s contributed so much, and everyone contributes so much with what they bring culturally to the U.S. when they are from outside of the U.S., like so much of our food is from different cultures and the U.S., I think we wouldn’t be what we are today without these people.”

Tamar's Story Tamar Shadur talks to Ngozi Okeke about how she would like to be remembered through the different ways in which she lived her life. She discusses her artistic passion for tapestry weaving and how it became a lifelong career. She was able to emphasize the different themes that have come out in her work and how she and her Mother have worked together to produce meaningful pieces. Scroll to listen Tamar's Story 00:00 / 04:07 How would you like to be remembered? I want to be remembered I think for someone who has not been afraid to take risks. Because, you know, having such a kind of changeable lifestyle from a very early age I was a little insecure at times, you know because I was always in new situations. When I was growing up in the 50’s and early 60’s I thought, oh no problem you know, I’ll just get married and I don’t have to worry about anything, but reality kicks in when you’re in your early twenties and you realize that no, you have to have a profession, you have to support yourself. But, something saved me from, you know, really becoming discouraged about a lot of things, which was tapestry weaving. I dropped out of art school, I was an art major, and I became a tapestry weaver in the late seventies in Jerusalem and there was this studio and for two years I worked there. Learning this complex skill of weaving very fine tapestries, large mural size pieces with a weaving partner next to me and it's a whole culture that opened up a door to a whole art aesthetic and field of art that wasn’t very much known, but those days are kind of over today they don’t support these kinds of industries so much anymore. When I came to the U.S. later, it became my main career for a while with my ex-husband. We produced tapestries and we basically became tapestry artists. We wove tapestries that my Mother designed, that we designed, and that became my sort of strong hold for feeling grounded and having something to do if all else fails. But it didn’t really support me financially so I had to gain a career and support myself. So I finished two degrees, one in art education and one at the masters school of education at UMass and I became an ESL teacher. And I was a Hebrew teacher, and gave art workshops, for papercutting and tapestry weaving. So I developed a career as a teacher, and now that I am not doing that as much, I would like to be known as one who contributed to my community both in educational ways and as a volunteer. And now lately, that I have more opportunities to exhibit my work and my Mother’s work, and give talks about it, and in fact, right now this month, in May there is a show at Michaelson gallery, Northampton called “Generations” and my work, my tapestry work, is alongside my Mother’s papercuts. One of them is the largest and most complex mural tapestry that I have woven that my Mother designed called, “Yizkor Holocaust Memorial Tapestry”. Yizkor means remembrance, that’s the prayer said over the dead and over the victims of the Holocaust. On my website there is also a description of what this tapestry is about. This one is the major work that took many years for me to complete with all the interruptions in my life. And it’s sort of a memorial piece that symbolizes the life of Jews in Europe before the destruction by the Nazis, with a lot of Jewish symbols that my Mother incorporated in her papercuts and it includes my personal memorials of my own family members, including my brother who passed away early on when he was only 38, and my two parents, and there is a homage to 9/11 by the letters W.T.C., World Trade Center, on the top border. It’s all part of the memorial tapestry and the events that happened over the many years that this tapestry was on the loom that enabled me to commemorate my personal memorials beyond the memorial for the life of Jews in Europe, which was my Mothers intention in the design. Those are some main anecdotes in my life, I think, and who else knows what awaits me.

Amy's Story Amy shares about moving from NYC to Philadelphia as a young girl. During this time, she learned some of the hard lessons about hatred and what it means to stand out. She also learned that some of her closets friends are the ones who have the most differences between them. Scroll to listen Amy's Story 00:00 / 03:46 ​

