I moved to the U.S. in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession. As an immigrant it’s rough hearing the first things from the news when you land, that the country is officially entering a period of financial disaster and a period of uncertain economic times. Now, 10 years since, we see the aftershocks of that earthquake. The news is dominated by anti-immigrant policy changes and inhumane treatment of migrant children.

But in those 10 years, I lived in large multi-ethnic melting pots in New York and Los Angeles. These included Bay Ridge, Brooklyn with the old Irish and Italian residents to the middle eastern population from Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Kensington, Brooklyn with Bangladeshis and Hasidic Jews on the one side and Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, Haitians on the other side along Flatbush Ave. Los Angeles’ Koreatown is fascinating in its own right with a blend of Koreans, Thai, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Mexican, El Salvadorean among the many here.

All these interactions with these people and my own experience of jumping through the insanely illogical bureaucratic hoops to citizenship made me want to understand their impact on society by means of food, music or choice of profession and how American society and culture might have rubbed off on them or their kids.