PSA

Seventeen-year-old Itrat shares what it’s like to be a Muslim girl in America and explains why she chooses to wear a scarf.

Michael and Cathy Hoffman recount how their son with Down syndrome is included on the middle school soccer team and how his teammates and opponents show support in a way that leads to his first goal.

“I felt alone and tried to hide it...”

“I remember being in court every day...”

This excerpt explains that families are defined by love, caring and sharing, not the number or gender of its members.

“Padam and Purna were forced from their homeland in Bhutan and trapped in camps in Nepal for decades before being resettled in an alien land: Clarkston, Georgia. The refugees have found some stability, but still feel frustrated and uprooted, which leads to domestic violence and suicide in the refugee community. Padam and Purna realized that familiar food is the first step to feeling at home. They have opened a food store and other refugee-run businesses, which offer safe spaces and sources of mutual support for all the Asian refugees in Clarkston, who are united by their experience of trauma.”

In this excerpt from his memoir, Rodriguez provides a stirring recollection from his adolescence: the first time he experienced racism as a result of being an immigrant in America. As he says, the experience "stays with [him] like a foul odor."

“I always lived in fear that someone would discover that I couldn't keep up.”

In this nonfiction piece, Julianna Fields tells the story of Bailey and his two fathers. After protecting Bailey from onlookers' scorn when he was a child, the family decided to participate in a project showcasing the diversity found in local families.

The distrust between the Jewish community and African-American community in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1990s reached an all-time high when a runaway car struck two children.

Linda Schubert recounts the fear that consumed her Jewish family living in Nazi-Germany in the late 1930s. Each family member endured individual stress and anxiety, but each also contributed to the family's greater good of the family.

English language learner, Sing, reads his personal memoir in front of an audience, overcoming his fears and feeling proud of himself.