Jonathan's Story Jonathan Daube (Northampton, MA) speaks with Selena DeCosta (Easton/Amherst, MA) about his time spent teaching in Malawi and how it shaped his view of the world for the rest of his life. Scroll to listen Jonathan's Story 00:00 / 02:34 I spent two years in Malawi. I think for me it was more valuable than graduate school. I learned an enormous amount. About the world, about myself, and when we got back, it was 1970. This country, the United States, was in considerable turmoil. And I found that my experience in Malawi helped me in ways I wasn’t even aware of. Helped me work with all kinds of students, especially African american. Because for two years I had been, my bosses had been, african american, well not american, african. It just came naturally to me to work with people of very different backgrounds. That was extraordinarily, extraordinarily helpful. So that's, that's how we got there and we went with one child and came back with two. Our daughter, the middle child, was born there. Do you look at the world differently now than you did at that age? I think I do. I understood, perhaps still understand, what real poverty is like. Beyond anything you could see, well I could see, in this country. I understood, and understand now, now that I am much older, what it is like to be in a situation where there just aren’t medical services the way we are accustomed to them. A town like Northampton with a population of about 30,000 would have in Malawi, would have less than one doctor for the whole town. So there would be all kinds of people who would have no access to medical help at all. I am more comfortable in situations that I have never been in before. I would now say, and I say it to my own children, that to be fully educated and you know somewhat understand the world we live in, you have to spend some time, and I don’t mean just a week or two, you have to spend some time in a different culture. Now the different culture could be a very different kind of family or set up down the road, it doesn’t have to be overseas, but normally it would be.

Mary's Story Mary Young describes, in an interview with Hellen Muma, the cast-off treasures she discovered as a kid—and how those experiences turned her into a life-long collector. She shares a lesson learned from Louis Armstrong’s white handkerchief and remembers a great-aunt who influenced her with the gift of a corrugated gift box. Scroll to listen Mary's Story 00:00 / 02:19 So, I know you have a lot of collections, and you keep creating new ones. What are some examples and what made you become a collector? I remember really clearly we lived in a sorta like actually my father taught in a boys boarding school so we lived in a dorm and you would take ethe trash all the way down to the basement to put it in these bins and I was old enough to take the trash down I guess for my mother So i as taking the trash down I went down to the trash room and I saw all this stuff and there was an older couple who worked was on the faculty and they were downsizing and they had piles of stuff and I was immediately really interested in it that was my earliest memory of finding extraordinary things in the trash and I’ve never stopped ever since When I was going through my paternal grandmothers stuff Among all the other stuff I found was a box of buttons I mean some of them were really old some go back to the 19th century and some buttons from when my grandmother during world war 2 was a part of the red cross ambulance driver corps ya know outside of Boston she didn't drive ambulances really but for some reason these women trained for that there were just and there were buttons they came from all different types of people now just women but mostly women the family and ya know from generations of all different people and I think I was already collecting antique buttons and I kind of dumped everything together and I would come up with some buttons from my mother and I’d put those in there and to me it's like this ocean of family history particularly for me of women history and it just is like it all flowed together into this soup and i just love that ya know I have made some things with the buttons like I've decorated some pillows with them I was thinking of framing some maybe I'll do it maybe I won't It's such an immediate connection to generations of women and its different as if I just got something from a tag sale cause this actually had to do something with people in my family who knows what but that's one example of potentially thousands I can tell

Ngozi's Story Ngozi Okeke talks to Tamar Shadur about traveling to Nigeria, dad's special pancakes, and how she would like to be remembered Scroll to listen Ngozi's Story 00:00 / 02:15 ​

Nikki's Story Nikki describes her travels to Manzanillo Cuba where she and her fellow volunteers created and conducted a Kids Camp for the children of Manzanillo and its surrounding villages. She expresses the importance of perspective taking, treating others with compassion and understanding the true impact one seemingly small act can have on the lives of others. Scroll to listen Nikki's Story 00:00 / 02:38 As a kid in highschool I started getting involved in community outreach programs initially starting with the youth perish in my local town so there I kind of learned to have a greater appreciation for volunteering and just people in general so I think that when it came to getting a worldly kind of perspective the first time I really experienced that was when I was chosen to go on an outreach trip to Manzanillo Cuba so the basis of the whole trip was to put on a kids camp is what we called it we ran a bunch of donation sports drives in the US and then brought all of those sports equipment over to Cuba and in Ramonas we were in electricity was kind of hard to come by and in ther individual home one of the things that we brought with us to Cuba my dad had actually donated and one of the things he had always told me growing up was to leave a frisbee in the back of your car in case you get stuck somewhere and your bored or its a nice day and you want to do something fun so one thing he found online was these glow in the dark frisbees you press the button and these neon light start popping up and when you threw it it spiraled in the air and it looked really cool and so we had a couple of them growing up and I had always loved them so he had bought a bunch and donated them to the cause and I remember our first night in Ramonas we broke out the glow in the dark frisbees and me and one of the other volunteers stood out and threw it across one of the open fields it was like lightning had struck and these people had never seen anything like it before children, adults, everyone flooded over to where we were and everyone wanted a turn throwing the magical light up frisbee through the night sky and I remember hearing these whoops and hollars and screams just joyful cheers of such a small kind of thing in my mind something that I had grown up with and now I wouldnt really think os as too monumental but for someone who has never seen something like that before I think that it again brought that blissful sense of innocence back into my perspective and not only for myself reflective back on it but I hope to think that those people who volunteered and locals can think back to that beautiful starry night in Cuba, seeing that beautiful rainbow frisbee flying across the night sky for the first time and yeah that was definitely one of the most prominent kind of visual memories that I have

Susan's Story Susan Martins (77) talks with a friend, Catherine Grella (21) about her travels to Italy and Israel in her early 20s, which she considers the highlight of her entire life. Scroll to listen Susan's Story 00:00 / 03:08 Well, I'd always wanted to travel and I always wanted to go to Italy, and I had $2,000, but this was in 1969, and $2,000 went a lot farther in those days. And I found a little pencion which was in a perfect location. It was a block from the Arno, but it was in a very great place. It was like the best place to be in Florence, and I just explored Florence while I was there. I had never really thought about going to Israel because while I was born Jewish, I really didn't know anything about Israel except while I was living there. I read a book by Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist, and it was about the Kabutz system in Israel, and I found it fascinating. And I felt like I wanted to go there. And in about January, I guess, I went to Israel. This was weird. It was the middle of the night when the plane landed in the airport in Tel Aviv, and I was sitting there waiting because the shuttle buses didn't go in to tell of the evening till six or seven in the morning. So I was just sitting, waiting. This plane came in and this bunch of people got off the plane and they started bending down and kissing the street. And then they came into the airport. They couldn't believe that they were there, and they were kissing the floor in the airport. And it turned out that they were Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust. They were immigrating to Israel and they'd never been there before. And they walked in and to them it was coming home. At that time, I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I wanted to go to a Kabutz. And there's an office in Tel Aviv that sends volunteers from all over the world to volunteer on a Kabutz. And you work in the fields, or I worked in the laundry, ironing pants for months, but I also worked in the grapefruit fields, and I worked pruning plum trees at one point, and one point they assigned me this Kabutz, had a fruit stand on the road that the Kabutz was up the hill from. They put me there to work because a lot of tourists spoke English. Somebody said, are you Israeli? And I said, no, I'm American. And they said, you look as if you were born here. You look just like an Israeli, and it's wonderful to meet you. And I felt like I had come home, and I felt as if it was my country. That was the weird thing that I had never thought about Israel. I didn't really feel like a Jewish person, but I felt as if that was where I was from and it was really power.

