The 95 Percent Project

Meet Grace Ericson, photographed in Yarmouth.

When Grace Ericson was in second grade, a boy in class called her “China-face.” She wasn’t offended. She thought his name-calling was in reference to her country of origin, not based on her appearance. So, she responded by calling him “Presque Isle-face.”

“I wasn't born here, but I live here now, and I've pretty much lived here my whole life,” says Grace. “I don't really think about [China] that much, because it never really comes up.”

Grace was adopted in China and came to Maine as an 18-month-old. Her younger brother, Peter, was also adopted from China. Grace sometimes wonders about her birth mother, what she looks like and if she’d even recognize her. One day she’ll visit China, she says.

As a freshman at Yarmouth High School, sports plays a big role in Grace’s life. Although soccer is her favorite, she also enjoys lacrosse because the sports are similar and they involve a lot of running. “I usually like to play mid-field, where you're running down the field and trying to score a goal," she says. “You're part of everything, and you feel like you're supposed to help people out.”

Among friends, Grace is known as the “chill” and funny one. In middle school, she’d stay away from the drama — which often started with texting among students. Friends would confide in her with their problems, and she’s a good listener. “I'm not really in a group of friends. I have a lot of friends that hang out with different people,” she says. “I'm not the one to get angry at someone.”

Over the summer, Grace worked as a counselor in training at her town’s camp. She likes being a role model for younger kids, but admits that she didn’t expect some of the challenges that came with being a counselor, including fighting among campers. “It just surprised me because, wow, this is how we were at this age. They fight over silly things like who gets ‘out’ in a game. It's just a game, and you have to try to settle it.”

Grace has thought about pursuing teaching as a career. “Maybe little kids, like first grade, because they're really cute,” she wonders aloud, but then acknowledges that some kids don’t listen and maybe she’d prefer teaching middle school. “You expect them to be more mature, but the kids in my grades aren't that mature… If you're a middle school teacher you'll be in all that drama, too. So, I don't know.”

Meet Keneita “Kennie” McPherson, photographed in Jackman.

Early in 2018, Keneita “Kennie” McPherson was sitting at home in Portmore, Jamaica, looking at a Google map of the United States. The third-year student studying public health, was going to work the summer abroad and be sponsored by Council On International Educational Exchange (CIEE). She needed to submit a choice of at least three states where she would like to work and spotted Maine on the map. Knowing little beyond scenic images she found online, she decided to put it on her short list.

“I really didn't want to be too near to family. I wanted to branch out on my own,” says Kennie, who has family in other parts of the country, in New York City and Indiana. She had visited New York and thought it was too loud, and decided to experience a life as far away as she could get from home. A job opportunity to work at at store in Jackman came up, and she took it.

Kennie arrived in New York first to spend a couple of days with family. While in the city she booked a bus ticket to Portland, thinking Jackman wouldn’t be too far. Upon finding out from a future co-worker that it would be an additional three-hour drive north from Portland, Kennie started to wonder what she had signed up for.

Ray and Lorraine Levesque, Kennie’s hosts and employers for the summer, picked her up at the bus station. As they were getting to know each other on the long drive, Lorraine prepared Kennie for something about Jackman, a small town of less than 900 people located 20 minutes from the Canadian border. There were not many non-white residents — in fact there were “three.”

"Three?” Kennie asked in disbelief. “Three colored-persons [sic]. Okay. I guess I'm number four." However, Ray was quick to tell her that if anyone said anything to make her uncomfortable, to come to him so that he could deal with it. Kennie also clarified later that she was the fourth woman of color in Jackman.

During her first week, Kennie called her mother, “I wasn’t sure. I was like, ‘Mom, I’m coming home.’” She was experiencing culture shock and was actually documenting each non-white person, usually one or two, she’d see around town in her journal. Her mother asked if she should transfer to another city, to which she responded that she didn’t want to be rude to “Mr. Ray” and that she’d just come home. Give it two weeks, her mother would encourage her. In time, her opinion changed.

“Everyone was just so nice to me,” she said. Her new community was getting to know her and checking in, constantly, asking if she needed anything and asking about her accommodations. And despite another person in town who asked her to call him if anyone made her feel uncomfortable, she never had to worry. “So, I was like, ‘I guess I'm cool here. I don't have to worry.’”

Kennie worked two jobs, at the Levesque’s business, Bishop’s Store, and at the local grocer, Mountain Country Supermarket. Canadian visitors often addressed her in French. And as she started making friends, she would participate in some quintessential Maine activities, like moose watching, rafting, and swimming in the cool northern New England waters. She was even spontaneously invited, by a customer, to a backyard wedding of about 20 guests.

A customer she’d see often at Bishop’s asked if she’d join him to see the Grand Falls. It was “just a mile walk,” he told her, as Kennie envisioned a pleasant stroll in the woods.

“I was not climbing. I was crawling,” Kennie recalls, laughing. “I was on all fours. Crawling up the rocks. I'm like, ‘Ugh, are we there yet?’” She received help along the hike and she sent a picture to her mother when she made it to the falls. The picture wasn’t clear and her mother was incredulous, knowing her daughter didn’t like heights. "She's like, ‘I can't really see your face, so I don't know if it's really you.’ I'm like, ‘It's me mom.’”

One day, a friend and co-worker surprised Kenny with a basket of banana chips. She missed eating them, and had mentioned to this friend that she would make them back in Jamaica. “You tell people stuff but you don't really expect them to remember,” says Kennie, touched by her gesture. “I was like, ‘Wow.’”

