What’s it like to be a teenage immigrant in Pittsburgh? Check out episode 5 of ‘From the Source’

What’s it like to be a teen who immigrated to Pittsburgh, or a teen being raised by immigrant parents here?

This week on the “From the Source” podcast by PublicSource, host Jourdan Hicks sits down with Pittsburgh Allderdice High School senior Sam Alawadhi to talk about the challenge — and the gifts — of having intersecting identities. Sam is a Yemeni and an American, and he shares his thoughts on his peers’ understanding of the concept of culture.

Though Sam was born in Paris, he moved to his family’s native Yemen at age 3 and remembers the Yemeni civil war breaking out when he was just 9 years old.

“I remember this really bad night where everybody was just kind of huddled up,” he says. “Because I was 9, I was like, ‘I’m just going to sleep and hope for the best and wake up the next day fine, hopefully.'”

Once his family moved to the U.S., Sam helped his parents adapt to life here. In this episode, he talks about what that was like and how teens often play the role of cultural translators for their parents.

Many families, he tells Hicks, “put the pressure on their children to know the society and become one with the society because the parents don’t know what’s going on. They need their kids to translate for them or they need kind of to teach them the culture here so they don’t look out of place.”

One place Sam uses his intersecting identities and experiences: As a member of Global Minds, a group founded at his high school to connect native English speakers and ESL students in Pittsburgh.

Discover Sam’s journey and his insights here:

Click here to listen to past episodes of “From the Source.”