Greener pastures: Rwandan author on book about life as US immigrant
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Loading... - Darweshi Yego
- 12 Aug 2022
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Like many people, Ivania Inyange’s wish was to live abroad, particularly, the United States of America. Watching the fancy life portrayed in Hollywood movies, she too wanted the lifestyle, and the immense opportunities such as jobs, better education, technology, innovations that she naively envisioned would be attained on a silver platter.
She believed that she would be successful in just months, because that’s what some movies portray—the better side of life.
When she graduated from the National University of Rwanda with a Bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology, her dream came true— she attained a Diversity Visa to immigrate to the US.
However, the reality was that life was way harder than she thought it would be, and no opportunities were waiting for her, she had to sail through many storms.
No one warned her of how tough it would be to get a job, with no experience—it didn’t help that she could barely speak English.
These struggles and experiences in a foreign land impelled her to write a book titled ‘Far Away from my Roots’.
“The book shares my journey in adapting to a new lifestyle and the challenges of shouldering ambitions in a new country. The stories reveal my difficulty in approaching a new culture and my face-to-face experience in love, loneliness, racism, among others,” she says.
Inyange says that challenges were the order of the day, such as the overwhelming Los Angeles traffic that she had to navigate through, and also the angry road users with rude gestures to show contempt. Read More…
