Global Connect Chicago

by Saideh Jamshidi, Global Connect Chicago Blogger

What is your name?

Have you ever struggled to pronounce your name in English?  

Perhaps you have gone so far as to change your name to avoid the awkward and ugly sound of the mispronunciation of your name?

by Izabela Glusak, Global Connect Chicago Blogger

Locals call the tiled gateway that leads to Little Village “El Arco.”

by Valeria Fanelli, Global Connect Chicago Blogger

When Elizabeth Hendren moved to Chicago from Birmingham, she was very excited to start a new life with her husband. 

Hendren, 29, moved to the U.S. in 2007, an year after she married her husband Andy Hendren. 

“After I got married I wanted to stay with my job in England, so we waited until I got my green card and then I moved,” she said.

In Madison, a group of Iranian-American women get together to discuss pressing social issues. At last week's meeting the group focused on education for girls.

Many Chicagoans associate African immigrants with driving cabs. According to the U.S. Census, just over half of Chicago’s cab drivers are immigrants, and at least 10% are from Africa. Few people realize, however, that a handful of African cab drivers are women, and that they face both similar and different challenges from their male counter parts.

The west side of Chicago is known as the Windy City’s Little Mexico, or La Villita. Here, 98 percent of the residents speak Spanish.

The community is currently struggling with a multitude of social challenges including a high crime rate and rising unemployment. But residents say there is hope on the horizon.

Earlier this year, the entertainment news was abuzz with the nominations given to one of the most controversial films of the year: The Help.

Chicago is a new home to many diaspora communities. People from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa have found places in various neighborhoods of the Windy City to call home.

Amira Kefi, 30, is a student in Chicago. She has wavy red hair and glasses, and she gesticulates wildly when she speaks. Beneath this appearance Kefi carries with her memories from her first hand encounters with the revolution in her home country Tunisia, which took place between December 2010 and January 2011. The revolution ended twenty-three years of rule by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

by Katarzyna Olcon, Global Connect Blogger

CHICAGO – It is that time of the year again when thousands of people gather in the Landmark Century Centre Cinema and Instituto Cervantes, and approximately 200 people from the Latin American film industry, arrive in Chicago for the Chicago Latino Film Festival.

CHICAGO, USA – “I wrote exactly the kinds of stories that I was reading. All my characters were white and blue eyed, they played in the snow and ate apples and talked a lot about the weather and how the sun always came out,” explains Chimamanda Adichie, a well known Nigerian author who has written novels, plays, poems, short stories and essays. Adichie who is featured in a TED video titled The Danger of a Single Story is most well-known for her two novels The Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). She has also recently published a collection of short stories titled The Thing around Your Neck (2009).

In a modestly furnished one-bedroom apartment here many of the neighborhood’s residents gather. They speak English with foreign accents and often interchange words for those in their native languages.

Chicago native, Cara Harshman is part Internet darling. Part blogger. Part inspiration. Harshman has become a walking, talking example of self-reflection for many Africans in the Diaspora. She has studied Nigerian culture; she speaks the native language of Yoruba and has chronicled the everyday lives of Nigerians in a powerful way. Her work has touched a chord with Africans and non-Africans alike mainly because, well, Harshman is white.

Chicago, USA – Fatimata Traore, 37, had only been in Chicago for a few months when she received an urgent call from her aunt, a hair braider.

I met Sherry on a freezing Sunday morning December at the Azteca Mall in Chicago as volunteers for Centro Avance, a local organization, gathered for a wheelchair and equipment drive.

Syed is a Pakistani American, a Muslim, a photojournalist and a mother of two. Living in Illinois since 1998, Syed covers her head and says she understands how it feels when Muslim women are misunderstood and misrepresented. And she says it happens in the media every day.

My worse fears are coming true. Two months ago, my husband Mohammad fell off our neighbor's roof while doing a simple favor. We are beginning to accept the reality of the fall. And it was a serious fall.

Nearly 180,000 Polish immigrants live in Chicago, according to the 2007 US Census American Community Survey, a new organization is striving to keep immigrants here aware of their rights.

Almaz Yigizaw's Ethiopian Diamond restaurant is a hub of activity. Walking into this Roger’s Park establishment on Chicago’s north side, there is a strong smell of roasting coffee, paintings of Ethiopia all over the walls and a hum of chatter from the crowded tables. As a couple wanders into the restaurant, Yigizaw greets them in Amharic, Ethiopia’s most widely spoken language, and leads them to one of the few free tables in the huge room.