This program was made possible by -- ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ By a grant from Anne Ray Foundation.

And by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ PBS American Portrait is a platform that allows people to share their experiences.

To tell their stories.

Using the prompts that PBS American Portrait put out.

♪♪ I was raised to believe -- I took a risk when -- What gets me out of bed in the morning?

What gets me out of bed in the morning -- -- is that I've got a purpose.

-- is the fact that we're going to be doing something special.

What gets me out of bed in the morning?

Probably my mom and dad.

Work.

School.

Music.

Coffee.

Optimism.

My faith.

My kids.

Knowing that I have to be the best dad that I can possibly be.

The thought that maybe this will be the day I figure out how to make my dream come true.

The idea that every morning there is a new problem to solve.

So that is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Is your story -- -- the millions of stories that make up this country.

Just regular people like you, me.

Everyone has a different story to tell and share.

People's videos and pictures -- A digital tapestry.

It's just a place to be heard and feel valued and listened to.

Escuchar los diferentes puntos de vista de las personas de diferentes orígenes, de diferentes clases, de diferentes edades.

To inspire and to encourage one another.

♪♪ A common humanity in the American experience.

This is who we are.

That is what is great about it is that you feel connected to a giant place because we all share little tiny snippets about our lives.

Most days I feel -- ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ This project can help bring us together -- -- to listen to each other.

Sharing your own ideas, your feelings.

Your challenges, your drive.

What makes us the same, what makes us different.

We all have a story to tell.

All around the United States.

To reflect our true American Portrait.

♪♪ What gets me out of bed in the morning is something most people can relate to.

What gets me out of bed in the morning is just the simple joys in life.

I wake up every single morning just excited.

Honestly waking up, making breakfast, having a cup of coffee.

What gets me up in the morning is knowing that I am going to be a blessing to others.

One of the ways I do that is to work with children, orphan children who do not have homes.

I converted my childhood home in Nigeria to be an orphanage and we serve children on a day-to-day basis.

We have helped 147 children find happy homes of which 19 of them are here in the United States.

We provide education for them, we provide health care and of course shelter and food.

So we help stabilize them so that they can be able to find a happy home.

Serving them gives me fulfillment.

People say, thank you for what you do.

I say, no, I thank the kids because it gives me an opportunity to be that life-giving spirit to others.

It is very rewarding because it feeds my soul.

♪♪ When I step outside my door I feel a lot of anxiousness, but a lot of excitement too.

My family and I moved to this really great old neighborhood right in the middle of the pandemic.

And because of that we haven't really had a chance to get to know our neighbors or to meet many of them.

So I guess I'm just feeling pretty hopeful.

We're really loving this community and we see a lot of great kids out and families walking their pets and we're really, I'm really excited to be a part of this community and eventually get to know our great neighbors.

And so when I look up when I walk out my door it's because some guy, somewhere, at some time said that the vast majority of people do not look above 40 degrees over the horizon on a given day.

And so I am being that exception and I am reflecting and taking myself out of the hustle and bustle of the day and reflecting on hope, reflecting on the solutions, reflecting on the people who are doing the work that are making our environment healthier and protecting wildlife and in the process protecting people.

Like many homes here in the Midwest we've got a front door that leads to a nice generous porch.

And I love that because the porch is this soft edge, this intersection between kind of private space and public space where we really can connect with the outside world, with what is beyond our private space.

And as a landscape architect I really pay attention to soft edges.

And it is my hope that once the pandemic is behind us that people will no longer be afraid to open the front door and allow themselves to be connected to what is beyond.

♪♪ When I step outside my door I see blinding white snow and never in a million years did I think that this is where I would live.

I was born in Mexico and spent the majority of my life in Arizona and never in a million years did I think that I would be living in Des Moines, Iowa.

And that's kind of how it goes, right?

We don't always think we will end up where we actually end up.

And those times in our lives when we felt like there was no way that we could survive were actually the birthplace of something new and something greater.

♪♪ Something that I never expected was to lose the second half of my senior year of college.

It was one week you were with your best friends having the time of your life and then the next week you're all sent back home or moving somewhere new and none of us were prepared for that, none of us really thought that would happen.

