In a collaboration between Candy Foster, Anthony Salazar, Molly Boucher, and Rachel Hoffman, we present this episode, “Bravery Displaced.” When creating this podcast, we took into consideration a multitude of challenges that immigrants still face unfortunately, in today’s society. We examined specifically what caused each of our interview subjects to leave their home country to seek asylum in the United States, the impact of educational opportunities, and the importance of women’s rights. Our two subjects, Salwa Mahdi and Osman Rezain are both from Kurdistan region, which encompasses eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and Western Iran, as well as, smaller parts of northern Syria and Armenia. Osman is from Iran and Salwa is from Iraq. Our podcast will explore the courage and resilience of our two interview subjects as they fled their home countries of Iran and Iraq to seek political asylum in the United States.
Our first interview was conducted with a man from Iran named Osman Rezain as part of the Shenandoah Valley Oral History Project. Osman was specifically from the region of Kurdistan, an area that underwent Islamic Revolution in 1979 and this was heavily reflected on the country’s new culture and made things difficult for non Muslims like Osman, Osman’s education was greatly impacted by the cultural revolution, because the educational focus was religious rather than focus on traditional subjects like mathematics, science and history. In our second part of our episode, we talk to Salwa Mahdi, who lived in Iraq where because of “morality” police and vigilantes, enforcing their country discriminatory laws against women and non Muslims forced many citizens to seek asylum in the United States. Salwa Mahdi is from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She has an undergraduate degree in business with a focus on statistics from a university there. She was forced to leave Kurdistan when Saddam Hussein declared the organization she worked for were criminals. She fled to Guam with her brother, where she waited five months before being given asylum to the United States. Courage and resilience our common themes in our episode as we discover their fight towards their respected causes.
Relevant material included in today’s podcast:
Dina Nayeri’s novel: The Ungrateful Refugee
Link-https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee
“We have no debt to repay.” Like Salwa who had a university degree from Iraq, but could only first find work in a factory because their English language skills were weak. Mary talks about how our mother, who was a medical doctor in Iran could only find work in a pharmaceutical factory, where her bosses and co-workers would question her intelligence daily, though they had a quarter of her education. Her accent was enough if she took too long to articulate a thought they stopped listening and wrote her office unintelligent. This is a common issue that immigrants face when they first arrive in the United States, the inability to speak English.

Bibliography:

The Ungrateful Refugee: ‘We Have No Debt to Repay’. 4 Apr. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee.