Articles

My name is Andrea Bazoin, and I am a translator. In high school, I used my then-limited Spanish to translate for the Central American immigrants who came to my checkout line at the grocery store in our small Nebraska town. Interpreting their “Cuanto cuesta?” was helpful, but I knew what I was really translating was a message of welcome.

Born in Havana, Cuba in November 1948, Ana Mendieta was a well-known performance artist throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. At age 12, she and her sister were forced to flee Cuba after her father joined an anti-Castro counter-revolutionary force, and the two siblings spent their first few weeks in the United States at a refugee camp in Florida until they were sent to an orphanage in Dubuque, Iowa — a location with a culture very different from the life Ana knew back in Cuba. She wouldn’t reunite with her mother and brother for five years and her father for another 18.

Portrait Photographer Betsy Meredith talks about her motivation for photographing foster children.

Student Cassie Suppes shares her following her passion alongside her peers who have hidden diversity in their identities.

Photographer and Entrepreneur Jaylyn Begay talks about representation, identity, and her mission in photography.

For those with hidden diversity and underrepresented identities, seeing yourself represented in entertainment can mean feeling pride in your identity, perhaps even for the first time.

In her journey towards finding belonging in the Jewish community, this woman discovered a cyclical pattern between representation, tolerance, and the acceptance of her own identities.

After years of feeling disconnected from her heritage, this woman is looking for belonging by exploring her Jewish roots.