Immigrantly

Haya Emaan is one of the few professionally-trained chefs from Pakistan. She started her career at a renowned Hotel, Avari towers in Karachi and proceeded to graduate from The Culinary Institute of America. She graduated top of her class and trailed at some of the most prominent restaurants such as Morimoto, Joel Robuchon, LeBernardin, Cosme, Per se, Restaurant Ramsay and Zuma before joining the M...

Sana Saeed is a host and producer at Al Jazeera. Prior to working at AJ+, Al Jazeera’s online channel, Sana had pieces featured in publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian, Salon, Huffington Post, and Elle, amongst many others. Her work has tackled a wide range of topics, with everything from foreign policy to life as a Muslim in the west, to sexuality and civil liberties. We talk abo...

Elad Nehorai has spent most of his adult life creating and nurturing communities. From the time he started a small online arts magazine (before such a thing was common) in college, to his efforts as an online marketer for startups, to his work with Hevria, a community for creative Jews, and Torah Trumps Hate, a community for progressive orthodox Jews, Elad cares about nothing more than connecting...

Today, I’m speaking with Grace Talusan, the author of the memoir The Body Papers. Grace is a professor at Tufts University in Boston, and the Body Papers is her first book. In 2017, the yet unpublished manuscript of the Body Papers won the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. It has been incredibly well received and has been written up by such publications as the New York Times, th...

Born and raised in Iran, and having attended the University of Tehran where she received a BS in Industrial Design, Shiva is an entrepreneur.  She later moved to the US, where she received her Masters in Industrial Design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.   Shiva currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is working on a host of projects including in-it, a video-base...

Jon Aragón is an entrepreneur who specializes in multidisciplinary design and branding. Intriguingly, Jon is also a preacher, which is a rather unconventional combination in my opinion. As a second-generation Colombian-American and as a part of the Afro-Latinx community, Jon’s background allows him to offer a unique perspective when approaching design and problem-solving. Jon’s spiritual identity...

Aymann Ismail is an award-winning podcast host, video editor, photographer, and writer at Slate whose work focuses on identity and religion. As a kid of Egyptian Immigrants, Ayman's early childhood experiences reflect reconciling with the duality of his identity. He wrote and produced "Who's Afraid of Aymann Ismail?" a video series that negates stereotypes of both American Muslims, and those are s...

Yousef Bashir is the author of the memoir “The Words of My Father.” Yousef’s story is one that showcases the inherent complexities of what it means to be a Palestinian American, particularly one that grew up in the Gaza Strip. From a young age, he was brought face to face with the harsh realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that experience has very much informed the work that he does...

Jennifer Asif's story was first reported by the Huffington Post. Her husband was recently deported by ICE due to an apparent error in their system. Jennifer is trying to reunite with her husband! You can support our podcast by donating to the gofundme. Here's the link Our music is composed by Basim Usmani, one of the lead vocalists of the punk band "The Kominas"     Learn more about your ad choice...

Malaka Gharib is a journalist at National Public Radio. She reports on topics such as the humanitarian aid sector, gender equality, and innovation in the developing world. She is also the founder of Runcible spoon food zine and She has written a graphic memoir "I was Their American Dream" about family, identity, and fitting in as a Filipino Egyptian American kid of Immigrants.   You can support ou...

Basim Usmani is one of the founders of the punk band "The Kominas" that was born out of Massachusetts in the early 2000s. Since their inception, the Kominas were lauded for breaking cultural boundaries and turning that which is unexpected into a new reality. Saadia Khan talks to Basim about his music, sense of belonging within and outside immigrant communities, and how he balances his American and...

Saadia Khan talks to Saadia Faruqi. Saadia is a Pakistani American author, essay writer, and interfaith activist. She writes children's early reader series "Yasmin" published by Capstone.  She has also written "Brick Walls: Tales of Hope & Courage from Pakistan" a short story collection for adults and teens. As part of her activism, Saadia trains various audiences, including faith groups and law e...