And it's crazy to think that some of the people I thought I had four more months with to make memories I still have not seen and we never got that final goodbye before parting our ways.

It was just one day we were there and the next day we were gone.

♪♪ I never expected to stop doing what I do.

I never expected to just come to a grinding halt, not be making costumes, not be answering questions, not be taking care of the volunteers, not be creating stuff.

Just never expected to be quarantined, that's not something we really do in our modern times but here we are again.

So that's not what I expected but it's what we've got to do.

So hopefully this is what helps us turn the corner.

Hopefully we keep being kind to each other.

Hopefully we find a solution fast.

♪♪ Three months into opening up a business for the first time I would be shut down because of a global pandemic.

I mean, what are the chances?

I grew up in a country where diseases and pandemics were commonplace.

I moved to the Midwest and worked hard to build a comedy club after years of working in engineering and then life takes me full circle and closes me down for a virus that originated in Asia.

So that was kind of fun.

And I'm not the only one affected by this.

A lot of people, a lot of businesses were affected and closed.

But what I saw was how this community came together and supported businesses such as mine in this time of need and I kind of needed that because now I know what's important.

And this isn't just a business to make money, this is something to support local comedians, support local artists, but more importantly to support a community.

I think that after a crisis that is when people need to laugh the most and that is why I know comedy will survive and that is why I know this comedy club is going to be great.

♪♪ So, you don't know what it's like to be a size 15 sneakerhead.

So I was going to make my story about something more serious, but why not bring a little levity to this project and discuss an incredible first world problem.

Being addicted to finding the latest and greatest sneakers but wearing a size 15.

Seriously, it's annoying.

Most stores stop carrying shoes in size 13 so I haven't purchased a pair of designer sneakers inside of a physical location since I was a teenager and I turned 34 last month.

For some reason, dress shoes are easier to come by.

It was either my junior or senior year of high school that I outgrew a size 13 shoe.

I remember visiting a store and having a clerk break it to me that they didn't have anything for me.

It hurts still.

Despite this, I still like to visit physical shoe stores on occasion to see if anything catches my eye.

Sometimes on those visits extra friendly employees keep asking me if I need help.

And I ask them if they have something in size 15.

This often draws looks of pity or a chuckle followed by some version of no.

Still, I make due, as you can see.

And I've been pretty good at developing a list of websites that carry my size.

Also, I also really like eye-catching shoes and I live in Iowa where the male shoe game resembles a New Balance ad and is home to more Nike Air Monarchs per capita than any other state.

I don't know if that's a real stat, but it feels like it's a real stat.

So me having gigantic and colorful shoes really gets attention.

I'm sure that's why.

And I sometimes find myself talking to parents who have teenagers with giant feet and I share a few of my resources, not all of them because they're still very competitive with size 15, but enough that their kids won't struggle.

See, as a guy who has big feet but doesn't want to be regulated to the discard pile or the clown shoe section, I empathize with those kids.

So being a sneakerhead is a small part of me but it's a part of me nonetheless.

So thank you for your time and hopefully sympathy toward the big foot cause.

♪♪ You don't know what it's like to be different.

As you can observe I sound different, my accent.

If I don't open my mouth and speak, I'm being judged with everyone else.

But when I speak I always get one question.

Where are you from?

I'm from Nigeria.

I speak a different language.

If I don't speak with accent people say oh he's smart, he's good.

But when I speak with an accent sometimes I'm being put in the category of needing an extra hand to understand simple things.

No, I know English, I just sound different.

But being different does not define me just because I have an accent.

Being different is also good.

I'm wired different but we can celebrate it together.

We bring things from different perspectives that I share with my fellow Iowans to make the world a better place.

So the word of difference comes with being different and unique because of my accent.

I took a risk when I shaved off all my hair.

I've done it a couple of times now and it's a risky thing, it's a risky thing for a young woman to do.

And I used to have extremely long, beautiful, conventionally beautiful hair and I think that myself and many women use it as sort of a shield to the public and they really use it to define themselves and their image.

And I kind of wanted to challenge and redefine my own ideals of beauty and what it means to be comfortable in my own skin.

And it was a big risk.

It changed a lot.

For something so seemingly innocuous it changed the way so many people looked at me and what they thought about me and who I was and it was calculated, a calculated risk for sure, but it worked out well for me.

