Our Stories Carried us Here

"Eleven storytellers chronicle their journeys from places all over the world—including Guatemala, Chad, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan—to the United States.

Each story compellingly details a variety of experiences the individual immigrant or refugee had, highlighting differences between stories that too often are lumped together or not given an opportunity to be heard. Each storyteller was paired with an illustrator from a similar linguistic and cultural heritage. The thoughtfulness of the matches shines through, as every panel authentically conveys the narrators' poignant and emotional memories, highlighting the beauty of their homelands and the cultures they still identify with. The narratives show the struggles and triumphs of acclimating to a new language, culture, and worldview as well as dealing with obstacles like racism and microaggressions...

Will strongly evoke both thought-provoking insights and empathy."—KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW

Green Card Voices presents a bold and unconventional collection of first-person stories told and illustrated by immigrants and refugees living across the United States. Stanford scientist, deaf student, indigenous activist, Black entrepreneur—all immigrants and refugees—recount journeys from their home countries in ten vibrantly illustrated stories. Faced by unfamiliar vistas, they are welcomed with possibilities, and confronted by challenges and prejudice. Timely, sobering, and insightful, Our Stories Carried Us Here acts as a mirror and a light to connect us all with immigrant and refugee experiences.

Tea Rozman, PhD is the founding Executive Director of Green Card Voices. Previously, she has worked for Reconciliation and Culture Cooperative Network, a New York City non-profit working with immigrants from the Former Yugoslavia. She is an NYU graduate in Near and Middle Eastern Studies and has a PhD in Cultural History, specializing in oral history from the University of Nova Gorica. She is a first-generation immigrant from Slovenia and 2015 Bush Leadership Fellow.

Julie Vang is a spiritual writer and co-editor of Our Stories Carried Us Here. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a Bachelors in Family Social Science and a minor in Asian American Studies. She is Hmong-American with over six years of policy and programming experience.

Tom Kaczynski learned to read English by looking at American capitalist comics in communist Poland. He moved to the U.S. in 1987. His comics have appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, MOME, and many other publications throughout the years, and were nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2011. Kaczynski is the founder of the independent publishing house, Uncivilized Books.

Nate Powell (b. 1978, Little Rock, Arkansas) is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. He began self-publishing at age 14, and graduated from School of Visual Arts in 2000. His work includes forthcoming graphic memoir/essay Save It For Later, Eisner-nominated Ozark horror tale Come Again, civil rights icon John Lewis' legendary March trilogy, comics essay About Face, Two Dead, You Don't Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence Of Our Friends, The Year Of The Beasts, and Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero. Powell’s work has also received a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, three Eisner Awards, two Ignatz Awards, CXC’s Transformative Work Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, a Coretta Scott King Author Award, four YALSA Great Graphic Novels For Teens selections, the Walter Dean Myers Award, and is a two-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Powell has discussed his work at the United Nations, as well as on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, CNN, and Free Speech TV. His books have been placed on school curriculum in over 40 states, and his animated artwork in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Selma: The Bridge To The Ballot has reached over a million students in 50,000 schools across the nation. From 1999 to 2009, Powell worked full-time providing support for adults with developmental disabilities alongside his cartooning efforts. He managed underground record label Harlan Records for 16 years, and performed in punk bands Soophie Nun Squad and Universe. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the "boat people" wave of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) has been selected for an American Book Award, a Common Book for UCLA and other colleges and universities, an all-city read by Seattle and San Francisco public libraries, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. It made over thirty best of 2017 book lists, including Bill Gates' top five picks. She illustrated the picture book, A Different Pond, written by the poet Bao Phi (Capstone, 2017), for which she won a Caldecott Honor. With her son, Hien, she co-illustrated the children’s book, Chicken of the Sea (McSweeney’s, 2019), written by Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and his son, Ellison. Her short comics can be found online at The Nib, PEN America, and BOOM California. She is currently researching and drawing a work of graphic nonfiction about immigrant detention and deportation, to be published by One World, Random House.