{"id":3531,"date":"2018-06-07T02:01:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T02:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2018\/06\/07\/the-unedited-interview-adama-bah-and-deleen-p-carr\/"},"modified":"2018-06-07T02:01:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T02:01:42","slug":"the-unedited-interview-adama-bah-and-deleen-p-carr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2018\/06\/07\/the-unedited-interview-adama-bah-and-deleen-p-carr\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unedited Interview: Adama Bah and Deleen P. Carr"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you know that the <\/span><\/i>stories you hear from us on NPR<\/span><\/i><\/a> and our<\/span><\/i> podcast<\/span><\/i><\/a> are excerpts of interviews pulled from the StoryCorps Archive? Participants visit one of our <\/span><\/i>recording locations<\/span><\/i><\/a> with a friend or family member to record a 40-minute interview with the help of a trained StoryCorps facilitator, or record a conversation using the <\/span><\/i>StoryCorps App<\/span><\/i><\/a>. We\u2019re sharing this unedited interview from the StoryCorps Archive with you in its original form.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In April 2016, Adama Bah spoke with her \u201csecond mom\u201d and friend, Deleen P. Carr, about her experience being forcefully detained as a 16-year-old on suspicion of terrorist activity, and what her life has been like since she was released with no charges.<\/p>\n

\"BahBody\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sleeping, and\u2026all I remember is when they came and pulled the blanket off my head. I\u2019m 16, I\u2019m going to pull the blanket back on. It wasn\u2019t time for school because the sunlight wasn\u2019t out. And then you hear noises and voices \u2014 ‘Get up! Get up!’ \u2014 and they\u2019re not say, ‘Hey, get up, sweetie!’ No, they\u2019re very rude,\u201d Adama says, as she remembers when FBI agents and police came into her family\u2019s home and took her and her father away. She tells Deleen about how confused she felt, and initially told the agents, \u201cYou can\u2019t do this to me, I\u2019m an American.\u201d The officers told her that she wasn\u2019t, and that she had no rights.<\/p>\n

Deleen recalls a letter that Adama sent to Deleen\u2019s daughter during the six weeks of detainment in which she described her conditions: \u201c\u2026You spoke to the fact that the conditions were horrible, the people were not nice, they were not kind\u2026 They just threw clothes at you in not your size, and\u2026you felt like they did that to embarrass you. You were very full-breasted and they made you wear a bra that was three sizes too small. You were describing how you felt under these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adama talks about the way that she and her siblings are still affected by her detainment and how they will continue to be affected for the rest of their lives. \u201cI went through an identity crisis. Am I American? Am I Guinean? What am I? This whole time I thought I was an American; now you\u2019re telling me I\u2019m not. Now I realize I am American. I just have two cultures. That\u2019s why they say Guinean-American. But I\u2019m American. And now you can\u2019t tell me any different, but it took me a while to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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