Immigration seems the issue on everyone's mind today.  Yet with all the thinking and all the talking, we forget half the story.  It’s not just about how the receiving country deals with new immigrants, it’s also about the immigrant’s experience and how that experience, especially for young children, will shape their lives, and in turn their contribution to and role in, the greater society of which they become a part.  

When we look at the mass migration to America’s shores at the beginning of the 20th century, we get a glimpse of how that plays out.  

Alex Tizon, came to America from the Philippines.  He would go on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the former Seattle bureau chief for the LA Times and currently teaches at the University of Oregon.  

His memoir of his immigrant experience is Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self

My conversation with Alex Tizon: