Life Stopped in Evin Prison

Mosaic Community Essays I, Mohammad H. Fallahiya, was born in 1975 in Ahwaz region in the southern part of Iran. In 2006 I was arrested in Tehran. I was considered a threat to national security. I worked as a journalist and a teacher. I spent more than 3 years in Evin prison from 2006-2009.  They […]

Art is Liberation

Mosaic Community Essays Art, to me, is liberation. This is really important because I am a woman of color. My mother is Puerto Rican, and my father is Cape Verdean. I am someone that was raised in various institutions in this country and never quite felt like I fully fit in. There are a lot […]

A True Anchor Baby

Mosaic Community Essays “Who is it?!” Mom stood silently, with her face turned towards me and her ear towards the door. BANG. BANG. BANG.“Open the door ma’am, it’s the NYPD. We just want to ask you some questions.” “Questions about what? I’m a single woman down here and I don’t open the door to nobody, […]

Growing in Sankofa

Mosaic Community Essays I am a child of South Asian immigrants, studying art and design at RISD. Out of the need for survival and success, much of Asian American values are based on hard-work, following a “stable” career path, and instruction, without question. But whenever I was forced to follow this status quo, whether that […]

On bearing witness to the costs of the post-9/11 wars, 20 years in

Mosaic Community Essays Twenty years. 929,000 killed. Eight trillion dollars. That’s a conservative estimate of the costs of America’s forever war on terror. When Brown University’s Costs of War Project, which I helped found 10 years ago, released these figures earlier this month, I was standing in my Maryland kitchen with my husband, a Naval […]

How We’ve Changed

It’s been 20 years since the September 11th terrorist attacks changed everything. In this episode of Mosaic, we’ll hear from four different people about their experiences with 9/11.

I moved to New York City in 1999 to chase my dream of becoming a writer.

Mosaic Community Essays I moved to New York City in 1999 to chase my dream of becoming a writer. I was 28 and broke and in love with the paradox of New York’s grit and polish and its chronic opportunities to reinvent yourself. I probably would have been leaving my apartment in Brooklyn – late as […]

Birds

Mosaic Community Essays It was 2020, the summer of COVID, when my parents, now in their 80s, decided to adopt baby birds.  Here’s how it happened: in the process of cutting dead wood off a tree in my parents’ backyard, trimmers had accidentally sawed off a segment which contained a nest hidden in a cavity […]

COVID NY

Mosaic Community Essays March 3rd 2020World Wildlife DayAt United NationsNew York The last event there due to covidA whisper around townIs this virus for real?Dinner with GaryWants to meet me in LAI say – stay in NY – not safe to flyI’m going to family in RI not LAShrugs his shoulders, flies the next daycomes back […]

Bonus Episode! Capture the Block from Fringe Fest 2021

Highlights from Mosaic’s community stage at The Wilbury Theatre’s Fringe Fest 2021. Ana sits down with activist Enrique Sánchez and artist Jess Brown to talk about the impact of the pandemic on their lives and communities.