I definitely enjoyed it.

I've done it more than once now.

♪♪ Time has always been now.

But it is also now more than ever that young people must understand the power that their voices hold and realize that by using it, it can initiate some much needed change in this country as well as be the reason for this country to finally provide liberty and freedom for all.

And because of that we'd like to share a poem we wrote titled "Angry".

♪♪ Oh, are you looking at me?

At us?

I know what you're thinking.

Two angry black girls.

It's okay, we get it all the time.

I mean, how can we not?

How can we stand here and act like everything is okay -- -- when our own rights are stolen from us before we even knew what they were.

When we have to memorize our brothers', our fathers', our friends' eulogies before they are even dead.

When a black man's trial can last longer than his life.

You know what?

You're right.

Because we are angry -- -- that our own school district does nothing to acknowledge Black History Month.

That they can't even take one month when in reality it should be twelve out of a year.

Angry that we fight for black lives, we fear we may just become another statistic.

Another name thrown around.

Another forgotten story.

Another victim to the unjust society in which we live.

Angry that we are taught to cherish the National Anthem -- -- before we can read that it celebrates the deaths of our ancestors.

And because when we promote black excellence -- -- they see it as enforcing white inferiority.

And because when we say hands up, don't shoot, they do it anyway.

Angry because they want to live like us -- -- look like us -- -- rap like us -- -- dress like us -- -- but they never really want to be us.

Because to be like us you have to know pain.

You have to know struggle.

You have to work twice as hard to get half as much.

They say to understand another person's life you have to walk in their shoes.

I'd ask you to walk in mine but I know that's impossible.

Because to be black in America -- -- is to live today -- -- you'll die tomorrow.

Angry that we're still treated like three-fifths a person.

That our actions always have to accommodate to them.

That they use n#*#*#*#* recreationally.

Then tell us it's not their fault.

It's just a song they were listening to.

But they have a black friend, girlfriend, boyfriend -- -- that has bestowed them the privilege -- -- as if being impressed by n#*#*#*#* for decades was a blessing in disguise.

Too blind to see their own.

They always want to be the victim.

But insist on pulling the trigger.

But don't get me wrong -- We're p#*#*#*#*#* the hell of at the black community -- -- for allowing us to be segregated between African and Black -- -- for allowing the white man to infiltrate our ideologies so that we praise the concept of colorism.

How many bullets needs to be taken for there to be unity in our community?

How many poems does Langston Hughes have to write for us to realize how deferred our dreams really are?

How many novels does Zora Neale Hurston have to publish for us to realize that Black Lives Matter is only a repetition of history?

Angry for the Charleston Church shooting victims.

For Trayvon Martin.

For Courtlin Arrington.

For Hadiya Pendleton.

For Taiyania Thompson.

For the black boy girls that have been gunned down on the street by law enforcement.

For the black boys and girls who have become mere statistics.

For the black boys and girls whose names I cannot announce because they were never given that justice.

♪♪ Angry.

Because when we say Black Lives Matter they don't say it back.

It's time to turn the page.

MLK has a story.

Malcolm X has a story.

Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, they have stories.

All of our late brothers and sisters have a story.

Now it's time for us to write our own.

Because when no one else was there for black people -- -- black people were there for black people.

But what do we know, right?

We're just some more angry black girls.

♪♪ A tradition I carry on is the production of local music onto vinyl records.

I'm the co-owner of a vinyl production company in Des Moines, Iowa.

We use a Presto 6N lathe, which was in production for around three decades starting in the 1930s and going all the way through to the 1960s.

It's an old technology.

It's one of the first technologies actually used to put music onto physical mediums and it's essentially the same technique that would have been used to create gramophones almost 150 years ago.

So the tradition goes back a really long ways.

♪♪ The tradition I carry on is Vietnamese home cooking.

Growing up I would stand in the corner of the kitchen watching my mom prepare dishes from your basic braised pork to bigger ones like Pho.

I honestly don't think that she knows what the exact ingredients are or the exact measurements are.

I think she just spices it until the ancestors whisper in her ear to stop.

I've tried to watch and learn and approximate what she has done.

I have very fond memories of that part of the culture helping anchor us in America.