People in town would often ask Kennie if she missed home. She said she didn’t, to their surprise. She had lived in Jamaica all her life and was enjoying the new environment, as well as learning a new culture. “If I was in New York or in the city I could get Jamaican food, but there's no Jamaican food here. So, I have to adapt to their eating ways, and stuff like that,” she says. During her summer she developed an affinity for bacon and has tried moose meat.

Meet Effie McAvoy, photographed in York.

Early in her career and in her 20s, Pastor Effie McAvoy was working a cross-cultural appointment for a predominantly white church in North Carolina. A cross-cultural appointment is when you serve a community outside of your race. On her first round of hospital visits she met a curmudgeonly old man who was very sick. When she introduced herself, he grumpily replied that she was his wife’s preacher, not his. Figuring that his wife was a member of the congregation, she asked if she could pray with him. “If you want to,” was his reply.

He flinched the moment she placed her hand on his. Surprised by his reaction, Effie asked if he was OK, making sure she didn’t hurt him. He was fine, so she laid her hands on his head and prayed for his healing, for God’s presence, and for grace. After prayer she said she’d return the following week — he told her she didn’t have to. But she continued to visit him.

Months later, this patient was being transported to a specialist in another community and was having seizures. His wife asked if a pastor could be at his side in his final moments. Effie volunteered to go, and it was far enough away that she would stay the night. After he died, the family was grateful to her for making the trip and they asked her out to dinner.

During the meal she shared details from all the stories and conversations she had during her visits to the hospital, pointing to one of the sons who she knew played the guitar. His wife smiled with tears in her eyes, yet the children were wide-eyed and kept asking throughout her anecdotes, “My dad?” She would respond, “Yeah. Your dad.” Finally one of the children broke the news to her: Their dad was a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.

“If I had known he was a Klansman, I would've never gone back,” says Effie of the surprising friendship she developed with this man. At a certain point he no longer told her she didn’t need to return and was asking her when she would come back. “When I said ‘yes’ to God, I did say 'use all of me,’” says Effie about using the color of her skin to change another person’s heart. “Maybe that was a means of actually having a transformational effect on his own soul, so he could die in peace. I don't know.”

Effie spent her childhood in California, raised by her great-grandmother. At age 14 she moved to North Carolina to live with her father, a Pentecostal preacher. She attended Appalachian State University and although she attended seminary at Boston University soon after her undergraduate degree, she struggled with her relationship to the church as a gay woman.

“Struggling with hearing, oftentimes, that God doesn't love you or that there's no hope for you, or that there is no means of transformation for you because of the way you're born is hard,” she recalls. After exploring various denominations, she went to a Methodist service and felt most at home. Yet the doubts about a career in ministry lingered until one day God spoke to her. He called on her to be the best Effie he created in her. “I'm calling you not to be your father. I'm calling you to be Effie,” she recalls him saying. She took his message and pursued a mission to be authentic, acknowledging her own imperfections, and not being ashamed of herself.

She continued working for several years as a pastor in North Carolina, in part to help her sister, a single mother in the military. When the last child graduated from high school she sought opportunities to return to New England and came to Oakland in 2010, to become pastor at Oakland Sidney United Methodist Church, another cross-cultural appointment.

During her time in Oakland she grew the congregation three-fold. Within her first six months she gained some media attention at a local MLK breakfast. Maine’s governor, Paul R. LePage, had made a controversial comment in response to not attending MLK day events organized by the NAACP, which he referred to as a special interest group. A picture from the event showed Effie dancing with the governor.

“I think that there were some people of color who were offended,” says Effie. Despite making a speech about the history of slavery, Jim Crow, present-day race relations and people who make ignorant comments about history, she felt that the media portrayed her dancing with the governor as a pass for what he said. Being a pastor in a new, predominantly white community, she chose her words carefully, but didn’t censor herself. “They thought that I just sugar-coated or glossed over his hurtful comments. That wasn’t the fact.”

Effie moved to York in 2017 for a new appointment at the York-Ogunquit United Methodist Church. In early 2018, she and seven clergy members of York organized a seven-week series of talks about race, which were spurred by white supremacist rallies and counter demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia in the prior year. They were called “Vital Conversations.”

“You’ve got to be patient because everybody doesn’t have the vocabulary,” says Effie. “We get upset because people use the wrong word, but we don't know what the intent is in their heart.” The conversations were especially challenging when she brought up the topic of “white privilege” as the only non-white person in the room. Privilege was defined by most in the room as a financial means. “It's not a monetary privilege. It's a currency that is just by the nature of your birth, by the nature of who your parents were and who their parents were,” says Effie, acknowledging that she has been pulled over for “driving while black,” or followed by the police in Maine and other parts of the country.

Despite those experiences, Effie has been a longtime supporter of the police, especially in Oakland and York. She is the current police chaplain and former chaplain in Oakland. “When police do bad things, it's a stain on all of police. Just like when clergy do bad things, it's a stain on all of clergy,” she says, adding “What that means is that police have to work double duty, just like clergy have to work double duty.”

She shared an anecdote told to her by an Oakland police officer who pulled over a black man driving without his headlights in the dark. She described the “six-foot-something, blue-eyed, lily white, big cop” asking the man for his license and registration. The man was shaking visibly and explained that he was a counselor at a nearby summer camp running an errand. Back at his cruiser, the officer noticed that the man handed him a driver’s license from Missouri — more specifically, Ferguson, Missouri.

“We think that when bad things happen in the world, that local police aren't aware of it, but they're highly aware of it,” says Effie. The officer returned to the man and explained the dangers of driving in rural Maine without headlights, but then offered to help him find headlights for his car. “That would never get put on the internet. That would never get 50 million likes.”

Meet Leopold Ndayisabye, photographed in Portland.

Leopold Ndayisabye loves to help people. Back in Rwanda, he worked as a community organizer. He worked with international NGO’s through the consulting business he founded, and organizations liked working with him because he knew the region well. He spoke six languages and understood various cultures, being a Rwandan born in Burundi and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In May of 2011 Leopold arrived in Portland seeking asylum. The first months were hard because, as he explains, asylum seekers are not like other immigrants who acquire a visa or like most refugees who arrive as part of a quota. Their cases are determined on an individual basis, and can take months for approval. During that time asylum seekers are in limbo and are unable to work.

Leopold applied for asylum in July and was granted official status in December. He received General Assistance for eight months until he found a job in February 2012, standing on long lines throughout the winter months. He was reunited with his family at the end of 2012 and became a U.S. Citizen in 2018.

Since first arriving in Maine, Leopold has earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health from Southern New Hampshire University and owns a home in Westbrook. He works full-time at Preble Street shelter as a case worker and started his own home care business, OneLove HomeCare, LLC, a fully licensed level II residential care facility. He is also president of the local Rwandan association in Maine.

He says he couldn’t have been a productive member of the community without General Assistance, and has been vocal whenever proposed cuts have been brought up in the legislature. He wrote a letter to the editor of the Portland Press Herald in 2015 and testified at the State House in 2017, to support General Assistance funding for asylum seekers.

“Maine, it's a good place, and I love the way we are treated,” says Leopold, but he also says he’s frustrated by rhetoric over General Assistance and new immigrants taking jobs away from American workers. “That xenophobia should not be existing in Maine, because Maine doesn't have much workers,” he says, pointing to the state’s need for workers due to its aging population.

Part of Leopold’s mission to change perceptions about asylum seekers is to create a database of them who were on General Assistance, see what they are earning now, calculate the taxes they pay back into state government and make the figures public. He thinks it would be eye opening and has had conversations with state senators about applying for a grant to do data collection. “That's what will help people [see] the other side of picture.”

Meet Cyndi Prince, photographed in Camden, Maine.

Almost 20 years ago, Cyndi Prince pursued her love of marine geology, and flew halfway across the world to western Australia to board a ship along with 100 other researchers and scientists. The crew would drill the earth’s core thousands of kilometers below the surface, and materials that would be studied aboard the ship. In two-month stints, she’d travel the world visiting various countries — highlights include Hong Kong, Japan, and Brazil. She even passed through the Panama Canal, and marveled at other large ships as they scraped their way through the man-made wonder.

Her journeys were a long way from where she grew up in a farming community and former Underground Railroad settlement in North Buxton, Ontario. To this day, the predominantly black community actively remembers its unique history, with a museum, re-enactments, and their annual homecoming celebration on Labor Day. Elementary and high school in nearby towns that were mostly white, took some adjusting for Cyndi. She remembers feeling isolated at times and at one point wondered what life would be like if she moved to nearby Detroit, near her cousins.

Back on the ship Cyndi took the position as photographer to document their findings and took advantage of the full photography lab and state-of-the-art cameras. She had always had an interest in photography and this job allowed her to combine her interest in science and art. During her time away from the ship, she would occasionally enroll in photography courses at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport. After four years of non-stop travel abroad, she decided that she needed a change.

“I really struggled with finding a place because I had traveled a lot and I didn't want a place where there was a McDonald's,” says Cyndi. Given the nature of her work, she also never visited a country for very long, and felt like she was “taking” something from each of the countries she visited. “All these things that these countries gave to me, I just needed to do something to help give back in some way.” She eventually decided to teach English on the Marshall Islands, living remotely with no running water or electricity.

After her teaching term ended on the Marshall Islands, she returned to Maine and met her husband who was also studying photography in Rockport. They loved the area and decided to settle in Camden.

In 2010, Cyndi was pregnant and researching alternatives to an array of products around the home that would provide a safe environment for her son. She discovered wool dryer balls through Etsy and tried them, after reading about the harmful chemicals in dryer sheets. She loved how efficiently they worked, but was disappointed that they didn’t last very long.

She was determined to try making them on her own, and after countless trials and errors, developed a dryer ball that would last. Her small, local, business was born and Cyndi started selling her product directly to consumers. In almost eight years, after numerous awards and grants, and her community of supporters, Cyndi’s wool dryer balls can be found in over 300 retailers across the country. The products are proudly sourced and made in Maine — the final “felting” process still takes place in the washers and dryer in her basement. The company’s name “LooHoo” is derived from her childhood nickname, “Cindy Lou Who,” the name of a character in the children’s book “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” by Dr. Seuss.

“With having an almost nine-year-old, my business didn't grow as quickly as it potentially could have, especially in the beginning,” says Cyndi, acknowledging that patience was one of her biggest lessons as an entrepreneur. Being the company’s only full-time employee, she struggled at times to balance growing her business with the demands of a household with a small child and two working parents. She’s learned to accept it, and today the family often travels together to fairs and shows. Her son, Graham, does inventory and even sells a line of wool toys; a percentage of his sales goes to P.A.W.S., his local animal adoption center. With the success of her company, Cyndi is often greeted around town as the LooHoo lady, or will be drawn into a conversation about laundry.

Meet Marilou Ranta, photographed in Monson, Maine.

Marilou felt proud. She had just completed her degree in Culinary Arts at Eastern Maine Community College. She was the oldest in her class of students in their teens and twenties. She was even older than her instructor, and her graduation happened to coincide with her 50th birthday.

