Our Stories

The year of 1998, my mother, Megan Huang came to the United States from China to continue her education in NC State. The journey truly began when she first saw the US in the small circular window of the airplane. Adrenaline rushed through her as the plane touched the ground. Looking at the bright lights of California, she thought to herself: “this is just the beginning of accomplishing my life’s dream”.

The challenges of this new life loomed ahead in the future. The first one presented itself the moment my mother disembarked from the plane in North Carolina. She had no mode of transport. How was she going to go to school? Life in NC was not like the one she had in China. There were no buses that dropped her off at home. Fellow Chinese students who had been in the US longer helped her with this problem. Once a week, my mother would get the chance to buy the weeks’ groceries. Every day, she carpooled with someone to school. However, this was just the beginning of her problems.

Although she had studied English in China, Megan Huang could hardly understand a word in class. The teachers all spoke very fast. Straining to understand, she eventually started recording the lessons on tape and listened to them repeatedly after class. Presentations were a whole new problem. Megan had been struggling to understand English; however, speaking the language was an entirely different issue. The success of her first seminar relied solely on not being asked questions from the audience, and luckily, no one did. Although she had passed this time, next time might be different.

Many evenings and nights, Megan was in the science lab. Most days, she would not be able to eat fresh cooked meals. During the weekends, she would cook the weeks’ worth of food and bring leftovers for the weekdays or eat takeout. This was the how my mother had spent her first years in graduate school.

Presently, Megan Huang and her family are still living in NC. In her words: “my original dream wasn’t fully fulfilled, but I am living a different kind of dream”.

Growing up in Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, William Duffy (my father) had an obsession with rock music and an unshakeable desire to become a rock musician. His mom was very into Hollywood movies, and so from a young age they provided a great escape from his “humdrum life in Britain”, and from this stemmed his interest and fascination with the US. The bands he liked always toured in America, and often wrote books detailing their experiences there; in reading them, he found he had an increasing desire to see all the places he’d heard about in their satires, and wanted to make some of his own. In the early ‘80s, he formed The Cult and was signed to a record label; soon enough, they had made enough money to go for a vacation in New York City!! The UK got/gets lots of American channels, so he felt like he kind of “knew it from his English living room”, but encountering all the sights, sounds, and smells of a city he’d only seen on TV first hand was an incredible experience, although the heat and humidity was a bit of a shock!! He returned to America not soon after as he toured the states with his band, and began taking a liking to the Los Angeles/West Coast area. The climate, food, and sense of “wide open spaces” drew him in, let alone the imagery of freedom which was “intoxicating to a young man used to the cold, damp negativity of northern England.” His band became increasingly popular in the US, and he was granted excellent working visas so he could live in America for years at a time. Something changed in him, however, when at a TV store in Cheshire, he learned of the events of 9/11. He felt that he wanted to settle down in America (partly because I was about to be born, too) and somehow “help” with their struggles. Also, the world felt like a dangerous place afterwards, so he was motivated to secure his living status in America, and applied for and was granted a green card. Five years later, as over the years he’d “grown to love and respect America”, he was happy to finally become a citizen in November of 2011.  He feels fortunate to have gained citizenship to a great country through hard work, but never turned his back on the UK and his heritage. He chose to make America his home and his very happy with his decision so far! His band is still active and based in California, where he currently lives. 

My uncle Rafael was born in Colon Panama in 1958. His mother immigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old leaving him behind with the rest of her family. After settling in, his mother had 4 additional children and joined the American lifestyle. When Ralph was 10 years old his grandmother advised him that he would be going to America to stay with his mother and his new siblings. After notifying the school of his leave, the kids at his school treated him differently and called him by the name of Satan. As he landed at JFK International Airport he looked up as snow began to fall, a concept he was never aware of. Due to his insufficient English skills, he was put into the 4th grade which was a year behind the American children his age. His new classroom setting provided him with 3 hours of ESL every day, where he met other Hispanic children from all over Latin America. Embarrassed by his deep Spanish accent he refused to talk to other kids at the school. His first attempt to assimilate was when he called out “foty eight” instead of forty-eight, in response to a math question and all the children began to imitate his accent. From then on, Ralph began trying to speak more like an American. The only place where he felt recognized and comfortable was with his siblings and parents. After graduating school he went to Columbia where he learned about American History. During his years at Ivy League Universities, he realized that in America he was not going to be seen as a Hispanic Immigrant but he would be seen as a Black man who came to America. He started to cope with the fact that even after he started living comfortably in America as an immigrant he would have to work twice as hard to live comfortably as a Black Male and that the “American dream” was not easy to be a part of. Later on, he joined the Air force eventually advancing through the ranks and retiring as a lieutenant Cornell with a Bachelors degree, mediation certification, and Masters degree in military operation. Today Ralph is a retired Post Master General from the United States Post office residing in Alabama with his wife. 

Miracles and horrors. Winners and losers. Rich and poor. The known and the unknown. That is the conflict at the heart of late twentieth century East Africa. While gunfire rang amongst the vast plains of 1972 Uganda, five-year-old Vipul Patel was trying on assortments of flat hats, and playing with the finest of china. The store was called “Cheap Stores” an import-export company on Kampala road, the main street of the capital of Uganda, and owned by Vipul’s father. However, just as every other Indian child submerged amongst the mounds of coffee plantations across the Ugandan border, Vipul would realize he was no ordinary child in fact the opposite.

At five years of age everything collapsed. General Idi Amin overthrew the elected government of Uganda, organizing a regime that would massacre 300,000 civilians, kill Vipul’s uncle, and in 1972 expel all Indian and Pakistani citizens. Having decided not to worry Vipul’s agitated father, Vipul’s mother packed only the “necessities”. Vipul’s mother cut one end of the toothpaste bottle choosing instead to fill them with gold necklaces. While radio stations hollered Idi Amin’s propaganda, Vipul’s father wasted no time. Packing only essentials, five daughters, two sons, and a pair of desperate parents packed their bags, leaving the place they called home. Vipul would remember traversing an airport held under gunpoint wearing his dad’s “flat hat while waiting to go to London.”

Arriving in London, Vipul’s parents waited out at a 6-week refugee camp, leaving Vipul and his siblings with their aunt in the heart of urban London. The government helped Vipul’s father find a job as a railroad conductor in Peterborough. The family lived in a small Victorian semi-detached council home.  For the first time Vipul’s mother worked on a conveyer belt in a toy factory. Overtime things settled down at 114 Dickens Street, all the children grew up, went to college, and got small conservative weddings. Vipul’s father would end up fulfilling his dream, buying a small business in the heart of London. At the same time Vipul graduated as a pharmacist from the University of London. In 1993, Vipul met Sejal, an accomplished software engineer, who got multiple offers to work in the United States. The couple would eventually make their home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A small city hidden amongst the trees, a fresh start with opportunities abound. My father had achieved the American dream.

My great grandfather, Kölcl Bernhard immigrated from Bveria​, in Germany, specifically, in a town called Kringil. He came to America because he wanted to work for his uncle, who came there earlier and started a butcher shop that sold various other things. He also payed for other relatives to come to America. Usually the oldest son comes to America to work for the uncle, but his older brother was electrified in an accident, so Kölcl came instead. At first, he knew no English or education, and had no money. Eventually, though, from working hard at night school to learn English and become a citizen, and earning money during the day from chopping meat, he bought his own farm that he loved. He met his wife, Kristina, at her mother’s delicatessen luncheonette in Elizabeth, New Jersey, In 1928, 7 years before he bought the farm that my grandmother remembers so fondly. The store was called Hauswalds which is my older brothers middle name! When the farm was bought Kristina stopped working for her mother and began working on the farm and raising her family. My grandmother, Margo (us grandchildren call her Emmey), remembers her life growing up in the family with him as a father, saying that he was always busy working on the farm but he was happy with a loving and caring American wife. when asked to remember specific things about him, she says, He was always in good humor and loved to tease, he was a handsome man with beautiful blue eyes, and he was a fantastic and dogged polka dancer​!  Emmey remembers him always saying to her, “watch the pennies and the dollars will take of themselves”. When both his children went off to college and started families of their own, he retired by selling the farm to a developer and moving to a retirement village. There, he made lots of friends and was happy until his sorrowful death in 1988.

