Mahendran Thiruvarangan Oral History Interview
At the time of this interview, Mahendran Thiruvarangan ('Thiru') is a senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna Department of Linguistics and English, and is a scholar who focuses on postcolonial literatures, the relationships between land and literature, radical democracy, and nationalism and co-existence. He received his PhD in English in 2019 from the City University of New York.
Pradeepa Oral History Interview
Pradeepa is a Sri Lankan Tamil artist and multimedia creator, as well as a social activist, hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota and based in Colombo, Sri Lanka at the time of this interview. She left Sri Lanka as a young child and grew up as an asylum seeker at constant risk of deportation in the United States.
Freaba Morrad Oral History Interview
Freaba is an Afghan-American woman who was born and raised in the U.S. She talks about being an Afghan woman, how war and displacement has impacted her and her family's lives and the connection that she feels to her roots back home. She talks about education, holding various identities, and gender norms and roles here in the U.S. and in Afghanistan.
Fiza Oral History Interview
Fiza is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of the interviewee. Fiza is an Afghan-American woman who immigrated to U.S. in 2003 through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) after living for over a decade as an undocumented immigrant in Pakistan. She talks about the hardships that she faced throughout her life.
Fatima Oral History Interview
Fatima is an Afghan woman who has lived in the U.S. for the last 6 years. She discusses her struggles as a refugee living in Iran where she grew up. She lived in Afghanistan for 10 years before moving to the U.S. She has been very active in speaking out against injustices regarding women's rights, minority rights and human rights in general.
Rabin K. Biswokarma Oral History Interview
Rabin Biswokarma speaks about his experience growing up in western Nepal, traveling to the US through various countries in Asia and Latin America, and the pervasiveness of caste-based discrimination, both overt and subtle, from the villages in Nepal to Kathmandu and in the US.
In this slideshow, you will see:
Rajan Maharjan Oral History Interview
Rajan Maharjan is a first generation immigrant from Nepal currently living in Queens, NY and working in Manhattan. The interviewee discussed growing up in Yala in Kathmandu valley, coming from a farming community, his family, struggles of early days in New York, his literary forays, and hopes for his young daughter. Also discussed: caste, ethnicity, class in Nepal and Nepali diaspora.