She and her husband, Billy Ranta, were going to celebrate her achievement in Bar Harbor, but he said he felt ill, so they headed back home to Monson. The field full of cars should have tipped her off as they drove up to their old farmhouse built by Billy’s great grandfather. When she stepped through the door she was surprised, and greeted by a house full of people. Surveying the room, she recognized the community members and family that had welcomed her to town over 20 years ago when she first arrived to this small, rural town in Piscataquis County. They were the people who believed in her.

Marilou grew up in Bulakanon, Phillipines, on the island of Mindanao, the youngest of 12 children. Her barrio (a term of Spanish origin that Filipinos use to refer to a rural village) was, in her own words, like “Little House on the Prairie.” She started her relationship with food early, picking vegetables and feeding the animals at age 5. She was advanced in school and skipped a few grades, graduating at age 15.

“There’s nothing for me in the barrio. I don’t want to have five kids and work someone else’s farm,” Marilou recalls. She left home at age 16 and ended up in Manila, working as a maid for a couple of years. There, she met her first husband who was in the U.S. Air Force, and they moved to the United States. She is the only member of her family to leave the Philippines.

She eventually remarried Billy, an army paratrooper who she met at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the couple decided to move to Monson, his hometown. They worked multiple jobs to make ends meet while raising two children. She loved to cook and, even more so, hosting and serving people. Their home would often be the gathering place for big parties, including pig roasts. At one point Marliou ran an Asian food stand at the Monson general store, called “LouLou’s Takeout.” But she had bigger plans — she wanted to own and operate her own fine dining restaurant.

“You could never go into fine dining if you don't have the degree, because they will always look at you like, ‘oh, you’re just the cook.’ Plus, I always wanted to go to college,” says Marilou. Before and during her culinary degree program, Marilou gained experience working as a chef at the Blair Hill Inn, an upscale bed and breakfast in nearby Greenville. While working at the inn she was approached by the Libra Foundation, a Maine-based charitable grant program. They wanted to invest millions of dollars to transform Monson, known through history for its slate quarries, into an artist colony. The program would fund a group of artist residencies throughout the year, and the foundation was in need of a fine dining option to feed the artists.

As she sat down for a phone conversation between Lucas Butler, Monson’s former town manager who became project manager for the Libra Foundation, and the chief executive of the foundation, Marilou dreamed of a fancy food truck. She wasn’t prepared for what the foundation would propose.

“They're in Portland, on the phone, and they're like, ‘Yeah, well, how about we'll just give you a restaurant. You run it yourself,’” Marilou recalls. She was in disbelief and also had no money, but the foundation was willing to invest in a location as long as she would take on the restaurant duties. She looked at Lucas and asked if she was getting “punked.” He responded, “No, you just got Libra-d.”

Her restaurant, The Quarry, opened in spring 2018. It’s an Asian fusion restaurant — some recent menu items have French and Scandinavian influences. Marilou’s staff of eight includes waitstaff that she babysat years ago. She’s grooming her sous chef to someday own his own business and his girlfriend runs the bar.

“It's like a family...I'm the mother for every one of them, because I give them a pep talk,” says Marilou. There have been moments of “tough love,” when someone shows up to work late or looking too tired after a night of partying. “I've worked at a restaurant before and I promised myself: No. No drama.”

Meet Ben Chin, photographed in Lewiston, Maine. 

Ben made national headlines in 2015 when he ran for mayor of Lewiston. It wasn’t his progressive policies that drew attention to Maine’s second largest city. It was the signs posted by a local landlord that read “Don’t vote for Ho Chi Chin,” bearing a caricature of former Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

“There's obviously very famous tension in Lewiston,” says Ben, who is deputy director of the Maine People’s Alliance, a grassroots organization for progressive causes. Many Mainers remember the early conflict that developed between the resettled Somali community and largely Franco-American population in the early 2000s. Unlike Pittsburgh and Syracuse, where Ben grew up, the Lewiston population can’t segregate itself. The city has one high school, one post office and two grocery stores. “The bottom line is that tension exists only because people interact with each other, and you can't really get around it,” Ben says. The integration presents opportunities and challenges within the community.

Ben first came to Lewiston in 2003 to attend Bates College. There, he became involved in community organizing. The first big project he took part in was the Visible Community Initiative, which halted a plan to build a four-lane boulevard through a low-income neighborhood. He built relationships with members of the Lewiston community, and when he launched his 2015 bid for mayor, he recognized supporters he had met as a college student activist. “That's one of the reasons why I've stuck around,” Ben says. “The relationships just mean a lot.”

Ben lost the 2015 election in a run-off to a popular incumbent, Robert Macdonald, and he decided to run again in 2017 as Macdonald had reached his term limit. The mayor of Lewiston can serve up to three two-year terms. After receiving 40 percent of the vote in the five-way general election, Ben faced another run-off with City Councilor Shane Bouchard.

A little over a week before the run-off, the Maine Examiner, a purported news website (and at the time, anonymous), posted a series of negative articles about Ben. Some of the articles contained leaked e-mails. Two in particular mentioned encountering “racists.” The articles themselves didn’t gain traction until they were shared by the Maine Republican Party on Facebook.

“Honestly, the nerve that it hit, why people were upset, is that there are a lot of people out there who have a guilty conscience about how they talk about people of color,” says Ben. “They know that racist things are being said and it makes them uncomfortable when somebody's just straight up about it.”

Earlier this year, Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine Republican Party, admitted to the state ethics commission that he owns and operates the Maine Examiner. Ben thinks the articles impacted the end of the race and he lost the run-off with Bouchard by 145 votes. “I think the thing that feels the most stuck is just the racial tension in the town,” says Ben. “That's going to take a lot of time and a lot of work...you can't really fix that with economic development plans.”