Giovanni Amatangelo and Luisa Ragazzi were both from Italy. They were born in Rocca Pia on June 24^th of 1890. On the day they were born, their fathers got together and promised each other that Giovanni and Luisa would marry each other once they were old enough. Giovanni´s father, Fiorenza thought that he would be able to find a better life for his family in America, so he decided to travel to the US. He was able to find a place in Pennsylvania and he sent for his family soon after. In America, Giovanni was able to find a job as a coal miner; however, this job had very difficult labor which only paid 50 cents a day. Later, they found better jobs a local steel mills in the Pittsburgh area. Once Giovanni was settled he sent for Luisa to come to the United States. Luisa was very nervous to travel to America to a husband she didn’t know and leave her family behind. Luisa immigrated to the United States and married Giovanni in 1908, just before their 18^th birthday. Together they started their new journey in America. Because they were living in the United States, Luisa and Giovanni went by Louise and John. Life in America was very different from their little village back in Rocca Pia, but they were able to manage it. Growing up taught both John and Louise to be self-sufficient. John grew a garden on the property where they lived. Most of what they ate came from that garden. John continued to work in the steel mill while Louise would stay at home. She loved cooking for her family, but she was also very talented at crocheting. She would crochet many beautiful tablecloths and bedspreads.

Together, John and Louise had 8 children that lived to adulthood. One child, named Caesar died soon after he was born, and tragedy struck again when John and Louise’s two year old daughter, Sylvia, died of a childhood disease. After her death, Louise kept Sylvia’s two little pigtails as a remembrance. While Giovanni and Luisa had faced many challenges and hardships throughout their journey of immigration and in their time living in the USA, they were able to build a good life for themselves and their family for many generations to come.

Austria, the homeland of the Hohenwerfen Castle, the Alkaline Battery, Gustav Klimt, and Constantin Zodl. Born on December 10^th, 2001, Constantin was born in Vienna, Austria. He lived there until he was eight years old, and then his family relocated to Hong Kong, China. For five years, Constantin lived in Hong Kong, before making his final journey to America. At thirteen years old, moving from what he called home, to Florida, was more difficult than what he imagined. However, shortly after that, his family packed their bags again and headed up North to North Carolina.

But when he first came to the United States, he was no stranger to moving, because it was something that he had done in the past. He says that moving to the United States was the most difficult move he had done because he had to adapt to American society, something he had not experienced before. He was forced to say goodbye to all his friends in Hong Kong, some of which he had spent almost half of a decade with. Constantin had been learning English in Hong Kong, but after moving to the U.S. his skills were really put to the test. He was forced to quickly learn the language, and juggle the stress of meeting new people, and to learn the ins and outs of American society, and the implicit social expectations that are woven into it.

He was fortunate to have tons of support to help him adjust to his new home and ease the transition. The world in which he knew was turned upside down and often found himself looking for things that he knew from Hong Kong, but ended up finding very different things here in America, like playing cricket or rugby. Finding yourself in a new country takes time, and it took Constantin two years to adapt to his new home. In the short amount of time that he has lived here, he has managed to find himself in the Cary Academy community. He has made many friendships, and found good, caring people. Constantin’s unique exposure to many cultures at an early age has shaped him into being the person he is today.

Shama Rajan had a wonderful childhood in Calcutta, India, but love pulled Shama away from her country and on a journey to the United States of America. In 1973, Shama met her future husband while he was studying in medical school. He was an Indian immigrant but had lived in the United States since childhood. After being arranged into the marriage, Shama and her family flew to Delaware to celebrate the big wedding. While Shama’s family returned to Calcutta after the festivities were over, Shama was granted a fiancé visa, allowing her to stay in the US indefinitely.

Shama was granted citizenship and began her education at the University of Houston, where she majored in International Relations. She graduated and moved on to Law School at George Washington University. It was here that she discovered her professional calling upon attending an Immigration Law clinic. Since 1991, Shama has worked as an attorney at the US Department of Justice on the Board of Immigration Appeals. She loves her job. Specifically, Shama takes pride in being an advocate for immigrants. Herself an immigrant, she feels an obligation to help people finding a home in the States.

Family has shaped every part of who Shama is today. She has three sons and two adopted twin daughters. For Shama, parenting has been the most rewarding aspect of her life, as well as the most challenging. She described being too involved a mother and learning to give up control. With a great family life, wonderful friends, and a job she enjoys, Shama has loved her life in the United States. But, as she explained, there are many aspects of Indian culture that she misses dearly.

As Shama was only 21 years old at the time of her immigration, she made the journey happily and without reservations. In retrospect, she misses the sense of cultural belonging that she felt in Calcutta but has never truly felt in the United States. There is an inevitable loss that comes with assimilation, as Shama says. Even though she can still celebrate Hindu holidays and enjoy Bengali dishes like Mutton Biriyani, in the United States, she is a minority. Although Shama has been living here for decades, she still faces some prejudice. She misses feeling a part of a greater whole, but Shama describes the profound happiness that her life and family have brought her in the United States.