Philadelphia Neighborhoods on Planting Seeds of Culture
Philadelphia Neighborhoods: Immigration – Planting Seeds of Culture to Build Connections Amongst PeopleSeptember 25, 2017 | Text and images by Marianna Sann and Sylvia Dao, Philadelphia NeighborhoodsWriter Marianna Sann and Photographer Sylvia Dao chatted with Al-Bustan’s own Elizabeth Taylor-Mead about An Immigrant Alphabet, upcoming events and more.
We’ve taken 26 letters of the English alphabet and then Wendy and the students together decided what word they would choose that represented their experience or their parents’ experience of being immigrants here for each of those letters, and then they created the image and the text.Then, we spoke to people at City Hall and to the Office of Immigrant Affairs and everybody loved the idea — particularly now when Philadelphia is under threat. Its status as a sanctuary city is under threat, so it couldn’t be more timely because people have a lot of opinions about immigration. We wanted to share those opinions and to do what we could to just say, “Look, these are these people’s experience, what’s yours?” That’s why it’s here and it’s going to be up until the end of the month.