With this year’s upcoming elections, Ben’s focus is on a ballot initiative that the Maine People’s Alliance is spearheading for a universal home care program that would support independent living for seniors and people with disabilities. “The behind the scenes stuff with community organizing I'd say is just as, if not more, important than the running for office.”

Meet Hanji Chang, photographed in Rockland, Maine.

When Hanji arrived in the midcoast of Maine with her soon-to-be husband, Andy O’Brien, she thought to herself, “this is what I want.” She and Andy had been living in Taiwan — he was in a punk rock band and she was working as a graphic designer. They were touring possible destinations to settle down, including big cities like Philadelphia and Boston.

When they first moved to Lincolnville, Andy’s hometown, the first few months were a tough adjustment for Hanji. She was waiting on a work permit, didn’t drive (she never needed to in Taipei), and wasn’t prepared for the harsh winter. The stares during trips to the small town’s general store would be uncomfortable. Yet, she felt welcomed by the community despite feeling like an outsider.

“Hanji” means “Korean chick” in Chinese. She earned that nickname --- and has adopted it as the name she goes by. Her life has always been about adaptability. She was born in Taiwan to a Korean mother and Taiwanese father, moved to South Africa toward the end of the Apartheid, moved back to Taiwan (and re-learned Chinese), then moved Maine, living in Portland while studying New Media at the Maine College of Art.

While in college she created “Temp Tales” in an animation class. It’s like South Park in Maine, but laced with profanity and cultural references only Mainers would truly understand. Andy would write the episodes and do character voices, while she created the animations. The content in the videos were largely based off of real life experiences.

An early episode, “Meat Recall,” viewed over 650,000 times on YouTube, which Hanji admits has “awful” animation, was based off of a real phone call Andy received while at a call center for a supermarket. “The first however many years that we were just struggling; doing different jobs, moving here and there. That whole period of time, really, was the key to feeding our career now,” she says. “Without those jobs, there would be no Temp Tales.”

The videos caught on and soon she was being approached by businesses to create animations for them. The business has grown, changing names from O’Chang Comics (a name that statted in college combining Andy and Hanji’s last names) to Puckerbrush Animation. They’ve created anything from videos about climate change and environment to trailers and music videos. Temp Tales videos have racked up almost 3 million views and a full-length movie is currently in production.

But the cartoon that started it all makes Hanji feel conflicted about her adopted home. She acknowledges that Temp Tales is “Maine-redneck, guy-humor” which has gained a loyal following. When she and Andy go to shows and signings around the state she can’t help but feel slighted by some fans.

“Even though they know I'm the creator, I don't think they are intentionally being mean — I really don't. I think part of it is just really being ignorant,” she adds, “they will ask me random things, like ask me to hold their coat.” She says some fans will get aggressive, trying to bargain down prices on merchandise or tell her how to run the business. Andy is never treated the same way and she believes it’s due to their lack of exposure to non-white people.

After the 2016 presidential election she said that she would get honked or yelled at walking down the street in Rockland. “I never was before, and now...I am kind of scared,” she said. “Every time there is a big truck, and again, our cartoons celebrate these giant trucks...I'm deeply scared of these people that I'm celebrating in my cartoons. So there is like, this confusion, in my mind.”

Yet, her internal conflict about her community hasn’t fazed her desire to stay in rural Maine. She had a realization one weekend, that she has developed a very diverse community of friends. She started off attending a high-brow hors d'oeuvre party with liberal friends, including a former Obama intern, then attended a hippie festival, and capped it off with a pig roast with a “redneck” crowd.

Although she appreciated the diversity of Portland (and shopping at Asian grocery stores) when she was in college, she oddly felt isolated by the amount of people and abundance of activities. It didn’t feel like home, and she made one true friend who she keeps in touch with. She and Andy even stopped showing Temp Tales in Portland, realizing it’s “just not our crowd.”

Meet Zsakiyah “Ziggy” Brown, photographed in Unity, Maine.

Zsakiyah Brown had transferred to five different public schools in and around New York City and spent part of her middle school years living in a homeless shelter. Still, the self-described perennial “new kid” graduated as an “A” student. But by the end of her freshman year at a New York college, Zsakiyah, known as Ziggy, was failing every class except for Algebra and her relationship with the coach who had offered her a basketball scholarship there had soured.

Ziggy made the 13-hour drive to Fort Kent, a small town on the Canadian border, to visit the University of Maine Fort Kent and try out for their basketball team. A year later, she admitted, she felt the urge to leave again. When she revealed to her coach at Fort Kent that she was thinking of leaving school, he warned her that scholarships and opportunities for an education wouldn’t last forever. Ziggy, who now works at Unity College as the assistant athletic director, decided to stick with Maine and get her degree.

While Ziggy expects she will move again before too long – “I feel like a nomad for sure” – Maine has grown on her.  “A lot of Fort Kent was me making it work, finding the right people,” she says.

She discovered a love of poutine and learned how to ride a T bar; a necessary step to her desire to snowboard. She went showshoeing and shot a rifle. She crashed a snowmobile playing a game of tag, where participants zip around throwing snowballs at each other. She spent her first Thanksgiving with faculty and hosted dinners with fellow students who didn’t return home for the holiday.

Although she was a black student from New York in rural Maine, she didn’t feel out of place. She recalled that she inadvertently became a part of a cultural exchange with a white student when the student asked her if she tanned, burned or stayed “that color.” “At first I was like, is she being racist, right here? Right here in my face?” recalls Ziggy. But she kept the conversation going.

