At the start of the Biden administration and just two weeks after the siege at the U.S. Capitol, how are immigrants responding to this moment? Three senior journalists in the Feet in 2 Worlds network discuss the opportunities and risks, and the trauma they continue to grapple with from the past four years. Carolina González moderates this conversation with Zahir Janmohamed, Maritza L. Félix and Macollvie Neel.

Feet In Two Worlds

Something I Can't Unsee

When Joy, who immigrated to the U.S. from China, finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship, she makes the choice to walk away from the family she thought she always wanted — and rebuild the family she always thought was broken. This episode was made in partnership with Self Evident: a podcast that challenges the narratives about where we’re from, where we belong, and where we’re going — by telling Asian America’s stories.

Finding Joy

We decided to check up on the immigrant elders in our lives to see how they’re surviving the pandemic. What we found was joy, wisdom, life experience and plenty of laughter — from two Italian immigrants in San Francisco, to a Haitian couple in Florida, to a 93-year-old aunt in Bangalore.

Laughter and Wisdom from Immigrant Elders

On a panel moderated by veteran editor and reporter Carolina González, the creators of “A Better Life?” discuss the inception of our podcast series at the peak of the pandemic. We talk about what kinds of stories we pursued in this season, what informed our decision-making choices as storytellers, and how our reporters dealt with the challenges of being vulnerable during the production process. This panel was recorded on a Zoom Webinar on Dec. 3rd, 2020.

Making "A Better Life?": A Conversation on Centering Underrepresented Voices in Journalism

Our friends at the podcast Self Evident have been reporting on the rise in xenophobic harassment, discrimination, and violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic. Listen to “Here Comes the Neighborhood,” which dives into the pros and cons of neighborhood watch groups in historic Chinatowns and other Asian immigrant communities across the country. For more stories of Asian Americans taking action during the pandemic, subscribe to Self Evident wherever you get your podcasts. Visit https://selfevidentshow.com/ to learn more.

Bonus: Self Evident's "Here Comes the Neighborhood"

The vice presidential nomination of Sen. Kamala Harris has made South Asian political power mainstream in the United States. In New Jersey — a state with a large and growing Desi population — differences over religion, culture and national origin make unity difficult to achieve.

Desi Voters, COVID-19, and the 2020 Election

As an immigrant in New York City, Rosalind Tordesillas has looked to her Tita Margaret Gomez — who came to New York from the Philippines in the ‘70s — as a role model for building a life there. The two New Yorkers remember their own resilience after 9/11, and Margaret offers inspiration for getting through this current moment.

Call Your Elders: We're Going to Be Okay

Black residents in Maine make up 2% of the state’s population, but they’re twenty times more likely to get COVID than white Mainers. We hear from two members of the state’s African diaspora — Lewiston councilwoman Safiya Khalid and civil liberties attorney Michael Kebede — about the history of African migration to Maine and how they were transformed by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Black Immigrants in the Whitest State

After the U.S., India has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world. New York City-based Ramaa Reddy calls her 93-year-old aunt Indira in Bangalore to see how she’s doing.

Call Your Elders: Hugs from Here

When Covid-19 hit Italy in April, Italian immigrants Sara and Maria were stuck in San Francisco. So the neighbors began reminiscing about all the things — music, bread, Neapolitan scenery — that home meant to them.

Call Your Elders: A Letter to Italy

Rosa — an undocumented Mexican immigrant who cleans hotel rooms in Phoenix — lost her income just a few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic. But she quickly fought back. Reporter Maritza L. Félix tells us her story.

Rosa’s Story: Undocumented and Unemployed in the Pandemic

Philip and Niki Zias are Greek immigrants living on Long Island. When they first moved to Queens in the 1960s, their home was filled with music, food, and laughter. On this Call Your Elders segment, their granddaughter Anna pays them a visit.

Call Your Elders: Cooking with Philip and Niki

When New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, Brooklyn-based producer Beenish Ahmed struggled over whether to visit her parents in Ohio or stay put. Her parents — a landlord and hairdresser who immigrated from Pakistan in the ‘70s — begged her to come home. When Beenish finally decided to go in May, she recorded that journey, and the discoveries she made about her family’s relationship to America.

The Home Clock

In our first Call Your Elders conversation, Haitian-American producer Florence Barrau-Adams checks in on her parents, Monique and Eric, to see how they’ve been making the best of quarantine.

Call Your Elders: Staying at Home with the Barraus

When the coronavirus hit the United States, two immigrants — Heeja and Elsa — wrestled with the same question: should I remain in America, despite the flawed U.S. response, or return to my home country? Having sought a better life in the United States, both women are rethinking their ideas of America and arriving at different conclusions.

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Feet In Two Worlds

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