Untold Immigrant Stories
William Twayigize is a Hutu who miraculously survived horrific experiences as a refugee, a Tutsi prisoner, and a Nairobi street boy to complete an elite education and achieve a distinguished academic career. Full Transcript Byron Harris: Don't tell William Twayigize...
Hosted by Byron Harris
Original music by John Wesley Gibson
They meet the challenges of a new land with determination, perseverance, resilience, and creativity.
Listeners will see America through their eyes and renew their appreciation for the land we love.
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Each year Literacy Achieves empowers hundreds of Dallas-area families by giving them the English literacy skills and self-confidence they need to become productive members of our community.
Jose Hernandez’s ambition to become a doctor in Cuba was thwarted. Hear how he came to the US and planted seeds that revived his grandfather’s business. Jose has grown it into a firm with international reach.
Arang Cistulli came to the US from South Korea as a very young child with her family. She grew up in a small Ohio town where her father was a medical doctor. Her story is bookended by prejudice she experienced as a child and by recent hate directed at Asian-Americans....
In 1979 Mylinh Luong left communist Vietnam with her father, mother, and four siblings in a crowded fishing boat. She was six years old. She vividly recalls the deprivation, squalor, and brutality of the journey and life in a Malaysian refugee camp. She knows what it...
Ana Arellanos was born in Mexico and came to Texas, undocumented, when she was five. She grew up in Gail, a small town in West Texas. Now, at age 34, she is a U.S. citizen and an immigration attorney. She knows the system from both sides. She wishes the whole country...
Ow-z (Aws) Al-Darkazali, known as “Big Al,” is an Iraqi dentist. At first euphoric over the ouster of Saddam Hussein, he grew so discouraged with the outcome that he gave up everything and left home to rebuild his life. After false starts in Cyprus and England he...
Alexandra Bacalao is an immigrant from Venezuela by way of Canada who came to the US as a schoolgirl. Now a physician and scientist, the podcast is the story of how she sees America through a complex matrix formed from the other countries where she’s lived, her...
Jabeen, a Pakistan-born woman watched her mother, who did not know English, struggle to the point of suicide in England. Jabeen’s own knowledge of English was essential to overcoming loneliness when she found herself without friends or family after immigrating to the...
Jeffrey Engel is a historian who directs the Center for Presidential History at SMU Center for Presidential History | Center for Presidential History (smu.edu). He is the author of over a dozen books on American history, and an expert on immigration to the U.S. ...
Daniel, a Haitian whose parents brought him here as a boy, goes through a “serendipity of experiences” to overcome the poverty of his youth, become an engineer, and learn to be a black man in America. Is Daniel really lucky or does he make his own luck? Read the...
In this episode, a young Mexican woman, a university graduate and marketing executive, wrestles with feeling welcome and unwelcome, free and lonely. This immigrant's experience shows the power of words—and the prejudice behind them—to hurt. Is her faith in the...
From Hungary to Libya and Iraq
Parts Unknown to White Oaks, New Mexico 1884
From Haiti to New York City, 1988
From US to Iran, 1976-77
Henna, Syria to Seminole, Texas, 1898