“Okay tell me what you are trying to say,” she remembers telling the student, “and I’m going to give you five seconds now, I won’t take offense. Tell me what you’re trying to say, I’ll reword it, then you’ll ask, and I’ll help you figure out what you’re trying to say.”

It took awhile, but the approach worked, she says. And over time, she learned about as much about rural white culture.

“They talk about rednecks, and I was never comfortable with saying the word ‘redneck’ because that’s just something you don’t say.” She would also hear the word “hick” being used, but was assured that some white people were proud to be “rednecks,” and that they aren’t necessarily racist. “So now we’re both learning,” she says, quickly adding, “[I’m] still not going to say the word.”

After graduating, Ziggy continued to pursue her love for basketball and played overseas earning her master’s degree in sociology and management. Her dream is to become the athletic director of a small Division II school, but she doesn’t picture herself staying in Maine long term.

“I don’t want it to sound bad in any way, but I don't want my black child growing up in an all white school,” says Ziggy, who grew up with a Dominican babysitter and a Jamaican stepfather. “I feel like sometimes white kids are missing out on other things in life because they have to ask those questions when they get to college. I want [my children] to be well-rounded.”

Meet Ashley Bryan, photographed in Islesford.

“Here’s some nice light. You should take my picture here,” he says.

I make a few digital photos under the sky light. He’s right, the light is really nice. Of course, he would know — he’s a renowned artist. It’s 2016 in late September in Islesford on Little Cranberry Island, off the coast of Mount Desert Island.

I’m eating breakfast with 93-year-old Ashley Bryan, who is known not only as an artist but also as a writer, a humanitarian and a performer whose everyday speech seems to come out in verse.

“You got other visitors today?” asks his friend, Phillip, moments later. It’s an appropriate question. Ashley often has summer visitors, sometimes by appointment, often unannounced. But this time of year the off-island visitors slow down. I have some rare quiet time with him, aside from a few island friends coming in and out of his home, including my hosts, Donna and Henry Isaacs. Phillip is here to draw and brought ham and cheese from off the island, for lunch.

“I don’t know if anyone’s stopping in,” says Ashley, who was born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx. He first lived on Great Cranberry Island in the late ’40s and eventually made Islesford his home in the mid-’50s.

Phillip wants to know why I’m visiting Ashley. It’s the early days of this project, and Ashley is the first person I am photographing for it. I’m not accustomed to explaining the project clearly and I stumble with my words.

“I think it will mean a lot, Yoon, because Maine has so small percentage of non-white people,” Ashley saves me as my explanation trails. “The more others see images, the more they think about more than just their own little area, which does not include any of these people.”

I feel relief and some validation for an idea that I was finally putting into motion. Ashley is no stranger to being in the minority. Despite growing up in a diverse neighborhood in the Bronx, he was the only black student at The Cooper Union, a prestigious art college that accepted him on the quality of his portfolio while other colleges had rejected him on the basis of his race.

He was drafted while in college into a segregated U.S. Army and spent his post-graduate years studying at Columbia University and traveling through Europe on a Fulbright. He’s published over 50 books and received numerous awards including the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the New York Public Library’s Literary Lions award. Libraries, children’s rooms and festivals are named after him in the United States and Africa. Little Cranberry Island is also home to the Ashley Bryan Center and the Ashley Bryan Storytelling Pavillion. He retired from teaching as a professor emeritus from Dartmouth College.

-

“Oh, that makes such a difference,” he says later in his upstairs studio, stepping back with his arms behind his back and looking at the few brushstrokes he’s made. He’s painting flowers from his neighbor’s garden. Ashley explains that he’s constantly seeking to discover something new in his work, while maintaining a “family resemblance” to his past work. I ask him how he maintains that motivation after a lifetime of work and achievements.

“The one thing that I tell people is remembering the child in you; that spirit of discovery and adventure with each day,” he says. “Now children, each day they’ll start out with this desire to explore. They’ll wake up with ‘Wow, I don’t know anything. I’m going to go at it.’ It’s that spirit of adventure and discovery of the child that I try to retain.”

“Good morning,” calls Susan, a neighbor and artist.

Ashley brings me to the desk in his studio to read me work by a poet that has inspired his new book. He then shows me a beautiful painting inspired by that work. At 93, he is busy creating. He has just published a children’s book, “Freedom Over Me,” based on slave documents from 1828, that was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

“Now what’s happening today for us?” Ashley says to Susan as she comes upstairs.

“You’re having people for dinner tonight,” she says.

“Oh, that’s right,” he says, and Susan reminds him that he’s cooking lobsters for his guests. They chat for a few minutes and she turns to go. “Enjoy your walk, and stop back and say hi to see how I’m getting along with the new illustration.”

-

“This is relish. I love the flavor of it,” Ashley says, as we sit down for lunch. He shows me a container given to him by the Islesford Dock Restaurant. Ashley invites us to make whatever we wish from the assortment of foods spread across the table, including Phillip’s off-island ham. Phillip explains that it’s hard to get things on the island that Ashley calls home year-round.

“In 1946, when Skowhegan [School of Art] opened its very first year, I was given a scholarship, and that’s what opened the whole thing of where I am today,” Ashley says between bites. “I knew nothing of myself, other than that I loved to draw and paint and I was always drawing and painting. I had no sense of direction...it saved my life.”

“There’s more bread, so eat it all up. Keep going. And there’s more meat, too.”

I ask Ashley if he misses city life. No, he says, because the city is in him — the museums, movies and theater. The island allows him to tap into an inner quiet, a quiet that nothing can spoil. He says he can carry this feeling anywhere in the world, and it is the reason he chooses to stay.