Today's guest Nevsah Fidan is a spiritual healer committed to personal enlightenment.  Her focus is optimal breathing for improving health and performance. She is an internationally renowned breath expert, a meditation teacher, a well-known author of 9 best seller books, a mother and a wife. She was born in Izmir, Turkey, she is an architect who decided to create her org focused on breathing and t...

  I recorded my interview with Gosia Labno, a couple of months ago, but I am releasing it today because of its relevance to the current discourse on immigration. When I spoke to Gosia, The Dream and American Promise ACT HR 6 was introduced. We spoke briefly about its impact. Recently the House Judiciary Committee passed HR6. With the Democratic majority in the house, it will most like pass the cha...

Immigration has been a contentious topic in the United States for a few years now. However, the dialogue has, for some time, focused on legal vs. illegal immigration. In very recent years, the focus has shifted not only to criminalizing illegal immigration into the United States but also curtailing legal migration altogether. We see this in the current discussion around asylum seekers, especially...

"What's in Name" is a special edition of The Alien Chronicles Podcast. It centers on the discussion around how some people who migrate to America change their names to more mainstream American names.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Saadia Khan talks to a Syrian refugee living in Berlin. Thair Orfahli grew up in Syria, in a middle-class family. His childhood was relatively normal, and he was studying law in Lebanon when the Syrian war broke out, what ensued was a series of fateful events which led him to leave everything behind, risk his life by riding a flimsy boat across the Mediterranean to get to Germany...

Saadia interviews Jade Chang. Jade is the author of The Wangs vs. the World. The book has been named a New York Times Editors Choice as well as best Book of the Year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, NPR, and others. Jade has appeared on national programs and she has spoken to audiences at universities and book festivals. According to NPR "Her book is unrelentingly fun, but it is also raw and profane—a story o...

Priya Minhas is a writer and producer from London. Her writing explores South Asian immigrant identity. Priya is a contributing writer to The Good Immigrant USA, an American edition of an award-winning best-selling anthology exploring race.  Her writing is featured in BuzzFeed, Burnt Roti, Kajal Magazine and Brown Girl Magazine. She is currently based in New York where she works with artists produ...

Huda Al-Marashi is the Iraqi-American author of First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story, a book the Washington Post called "a charming, funny, heartbreaking memoir of faith, family, and the journey to love. If Jane Austen had grown up as a first-gen daughter of Iraqi parents in the 1990s, she might have written this.” Her other writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the L...

In this episode, Saadia talks to Chimene Suleyman. Chimene is the editor of The Good Immigrant USA, and a contributing writer to the original best-selling award-winning British anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound, 2016). Chimene’s work has also appeared in the Guardian, Independent, IBTimes, The Quietus,  News night, BBC Radio 4’s Today Program, NPR, and Sky news. Chimene and Saadia talk about t...

Beth Schuman and Nizar Farsakh are part of an organization called Combatants for Peace. The egalitarian, bi-national, grassroots organization was founded on the belief that the cycle of violence can only be broken when Israelis and Palestinians join forces. Committed to joint nonviolence since its foundation, CFP works to both transform and resolve the conflict by ending Israeli occupation and all...

 Saadia Khan changes the format for this episode. She introduces three immigrant stories. Each immigrant shares their experiences in the US in their own words from a different vantage point. You will hear from them what it's like to be an immigrant in the US. Each perspective is unique in that it unravels the complexities of being an immigrant through the lens of the narrator without any leading q...

Sanjana Bhatnagar and Stephanie Munn are high school students and Students for Refugees (SFR) representatives. S.F.R. is working to raise funds to support educational facilities and individual student programs in affected countries as well as supporting local refugees. There are a broad range of things that SFR engages in, but their primary goal is to get students involved in helping refugees. SFR...

Saadia Khan talks Susan Muaddi Darraj, a Palestinian American. Susan talks about her experiences as a child of immigrants and how her dual identity has shaped her life. Susan is an Associate Professor of English at Hartford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland. Susan is also a Lecturer in the Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing program. In 2014, her short story collection, A Curious Land: S...