Jenny Peek
Tenzin Rangdol, who emigrated from India three months ago, shares his story at Memorial High School for Green Card Voices.
Tenzin Rangdol knew for most of his life that he would one day live in America, where his parents hoped he and his sister would have more economic opportunities.
But the family would have to wait 12 years before they could finally make the journey from Manali, a Himalayan resort town in northern India. Sponsored by his uncle — a U.S. citizen who has lived in Madison for nearly 25 years — Rangdol, his mom, dad and younger sister finally made the journey three months ago.
The 17-year-old Rangdol tells Tea Rozman Clark on a recent Tuesday morning at Memorial High School that his first impressions of America, after getting off the plane in Chicago, were good. “It was so great when I came out from the airport. I was feeling so good,” he says. “In India there was so much dust and pollution; when I came here, I didn’t see any of that.”
Rangdol sits in front of a white backdrop as Rozman Clark and a crew of three look on. Bright white spotlights illuminate an otherwise dark room. Rangdol answers Rozman Clark’s questions thoughtfully — telling her and the crew his story in English, which he studied in India but is still learning.
His story is one of many Rozman Clark is recording for the fifth installment of Green Card Voices, a multimedia and book project that provides immigrant students a platform to share their stories and that breaks down stereotypes about immigration.
Rozman Clark, a first-generation immigrant from Slovenia, sees the project as offering a lighter, more human side to an issue that has been dominated by debates over border walls and ICE arrests. She hopes the project provides both a “window and a mirror” on immigration.
“A window for all the people that perhaps don’t know so much about immigration, or just hear about immigration from the political lens. It really gives an opportunity to hear the stories authentically shared,” says Rozman Clark, co-founder and executive director of Green Card Voices. “And then a mirror is we find that there’s just not a lot of books that represent students like this.… So we just hear again and again from teachers who assign this book, how excited immigrant students are to see people like themselves actually in a book and sharing stories.”
Over two days at Memorial, Rozman Clark and a team of filmmakers and photographers recorded 12 students, who will each be featured in their own 5-minute documentary. Their stories will also be featured in Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from Madison and Milwaukee High Schools. The project has also given immigrant students in Atlanta, Fargo, Minneapolis and St. Paul a platform.
Between Pulaski High School in Milwaukee and Memorial in Madison, this book will showcase 30 first-generation immigrant students, and is set to be published in September 2019.
After conducting almost 400 interviews in six U.S. cities, Rozman Clark is still astounded by the variety of experiences immigrant students face.
“You hear it all — it breaks that cliché that all immigrants have similar stories,” she says. “[The students] have so many different reasons for coming.… It’s just so uniquely different. Even though I’ve interviewed close to 400 people, I continue to be surprised by the diversity of experience.”
Rangdol is still settling into his new home. After school he often goes to his neighbor’s house to play basketball — his favorite sport — with his little sister. He’s focusing on building his skills as an English language speaker and embracing his new life.
He’s excited to share his story in hopes that other people read it and might see themselves in his experience. “Everybody has their own autobiography, and that autobiography is important to every single person, so I like to share that story.”
197: Countries in the world.
15: Countries represented in Madison and Milwaukee’s Green Card Voices project.
11.7: Percentage of Madison residents born in another country as of 2017.
16,697: People from Laos living in Wisconsin as of 2016.
278,981: Foreign-born individuals living in Wisconsin as of 2015.
