Perspective builds identity

In this excerpt from his memoir, Rodriguez provides a stirring recollection from his adolescence: the first time he experienced racism as a result of being an immigrant in America. As he says, the experience "stays with [him] like a foul odor."

In this interview from National Public Radio, host Terry Gross speaks with Imam Rauf about his dream to build a place where Muslims and people of different refligions can go to learn from each other and coexist.

In this excerpt, the reader meets two characters from The Misfits: Addie, a girl who is exceptionally tall and smart for a middle schooler and Joe, who is creative and feminine in a way that makes his peers nervous.

In this video, young people reflect on society's rules for what males and females can and cannot do.

Until Daniel Beaty was 3 years old, his father would "knock knock" on his door every morning. This performance explores the shaping of personal identity in an incarcerated parent's absence.

This cartoon challenges assumptions that all men who wear turbans are affiliated with terrorist organizations.

Rosie Molinary describes how she felt as a Latina teenager in the United States, caught between disparate and unrealistic beauty standards.

In this essay, Melvin Pichardo, a young aspiring actor, becomes so immersed in becoming a character for a role that he begins to question who he is as a person and what he feels and thinks.

This cartoon offers “a short illustrated history” of the artist’s life from birth to present day, with a special emphasis on his Sikh metamorphosis.

This cartoon eye chart tests for perfect vision, which sees beyond stereotypes and bias and encourages a lens of compassion.

Young people speak out against fitting every person into one of two narrowly conceived gender categories.

In this excerpt from his book, Walking with the Wind, John Lewis describes his involvement in the sit-ins in Nashville, Tenn., in the spring of 1960.

In this blog post, the author moves through a timeline of sexual aggression and violence imposed on her, or women around her, beginning in her childhood and going through having her own child.

A white man writes about his journey to understanding his racial privilege and the “benefit of the doubt” that life has afforded him.

After growing up in foster care, Ashley, a young Native-American Caucasian woman, converts to Islam in hopes of finding structure in a life where it never existed. However, with that decision comes the risk of losing one of the few biological connections she still has.

In 1942, “For My People” won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, and Margaret Walker became one of the youngest black writers to have published poetry in the 20th century. Her poem makes tangible the African American struggle, yet also brings to the forefront a hope for all people to “rise and take control” during a dark period in American history.

This spoken word poem explores the limited definition of maleness that is sometimes passed from fathers to sons.