Nerjes Azzam

“Home Away from Home” is a piece centered around how minority students at Middlebury present their identities at a predominantly white institution. Here, five students, including myself, illustrate how they have adjusted to the college life through cultural and religious elements. For some individuals, feeling “home” is through the items brought from them.

This piece captures cooking with Japanese ingredients bought from an at-home ethnic supermarket, eating Pakistani snacks sent in family-made care packages, the exhibition of a Somalian flag in a dorm room, the wearing of a Jewish necklace passed down through generations, and the mix between a Mexican quilt handmade by my very own grandmother and the jewelry that speaks my name before I can. Exhibiting this cultural or religious pride is just one of the many ways students are able to deconstruct the main identities that exist in a white Christian institution.