He asks me whether I like living in Maine and if intend on staying. My honest response is that the first year was hard. I didn’t know a lot of people. “And they don’t come to you,” Ashley says.

“No, they don’t,” I respond.

Meet Norman Ng, photographed in Hollis.

Most Mainers would know Norman Ng for two reasons: His father Sonny, owned the Hu Ke Lau, a popular Chinese restaurant in South Portland in the 1960s-1980s, famous for its wacky TV commercials, including one where Sonny delivered food to aliens on an asteroid. Sonny was a pop culture icon, and he would charm diners at his restaurant with his eccentricities. And Norman himself is well known as a world class magician who has traveled across the country, performing in prestigious venues like the Shrine Auditorium, as well as exclusive top-notch venues like Magic Castle. He was featured in Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us” in 2015.

What they may not know about Norman, is that he runs a one-of-a-kind vintage tractor parts company that has grown exponentially since its inception two years ago. Just as he taught himself magic starting at age 8, Norman has learned his own way around an engine.

“I (had) never picked up a wrench,” says Norman, a father of four, who started working on a 1974 Ford tractor for his then-2-year-old son, Lucas. “I picked it up and went for it, and I'm now considered this modern pioneer of antique engines.”

Lucas was born deaf and can hear with the use of cochlear implants. Norman thought that Lucas’ interest in his toy tractors would translate to a vintage garden tractor (much smaller than a modern tractor) that he could actually use. Not only did Lucas love his 4th birthday gift, but it strengthened his language development and gave father and son a common interest. After realizing a niche market for vintage parts, Norman taught himself machining and computer-aided design, and he became a certified master technician. “I don't think of myself as very unique,” says Norman. “I just like learning.”

Norman is a first-generation Chinese immigrant, born in Portland. “I was the only Asian kid in my class, ever, until high school,” says Norman, adding that he didn’t relate to the other Asian students he met at Portland High School, who were mostly new immigrants from Cambodia or Vietnam. (cont. in comments)

“They didn't have the same culture as me. I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons, and Hanna-Barbera, and Saved by the Bell.”

After high school, Norman moved to the San Francisco area for a couple of years and his magic career took off — at one point he was doing 400 shows a year. Living in an area with a large Asian population, and especially among many other Asians with American upbringings, was a shock at first, he said. When he and his wife, Tonya, who he met in high school, were expecting their first child they moved back to Maine.

“I'm pretty confident I’m the only Chinese person in Hollis, but I kind of like it,” says Norman who has enjoyed the celebrity of being in show business. He’ll get autograph requests while out at the grocery story or approached at community events. “I forget I’m Asian all the time. I actually don't view ethnicity at all.”

Meet Carolin Moreta, Machias. (Part 2)

When I met one-on-one with Carolin, president of the Black Student Union at the University of Maine Machias, she apologized to me. She said she isn't usually as pessimistic as she felt that day.

“I have a strong character, and I like to show my character, and I like to be me. When I'm not able to be me I feel really limited, and I don’t like that,” she said. “I definitely feel very oppressed sometimes, after being here [in Maine].”

Carolin is a first generation immigrant from Lawrence, Massachusetts, born to Dominican parents, who grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was either Dominican, Puerto Rican or black. Her first experience in Maine, at a boarding school, ended abruptly: “I didn’t know it was going to be such a culture shock...I didn't feel smart enough at all. My values were different than other people’s values, I spoke differently, I didn’t understand as much, I just felt inadequate. And it would all build up. And it all built up until the day that I finally was kicked out.”

She came to the University of Maine Machias, motivated and looking for redemption, after being recruited at a college fair. Despite her high G.P.A. and dean’s list status, the lack of students with a similar background to hers started to wear on her. Carolin recounted a few experiences when she felt singled out or othered, once by a police official who visited her class and told her that the state’s drug problem was attributed to out-of-state students, which she felt meant “brown or black people.” He also told her that she could return to Massachusetts if she didn’t like Maine. At the beginning of the academic year, she said she was confused for another student of color who looked nothing like her.

“It’s just a matter of people getting to know other people and feeling comfortable speaking about race, because this place, you know, with the migrant workers with people coming in, I feel like it is getting more diverse,” said Carolin, “The community is recognizing people coming, but I don’t feel like they’re knowing what to do. They’re just staring and assuming.”

Meet Carolin Moreta and Travonne “Trey” Thompson, Machias.

Carolin and Trey are president and vice president of the Black Student Union at the University of Maine Machias. The group started three years ago when black students felt they needed a support network, and it meets weekly with a university facilitator to plan events and spread awareness on campus. Although both share the commonality of being students of color, their experiences living in rural Maine differ greatly.

“It’s going to sound weird, but I’m from Florida,” said Trey. “I would much rather deal with the people up here, that are white or not, than people from the South. Because up here you’re going to get what you get.”

Trey played basketball in high school in Melbourne, Florida, and competed in AAU. When it came time to choose a college, although he had offers from schools in California, Georgia and Texas, he decided to come to Machias because he knew he would never otherwise live in Maine and he wanted to give it a try.

“I have a high GPA, I’m a Dean's list student — but I don’t know — at first it was good,” Carolin said. “It’s a small school. I was able take on roles that you wouldn't be able to take on in bigger schools. But then it started to catch up: I'm not around people who are like me.”

Carolin was recruited to come to Machias, she said, by the only person of color at a college fair who approached her in Spanish. Despite a rocky experience she had as a student at a boarding school in Maine, she told herself that she needed to come back to Maine and succeed.

