Siblings usually grow up together in the same house, with the same parents, and sharing the same cultural background, yet they still become remarkably different people with distinct interests and divergent life paths. This is a widespread occurrence in families, but in immigrant families, the phenomenon becomes even more pronounced, as cultural expectations, adaptation pressures, and family roles provide additional layers of complexity. Children raised in such environments must navigate between the customs of their ancestors and the practices of the dominant culture,
It was a Sunday this past June, and Virginia Ortega was heading to work at her job cleaning hotel rooms, putting in overtime so she could pay her rent. She asked her son Cesar (a pseudonym), an autistic 16-year-old who also suffers from hallucinations, if she should find someone to watch him while she worked, but he said no, he was old enough to stay home alone.
"I saw the physical signs of stress. There was a lot of insomnia, just a lot of worrying, constantly talking about what are we going to do next?" Like many first generation immigrants in their community, her parents had limited fluency in English. They struggled to figure out how to apply for funds for rebuilding. So, Pham and other youth in the community, who were fluent in English and computer savvy, stepped up to help the older generation.