Sofie's Story Sofie talks about her experience being diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 12 and how it affected her and her family. She discusses how it inspired her to pursue her future career and the importance of empathy in the medical field. Scroll to listen Sofie's Story 00:00 / 03:25 So even at a young age, I think that I have overcome a lot in my life. What comes to mind for me is my struggle with being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. In the 6th grade when I was 11 years old I was diagnosed with diabetes. And, it's kind of just become my new normal but that does not take away from the fact that it's a very hard thing to deal with. Not only did it affect me, it affected my family. We kind of had to learn how to take care of my body because I did not have full control over it anymore. We had to learn these calculations to eat and I had to learn how to test my blood sugar and take shots every day. Eating wasn’t normal for me anymore I had to take an insulin shot to eat. But most of all, I think that it's taught me to be empathetic and to be more curious about the human body which is why I want to go into nursing school. But I think that knowing about a health issue such as diabetes firsthand, really really translates into your career. So my endocrinologist, which is my diabetes doctor, is a type 1 diabetic herself and it’s had such a huge impact on my life because not only does she have empathy for me and can, you know, understand my struggles but she relates firsthand because they are struggles that she’s gone through every day of her life. I want to have that impact on my patients, I want them to see me, and see me being successful and healthy and say to them you know you can do it I know that in the moment it doesn’t feel like you are going to get through this but you are. And that's another thing that you know as a nurse you have to be aware of people’s circumstances and do those little things for other people like you know, it's not just about treating them it's about making them feel that comfort that you know they’re cared about and they’re loved. And that's something that my parents both taught me and it's something that I think you know they definitely had a huge impact on my choice to become a nurse for sure. So I think that just because I’m young, I don’t think there’s an age on wisdom. I don’t think that wisdom has any age I think that I’ve been able to become a lot wiser because of my experiences. I think that you know, being a young person that has overcome a lot of health issues, it’s has taught me to be thankful for all of the little things. I want other people to be able to feel that as well. I think that even though again I’m young, this has totally shaped me into the person I am today in every single way and I think that being a young voice for other diabetics or other people in public health has allowed me to share personal experiences with my classmates, with my professors and its allowed me to have this voice that other people don’t necessarily have. I also think it's important to show people like that if we view our struggles as growing experiences, learning experiences, they can open up so much opportunity. And I’ve learned a lot about myself, about public health, and about everything just because of diabetes and I’m super thankful for that. So that’s why I feel that it's important to share my story.

Hellen's Story Hellen describes the way her house represents Africa from the mustard-yellow color on the outside to the smell on the inside and the white lace sheets over the doors. Her parents incorporate many pieces of Kenya with them in their home in the US, and continue many traditions from their past. Scroll to listen Hellen's Story 00:00 / 03:42 ​

Marylou's Story Marylou Davis (76) talks with her granddaughter, Abigail Horan (21) about the pivotal moments in her life which sculpted the path to the life she has today. In the interview, Marylou discusses how moving from Florida back to Massachusetts where she originally lived was a tough decision, but ultimately worked out in the end because of the relationships she fostered once arriving back. Scroll to listen Marylou's Story 00:00 / 03:24 Well I think the most pivotal point in my life is when I basically had to make a big decision because of being now a widow. My husband passed away. He died young at 57. And I was living away from my hometown we had moved to Florida and my decision was did I want to come back to Massachusetts because this is where I had friends I had a family I have two daughters one in Marco which is where we lived in Florida and one in Massachusetts my daughter who was having grandchildren who were living in Boston moved back to the area where we are from that is the decision I had to make. When she was coming back I knew that I wanted to go back home. That was always my thing ya know I wanted to know my grandchildren and be able to have a connection with them we lived there for nine years What are some of the important lessons you learned from this big decision to move home? Well, the lesson that I learned is that I could live on my own ya know because you always think about this part of your life are you going to be able to live on your own I had to find an apartment, I had to find a job I had to work and you know I had to make a new life for myself. Even though I did have friends you know but I did reconnect with people too and that was a big turning point in my life you know I was all set to have this one apartment it was going to be in Dartmouth but my mother in law was still living and I had to take her to the doctors one day we went to her doctor her doctor lived in this beautiful mansion of a house in New Bedford Mass and he knew me he knew the family he knew the situation after he examined my mother in law he said to me well Marylou you have a job and I said no I do not have a job I’m looking for a job he said well do you have an apartment I said well I do have an apartment that's going to be in Dartmouth he said well I have an apartment upstairs and I would really like you to look at it I was in Dartmouth I lived in Dartmouth for 20 years So I was thinking oh I don't know if I could live in the city you know but after we got done he said take the key go upstairs and look at the apartment So I take the key, I go upstairs I look at the apartment I fell in love with it It was a huge apartment I mean it was two bedrooms, high ceiling all freshly painted everything was included, the electric the hear. The doctor his name is David had a brother that I knew was his brother because I worked for him years years ago and he was manager of a store in the city and when I had this apartment I kept saying to myself cause I would see Steven every once in a while at the stores but I hadn't seen him in a long while of course but I said ya know if I ever see him I want to tell him where I live in his brothers apartment and of course, his brother knew that I knew him but so I did see him one time he changed jobs and I went up to him and I told him and low and behold I didn't know that he was going to be my second husband I lived in that apartment for three and a half years

