Category: Push and Pull Factors

feature stories exploring people’s motivations for immigrating.

More Than a Coin Purse

As humans we often assign personal value to objects and my parents were no exception. When my parents migrated from Colombia in 2011, they packed their whole life into one overfilled suitcase and when it could hold no more, they carried essentials in their hands and pockets. One of these essentials was a coin purse. This coin purse was a carefully hand crafted small brown leather coin purse stamped with “Colombia” and the colors of the Colombian flag. To many, it might have seemed like a simple coin purse passing by, but to my parents, it represented the love and pride they had for their country. Despite this, what we love is not always what is best for us. This is why my parents felt forced to leave due to the increasing violence in Colombia associated with the Colombian armed conflict, as well as the economic difficulties that persisted from the early 1980s through the 2000s. They were in search of safety and opportunity. My parents were lucky enough to find that in New York where they were uplifted by their Colombian community in Jamaica, Queens. Over time, the coin purse was passed down to me. Now every time I hold it I am reminded that the coin purse carries more than just physical currency but also cultural currency and it represents a story that didn’t end with my parents, but continues through me.

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Authentically Faux Pearls

Throughout my life, asking questions about my family’s history within Asia has proved futile. My ancestors arrived in China from Korea multiple generations ago, yet fragments of the past were never passed down and instead were lost. However, during a visit to China in the summer of 2025, my paternal grandmother gifted me a tangible reminder of my family’s muddled history, a faux pearl bracelet. This bracelet, though cheap, has become a priceless symbol of connection. It carries the weight of my family’s migration from South Korea to China, and my maternal grandparents’ and parents’ eventual departure from their homes to live in the United States in the 2000s. My family chose to continue this pattern of migration, cultivating new and better lives for themselves, settling in the Asian-dominated community of Flushing, NYC. Having the privilege of living in the United States, I am constantly reminded of the sacrifices that had to be made for me to lead a more stable life. These reminders fostered a deep desire to situate my family’s unique journey within the broader history of Korean migration and displacement. I have come to understand that 20th-century mass migration from Korea was driven by survival and shaped by multiple instances of wartime and political instability. With this, my simple faux pearl bracelet has come to represent the struggles and resilience of countless Korean migrants, including my family.

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Russian-Soviet-Jewish-New-Yorkian-American-Parisian Tea Culture

Every night after dinner, my mom asks me a one-word question: “Tea?” After I nod my answer, she pulls out two teacups, two saucers, and a teapot from the cabinet behind her. In the teapot, she prepares zavarka, a concentrated form of tea, using black tea, named Paris, which I bought from a company based in SoHo. Over tea, she tells stories about her home country, Moldova, and adjustment to NYC. In 1993, my mom and her family immigrated to NYC from Moldova, along with the 35,900 other Jews emigrating from the former Soviet Union. After 1970, the largest wave of Jewish immigration since the 1920s occurred, and one of the largest locations of settlement was NYC. Migration was influenced in part by war breaking out when Transdniestria, now considered a region in Moldova, declared independence from Moldova. This region was composed mostly of the minorities of Moldova’s population, and Moldova refused to recognize it. When she escaped this situation as a refugee to NYC, my mom was one of many Soviet-Jewish women married early. She received one of the most common Soviet wedding gifts: a tea set. This set now stands in a cabinet in my mom’s kitchen, displayed as a reminder of her Soviet roots, but when used with American tea and her American daughter, the tea set reminds my mom of her adjustment to a new home.

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NYC Postcard

Old postcard showing lower Manhattan, NYC

In terms of immigration or migration, I may be a citizen but that is only because of the stories that come from my parents before me. My mom immigrated from communist eastern Europe to the United States when she was just eighteen years old. She was born in 1970’s Hungary, during the cold war and occupation of several countries by the Soviet Union. Life during this time was far different from how it is now, with communism and socialism playing roles in my Mom’s life. In 1989 communist rule in eastern Europe collapsed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transition from communist rule to a democratic system in Hungary. Two years later was when she first came to the United States all by herself. My mom was raised in a smaller town, so she was always amazed by the big American cities that were on TV, especially New York. More importantly, she also had a postcard displaying the big buildings in Manhattan. It served as another form of seeing what other parts of the world look like, and what her life could be or look like as well. That postcard she had was something that really helped to give that ambition to change her life trajectory by doing what not many can muster the confidence for in immigrating to NYC alone, and is a big part of why our family is here today.

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Refuge to Service

This Army Commendation Medal was awarded to my grandfather, Captain Murray Kohn, for his exceptional service as a dental officer at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1970 to 1972. Born in the Bronx in 1943, Murray was the son of Jewish immigrants who had escaped the rising tide of antisemitism in Austria and Poland just years before his birth. His father, David, fled Austria in 1939, while his mother, Shirley, arrived at Ellis Island in 1926. Growing up in Washington Heights, Murray’s path to American identity was defined by education and service. During the Vietnam War, he entered the military through the “Berry Plan” as an obligatory volunteer, ensuring the health and readiness of soldiers heading to and returning from the front lines. This medal represents more than just military merit; it symbolizes the full circle of his family’s migration story. For a family that had fled state-sponsored persecution in Europe, Murray’s service as a commissioned officer and his receipt of this honor marked a profound transition from being outsiders seeking refuge to being integral protectors of the American nation. As the only dentist in his cohort to receive the medal, it stands as a testament to the “steady hands” and exactitude he inherited from a lineage of survivors. Today, this object serves as a bridge between his parents’ struggle to reach America and the civic legacy he built for our family.

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The Megillah

The Megillah

This Megillah was a constant companion in my family’s journey across multiple countries, keeping them connected to their roots. A Megillah is a Hebrew scroll read every year on the holiday of Purim. This Megillah was made in the city of Tetouan, Morocco, where my family lived until the mid-20th century. In the 1950s, after Morocco’s independence, the Megillah took on a more meaningful role in my family. Tension rose between the Muslim and Jewish communities in Morocco. Families started to leave behind the only lives they knew in order to escape the pressure. My family moved to Israel, where they could freely practice their religion. Due to economic difficulties, my family migrated to New York City in 1982, their final destination. Despite various moves, the Megillah has remained a constant pillar and has become a symbol of their identity. Today, our family’s Megillah is read annually in my local synagogue on the holiday of Purim, a community tradition. This object represents the immigrant experience in America by blending personal experiences and community. NYC is a city built by generations of immigrants who have each brought their own unique culture. The Megillah is an example of how culture and tradition can be maintained while still being part of a broader American identity.

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The Passover Spoon

From Silk Road trading tables to my family’s Passover seder in Queens, this gold-plated “Passover spoon” has carried nearly two centuries of movement across continents, holding a significance far greater than the meals it serves. Each year at our Passover seder, we share a bite of my grandmother’s Plov from this spoon, preserved since 1828. As a child, I was fascinated and repelled by how many mouths the spoon had touched, but now I see it as a witness to migration, trade, faith, and continuity. Family oral history suggests the spoon was acquired through trade, reflecting generations of interactions and shared meals among Muslims and Jews in Central Asia. My father’s side of the family are Bukharian (Mizrahi) Jews with roots in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria, who worked as merchants along the Silk Road before settling in Tajikistan. They lived under Russian and Soviet rule until my father immigrated to New York in 1992. Earlier periods reflected coexistence and shared commerce between Muslims and Jews, but rising antisemitism and restrictive Soviet policies led to major waves of Jewish emigration in the 1970s and early 1990s. Religious holidays, meals, and language unify my family. We speak Russian, Bukharian (a dialect of Farsi), and English. This spoon brings these elements together in a single ritual. In Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world, our Passover table reflects the cultural coexistence that shaped my ancestors’ lives along the Silk Road.

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A sound carrier: My uncle’s talking drum

On a shelf in my uncle’s reading room sits a small talking drum. You can easily recognize it by its wooden frame, which is surrounded by leather strings and fitted with two leather faces. The drum only ever leaves the shelf when someone asks about it, and when it does, it always ends up in my uncle’s hands. He is very fond of it and his arms tend to fold around it like wings closing over a nest.

Traditionally, the drum is used during celebrations and coronations for kings because it has the ability to mimic the tone of a person’s voice. However, in my family, it takes on a different role. When it comes out, we gather around whoever is playing and take turns trying to guess what the drum is saying. When it reaches my uncle, the drum settles into a playful rhythm that makes people want to dance. Its crisp, tight sound is what first attracted my uncle to it. That sound was harder for him to find after he moved to the United States in the 2000s, which prompted him to get a talking drum of his own. The sound of the drum celebrates my family’s life in the U.S, but like a heartbeat, it is also a reminder of home. We carry the sounds of home with us, and the talking drum is my family’s way of sharing that sound.

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Double-headed Eagle

A single piece of jewelry bears the weight of identity, family sacrifice, and cultural survival across generations. My pendant is a small gold necklace featuring a gold double-headed eagle. Two heads are facing outward on a single body, mirroring the Albanian flag. As a first-generation Albanian-American, I did not grasp its significance until my mother gave it to me during my sophomore year of high school, a time when I was searching for who I was and where I came from. The two heads represent the unity of Albania’s two groups, the Gheg and the Tosk, and the nation’s position between the East and West. Under communism, the government forbade citizens from expressing national identity, yet the eagle was worn close to the heart, because identity cannot be legislated away.

My own parents were among the Albanians who left after communism fell. My father served in the military before boarding a boat to New York, where he rebuilt his life working in factories and pizza shops. My mother followed family members by plane, carrying Albania with her while forging something new in America. Together they labored to provide for my siblings and I. This necklace ties me to a country I did not experience firsthand, while enabling me to carry Albania’s history and my family’s story into my own American life. I now use this as a reminder to keep on working hard (just like my parents did) at the things that I want in life.

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