So to this day I will try to cook all the Vietnamese dishes for all my friends and family and try to introduce them to my culture.

♪♪ The tradition that I carry on is reconnecting with Mother Nature through foraging.

♪♪ My grandparents and their parents before them were family farmers.

My grandfather fished the creek.

Being outdoors on a regular basis was a majority of the time that we had spent while we were out there.

The way that they worked with the land and growing their crop was very respectful and provided a lot of abundance for our family.

I believe foraging is working on a small scale towards a bigger idea of getting closer to reconnecting with my roots and what my grandparents had established.

♪♪ The tradition that I carry on is providing a community space where people gather and enjoy simple pleasures, especially really fine coffee.

In spite of everything that has gone on, I still try and look to my mission statement of providing a friendly and welcoming environment where we can provide a high quality product to our community.

And so even though we have had to adapt how we're serving that, I still use that as a guiding force with the understanding that we have to be very careful about how that is shared.

Obviously I'm thinking about my customer's interests and health, my staff's interests and health, but also the potential longevity and sustainability of our business.

And so I want to make sure that I'm conscientious about keeping our business going and yet doing it in a way that everybody remains safe.

♪♪ So, the first chapter of my American story actually started 50 years ago when my family immigrated here during the Vietnam War.

20 years after that, right here in Des Moines, Iowa, I was born, thus starting chapter 2, my chapter.

Growing up is tough for any kid, but as a first generation Asian-American millennial I feel as if my rules were a little different.

Everything was American outside of home, but at home everything was like traditional and the Southeast Asian culture was alive and thriving.

Like, I'm talking between the Buddha shrine in the guest bedroom and all of the plastic Tupperware stored inside of the oven, I honestly didn't know who I was.

My parents pushed and pushed and pushed for me to assimilate and work hard and never bring any extra attention to myself.

Little did they know though I was writing a completely different story.

I grew up right here in America.

They didn't.

So who are they to teach me how to live in a country that is unnatural to them?

That was my struggle, that was my story for 30 years.

It was absolutely impossible for me to see eye-to-eye with them.

They carried the weight of a lifestyle left behind whereas this American lifestyle is the only one I've ever known.

So who are they to teach me how to live in a country that is unnatural to them?

My childhood was a kitchen sink of influences and it took me many, many years for me to realize that I'm actually exactly who I'm supposed to be.

Kids always see their parents as the adults or the grownups in the room.

But it wasn't until I actually started to see myself as an adult or as a grownup that my perspective on my own story started to change and my understanding of my first chapter actually started to deepen.

I don't have to choose between being Asian sometimes or being American other times.

I am an Asian-American and it is equally as beautiful as the two separate cultures that make me.

♪♪ The people I relate to most are problem solvers, people who think about what if.

What if this could happen?

What if that could happen?

And people who don't get stuck on a, well what if it goes wrong?

I think in those moments it's always being able to say, well if we open up one idea, we can open up ten ideas and it helps us go from feeling like we're stuck to feeling like we have options.

We know who we can get information from, where we're going to get information from and we don't think that we have to solve it ourselves.

And so when I meet people who are really great at problem solving they just realize they have this entire index of resources around them.

When a problem does come up I can just step back and say, has this happened before?

If so, what happened?

If we were to try to do this, what could happen?

By asking what if, it continually opens the door.

We're not stuck.

We just need to find more answers.

At the end of the day they're able to get something done and I see problem solvers as people who are able to take something that maybe is stalled in action and to really lead to a desired outcome.

♪♪ At this point in my life I feel very much in the middle.

I have two young children and I have parents who are empty nesters because my sister and I are graduated.

And I feel I think three things.

A lot of fear, fear that I'm not going to raise productive humans, but I'm hoping those Midwest values stay true.

I also have a lot of fear for knowing that my parents are aging and we're just entering a new phase of life.

I also feel very in the middle because I kind of see the future but also have some past, which I didn't have before when I was little, everything was just present.

But I'm hopeful.

I'm hopeful that we can develop the next generation of productive humans.

I'm hopeful that we can continue to have hope with all of the things going on in this world.

And I know and believe that we can have good ripple effect, we can create ripples happy or crappy, it's our choice.

And I look forward to creating good ripples in this middle portion of my life.

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