Like a Pandora's Box: A Conversation with Joy

Joy, who immigrated to the US from Taiwan as a child, shares her thoughts on how her immigration experience shaped her sense of identity, and explores how issues of race impact her relationships with her white friends. She says conversations about race do not come up often and when they do, they are "like a Pandora's box, (because) you don't really know what will happen if you address it."

Listen to my conversation with Joy here: Like A Pandora's Box: A Conversation with Joy

Impressions of America: Tereza's friendship with Elizabeth

Tereza, the producer of this podcast, who immigrated to the US from the Czech Republic in her teens, remembers her friendship with Elizabeth, who was from Ethiopia. She says that their friendship was rich in that they were able to discuss issues of race together. "When I remember our conversations," Tereza recalls, "we used words with each other--tongue-in-cheek--that we would not use with other people. It's kind of embarrassing to think about that now," she confesses, "but that's just how we talked about race (then)."

These very conversations, says Tereza, helped both girls begin to make sense of US society and their place within it as new immigrants.

Click here to listen to Impressions of America.