Stories As We Move: A HOME Interview Series

Fatimah Abdul Manan (Malaysia/Milwaukee, WI) in conversation with Nurhasanah Harun (Malaysia/Milwaukee, WI) on March 21, 2025

Stories As We Move: A HOME Interview Series is an ongoing project that launched in 2020 as part of Lynden's HOME virtual platform. The series pairs individuals that have faced forced displacement and its changing forms in a conversational setting that is both purposeful and informational to interviewer, interviewee and their audience. Refugees, asylum seekers and migrants interview those that have resettled to the United States, including friends and family that are based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as those that remain overseas, covering various backgrounds and narrative identities, and professions, expertise and interests, including but not limited to artists, community members, advocates and leaders, healthcare workers, caseworkers, interpreters, and students and educators. These interviews are reflections of relationships and conversations that we continue to have long after resettlement; they explore issues that our refugee friends and family members continue to face as they remain in their country of origin or interim country.

In this seventeenth conversation of the HOME Interview Series, two young and ambitious Rohingya women speak about their experiences moving from country to country, and city to city. They discuss a wide array of topics as English language learners, including ‘adulting’ and code-switching as hijabis, and the overall diversity and varied experience of living in the south side of Milwaukee, as they pursue their careers in architecture and medicine.

About Fatimah Abdul Manan

Fatimah Abdul Manan was born in Myanmar and moved to Malaysia when she was 6 years old. As a refugee, she was unable to go to school in Malaysia and spent her time taking care of my two younger brothers. In March 2013, she came to the U.S., where I attended middle and high school, and later graduated from the B.Arch (Bachelor of Architecture) program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Shortly after graduation, she began studying for her architecture license while working on a community mosque project. As of 2025, she is focused on refining her portfolio as she prepares for her career in architecture. Beyond architecture, she teaches crochet, helping others learn basic stitches and techniques. She is also passionate about tennis and being active. She enjoys other creative pursuits and challenges, including food-related such as cooking spicy Asian curries. Whether through design, teaching, or exploring new skills in various fields, she is always looking for ways to grow and expand her creativity.

About Nurhasanah Harun

Born and raised as a Rohingya refugee in Malaysia, Nurhasanah Harun's journey to achieve her educational dreams has been anything but easy. Upon the inability of being granted permanent residency in her country of birth, she arrived in the United States with her family at the age of 14. Despite having limited English proficiency, and whilst facing immense challenges adjusting to a new life in America, she remained steadfast and determined to pursue a career in medicine. In 2022, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Criminology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Upon graduation, she has been actively working in the healthcare field while completing the necessary prerequisites to pursue medical school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, striving to turn her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor into reality. Her hope in pursuing medicine is to help others the way she once wished she and her community were helped and to make a real difference in people’s lives by offering care with compassion. She hopes to use her journey to turn her struggles into a strength, and to inspire others to never give up, aiming to prove to herself that her dreams—no matter how impossible they seem—are worth chasing.

Check out the entire collection of Stories As We Move: A HOME Interview Series here.