Biography:
Ariana Lindquist grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota, USA. She studied anthropology at the University of Minnesota before moving to Taiwan to learn Mandarin Chinese. After receiving a Masters of Arts in Visual Communication from Ohio University, she relocated to China on a Fulbright grant and remained there for seven years working as a photojournalist. Ariana is also the photographic author of the award-winning book Green Card Stories, a collection of modern American immigration stories, published in 2012. Her images have earned honors from World Press Photo, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Int’l Photography Awards.
Exhibition: Green Card Stories
Green Card Stories is a collection of powerful life stories (authored by Saundra Amrhein) and photographs of 50 recent U.S. citizens and permanent residents that collectively convey a portrait of immigration in the United States at the turn of the 21st century. Through each personal story of determination and resilience, an overarching narrative emerges about the complex and often criminalizing nature of the U.S. immigration system at a time of unprecedented globalization and societal change. Together the stories reveal the broader social trends of today’s immigration — that the majority of immigrants to the United States now come from Latin America and Asia, instead of Europe, and that they increasingly settle in new destinations like the Midwest and the South, as well as traditional gateway cities.
In order to embrace the vast diversity of the immigration experience that is often under-reported, the narratives and photos in Green Card Stories place immigration firmly in the landscape of individual human lives. The stories include that of Muslim-American Soumaya Khalifa in Atlanta, grappling with hatred and suspicion directed toward her following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even as she strove to find a place of understanding between varying religions. The book chronicles the struggles of integration and identity formation amid dramatically changing national demographics — like Lylna Thao, a young Hmong woman helping on her parents’ chicken farm in Arkansas, who bucked traditional expectations, divorced her Hmong husband and found her calling as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter.
Green Card Stories also explores the complexity of current immigration policy and the immigration process, shedding light on the varied paths to obtaining a Green Card — from family and employment sponsorship to business investment, from exceptional artistic or athletic ability to political asylum. Included are personal stories that highlight the frustrated aspirations of college-bound immigrant youth, like Randolph Sealey, who only learned of his undocumented status when filling out college applications. He obtained “suspension of deportation” — a route to a Green Card no longer available today for millions of young people who instead pin their hopes on the Dream Act.
All of the life journeys in Green Card Stories show a resourcefulness prevalent among the country’s newest arrivals. With the use of individual stories and photographic portraits to elucidate the complicated topic of immigration in America today, Green Card Stories reveals the enduring contributions that immigrants continue to make to their new country – including those of Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang — and in so doing provides a timely addition to the national debate on this critical topic.
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