Savannah's Story Savannah speaks with Dennis about her experience living and working in Washington, DC the summer after her freshman year of college. Savannah discusses her determination to experience somewhere new, and how she was able to make it happen for herself. In her story, she touches on themes of loneliness, independence, family and friendship. Savannah reminds us that while independence is a virtue, we can all use some support to get where we're going. Scroll to listen Savannah's Story 00:00 / 03:57 So when I was looking at colleges, UMass was just sort of what made the most sense. But I also don't think it was expecting to have, I guess, the tough year that I did. I think UMass is a very big school. And it's an easy place to sort of get lost in. And I was really used to being at home in my hometown in my community that was so familiar. And I had a good group of friends and a good kind of support system. And I kind of went from that to go into this big place that was super vast, where no one's really keeping track of you or worrying about you. And I definitely felt lonely. So at the end of that year, I kind of knew that I had to do something different with my summer, I knew that I needed something that was a little bit more of a leap for me something that was challenging and new. And so I was like, okay, great, it's time to figure out how I'm going to spend the summer. So I ended up applying to an internship program in Washington, DC and spend two months of my summer living there is a really well set up program. And I think what draw me what drew me to it was it was pulling students from across the country around the world to which was really exciting to me. And I think the concept of the program gave me a little bit of the community that I knew I needed. And so once I kind of set my sights on that, at the end of my freshman year, that gave me a little bit of vigor, a little bit of excitement that I think I needed, then it was just time to kind of decide and figure out how I was going to make that happen for myself, I knew that this was going to be a good program, but I had to, like pay for the housing, I had to pay for some of the programming fee and things like that. My next kind of step was I have to find scholarships, I learned quickly that there's money floating around universities and floating around for a lot of the things that you want to do. People just tend to not know that those scholarships, those grants, those things are there. And so they don't look for them. So I made it my goal to find this funding to get me to DC. So that's what I did. I ended up applying to so many scholarships, writing so many essays, and all these different things. So I did get there, I always remember just like sitting on the plane and like taking a breath and being like, Wow, I can't believe I can, if I pull this together, it's amazing. And so from there it was, it was a really wonderful experience. I loved DC living there gave me kind of my first taste of like, what you would maybe call adult life. But I kind of got all I think the best parts of it. I think reflecting the important parts were the social parts and getting to be somewhere new and getting to kind of fulfill the plan that I had for myself, I think maybe twofold. I think I came back with some confidence. And I definitely learned that I had the ability to kind of dictate my environment and kind of get myself out of the funk that I was in, I think was really important. I can definitely see that I've grown in that way. I definitely hold on to that determination that I had and know that it's like still in me, how are you feeling about this next transition? And what do you see is coming next. So I've definitely been pretty stressed about my next transition. I think part of it is because this is something that I never would have, I think believed my freshman year but I have such a good and rich life here at UMass and in Amherst, that I think it feels intimidating to think about moving that somewhere new and even meeting new people. I think I am so kind of comfortable where I am. So I think making that transition is a little bit scary. But I also know that I have done it before when I went to DCA essentially picked myself up and moved to a new city for a couple months. And now it's just kind of doing the same thing, but for a little longer. And so I think I'm trying to harness that sort of can do attitude that I lose a little bit sometimes. And so I kind of try to take that from my summer, and I'm trying to kind of be hopeful and positive and excited. And I think that will serve me well.