All Stories
Rayson Chen
Rayson’s Chen’s parents, immigrants from China, had big dreams for their first child. They expected Rayson to become a doctor, lawyer, CEO. Instead, he wanted to become a high school history teacher. That didn’t go over well.
Hassan Iqbal
Hassan Iqbal never intended to become a cab driver. When he was a teenager in Lahore, Pakistan, he dreamed about becoming a doctor or an engineer. “But then I put my dreams in the back and said, ‘I have to make money for my siblings, my family.’”
Rayan Itani
Rayan Itani grew up in a house bursting with different languages. Her mother is Lebanese and her father is Mexican. She grew up speaking Arabic, French, Spanish and English. It was a linguistic whirlwind.
Carlos
Carlos, an undocumented immigrant, told a harrowing story to Israel Salas-Rodriguez about his life in Mexico, his trips across the border and his life in the shadows in New York City. But the voices you hear are not his…
Shanjida Choudhury
Shanjida Choudhury is an American Muslim who, when she was young, had trouble accepting her religion and held a good deal of anger towards God. Now she works to build ties between Muslims and Jews.
Jeffrey Verna
Jeffrey Verna witnessed both the positive and negative sides to growing up in Brooklyn. “It was great, as far as my childhood, it was fun. I didn’t notice anything negative around me, but as you get older you notice all the negative things that were going on that we were so blinded by as kids.
Myrna Skurnick
Myrna Gordon Skurnick never planned to come to America. Growing up in London during World War II, living through the Nazi bombing during the Blitz and her father’s loss of his job, by the end of the war, she wanted to get out.
Steve Schwerner
Steve Schwerner, 79, has been an activist for over 60 years. He has marched against segregation, protested the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, done draft counseling during the Vietnam War,
Romano Ivory
Ivory, a gay man from the Caribbean, has made a life in Brooklyn, although along the way he has faced many challenges concerning his sexuality.
Robert Scott
It’s hard to exaggerate Robert Scott’s impact on almost two decades of Brooklyn College’s students of color.
Pedro Batista
Pedro Batista grew up in the Dominican Republic, living with his grandmother and aunts. He didn’t really know his mother who had moved to New York City to work.
Luisa Russo
Luisa Micelli Russo is a born and bred Brooklynite . . . and proud of where she is from. “Brooklyn, USA,” she tells her daughter Valerie in her oral history.
Erin Williams
Erin evolved into The Lion Kween when she moved to New York City in July 2014. Once here, she immersed herself in the spoken word poetry culture of Brooklyn and joined a community of buskers.