I met up with Carolin and Trey in Machias, after Carolin had told me about an incident that happened during a basketball game at Unity College the day after the U.S. presidential election. Trey was on the court. Unity fans often use duck calls to cheer (or jeer) during games.

“I heard something else than a duck, and I was like what is that noise?,” Trey said. Then it struck him: “There's no way. There's no way that's a monkey call. I heard a monkey noise, and...I’m like, that’s a monkey noise. And they’re obviously making them because we’re black.”

Other inappropriate comments were made during the game and Trey had difficulty identifying who was making them. “After finding out it was 7 or 8 people...I was more composed, but in my mind I’m thinking, if this is a big group of people, and at any given moment they want to rush the court and do something to us, we can’t do anything about it.”

After the game, players from Unity apologized for the behavior of some of their fans. A few students also came to the locker room to give the Machias players hugs.

The racist comments by the fans are being addressed through the college judicial system, said Sarah Cunningham, chief student success officer at Unity. She said she couldn’t discuss the details.

“It’s important to us that people do know that doesn’t reflect our values as a community. We take discrimination very seriously,” she said. “I hope the students of Machias know that we didn’t ignore what happened. If any of them are unhappy with our response, we’d love to talk with them.”

After returning to campus Trey admitted that he felt hurt by the experience and did not talk about it with anyone at first. But after he spoke with his coach and the university president, and after conversations between leaders at both institutions, Trey felt supported by his university community. Despite his mother’s wishes that he return to Florida, Trey decided to come back to Machias after the winter break. He wants to finish his degree in Maine.

“I think Maine is an amazing place. I've been to Portland, I’ve been to South China, Maine, I’ve been to Presque Isle — literally every school in Maine — Husson, UMO (University of Maine Orono). I’ve never had a problem here,” Trey said. “If someone, for example, were to come to Maine that night, to that game, and not have experienced anything else outside of that, they would have had that same mindset for the whole time that they’re here. But for me, luckily coming to Machias first, and then going around for the last year not experiencing that, and then coming that one bad time — it kind of, for me, outweighed that one bad time — the good times — to come back to school and play basketball.”

Meet Geo Soctomah Neptune, Indian Township.

I started this series with a relatively new immigrant to the United States. According to oral tradition dating back to over 12,000 years, the Passamaquoddy Indian tribe has no migration or removal story, meaning that Geo’s ancestors have been in Maine before recorded history. Passamaquoddy people make up one of the four Maine tribes that are part of the Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawnland.”

In Indigenous culture, Geo is a Two-Spirit, someone who embodies the spirit of man and woman inside one person. Geo uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they” and “them.” After graduating from Dartmouth College with a degree in theater, they decided to forgo an acting career to become an educator, doing so on the reservation and at the Abbe Museum. Last year they decided to leave the museum to become a full-time basketmaker. Geo has been making baskets since age 4, and the craft has deep roots in Wabanaki culture. According to Wabanaki history, Glooscap, the first man, shot an arrow into an ash tree. When the tree split, out stepped the first Wabanaki woman and man. Geo said basket makers are considered “miniature creators” because they use the same material that created the Wabanaki, making something that has a piece of their spirit.

Much of our conversation in December revolved around Geo’s efforts to build community and awareness by promoting contemporary Native culture and encouraging indigenous youth to stay in Maine. Geo recounted a few stories about how misinformed Mainers can be about the state’s Native population. During a recent school program, students were shocked to meet Geo: “It was blowing their minds. They were like, ‘But wait a minute, how is there an Indian standing in front of us right now when our teacher said they were all gone?’” Geo says that a lack of education, along with the persistence of old stereotypes - just try Googling images of “Native American” - has resulted in a misunderstanding of indigenous people today. “If you’re not an Indian wearing buckskin and feathers on the horse you're not really an Indian.”

Part of Geo’s mission to change perceptions starts on the reservation. “I’m really focusing on working with tribal youth more and showing them that they can both be an Indian and be someone from 2016.” Part of that education includes peace-building and dialogue about cultural sensitivity, especially when youth move away from the reservation.

Success was often measured by how far you moved away from the “res,” but Geo wants to change that. “I want to be able to be part of a community where you can be successful here and we don't have to leave our community and give up our traditions and completely assimilate to this colonial lifestyle in order to be successful.”

Meet Ali Al Mshakheel, photographed in Portland.

Ali’s story seemed appropriate to share first, given the current political climate. He is originally from Iraq, and he and his family came to Maine as refugees in 2014. His three children, including Elian, pictured here, sat with us while we talked. At one point I asked them if they knew how their dad made a living in Iraq. They exchanged pensive looks for a moment and shifted in their seats. One of them finally guessed that he was a businessman. With a smile, he interjected and said that they were unaware that he worked as a journalist. In fact, no one except for his wife knew, given the dangerous nature of the job. Ali worked with the Times of London, ABC News as well as the United Nations, and he shared with me his experiences reporting from a mass grave and the Battle of Baghdad. He shared stories of close calls, including interrogations and kidnappings in his town, random stops by armed men while working on stories, and never being able to travel back home on the same roads. After having children, the risks involved with his profession weighed on him more heavily and he applied for refugee status. “Death falls on the people you love, and you don’t want them to suffer,” he said. “Always in your mind, day and night, you think of them. That they might lose you.”

In his first few months in Portland, Ali spent time learning the streets and buses, and set up his “office” at his neighborhood Starbucks. He used that opportunity to meet strangers and continued to look for ways to network, landing his first job after three months and eventually finding a job within Portland Public Schools. “I came here with an open mind and an open heart.” He mentioned leaving a positive “thumbprint” in the community several times throughout our conversation. “In our minds, we want to give, not only take.”