I am a Karen immigrant to the United States. This picture is the place where I grew up when I was a child. I grew up in Thailand. I left there to come to the U.S.A. in 2015. I had friends when I was a child. We were all students. I went to school every weekday and I usually went to the farm on weekends with my friends. My friends and I liked to work at the farm to help our parents. If we went to the farm we had to cross the river by the woodbridge but sometimes we crossed by boat. When we came back home, before we got home, we would usually swim in the river. We were all good swimmers. On the weekend I would go visit my grandmother. She had chickens. She is in front of her house in my landscape. She is wearing Karen clothes. Karen clothes are weaved from thread made of cotton grown on the farm. Karen people usually wore these clothes when they celebrated Karen New Year and other holidays. I brought Karen longyis and Karen shirts with me to the U.S.A. They are important to my identity because they are Karen traditional clothes. When Karen people wear these clothes, Karen people know where the clothes came from. They came from Karen State in Burma, where the Karen people are originally from. When I wear my Karen clothes, I know where I came from. This is a place that I want to go back to again.

– LEAP High School Student

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant