Immigrant Buddhist Memoirs

I am what they call a "convert Buddhist" - born white in North America, to a nominally agnostic family, but raised in Christian culture. I came to Buddhism in my late teens and early twenties, and adopted Shambhala Buddhism, which contains threads of original Tibetan Buddhisms and also American adaptations, specifically for people like me.

But I am aware this is not the only experience by far. One of my ongoing "research" projects is to learn more about race in North American buddhism - specifically how the convert buddhisms we have now in North America often cater more towards white folks than people of color. In the meantime, I am also taking up efforts to immerse myself in the experiences of immigrant buddhists, sometimes called "ethnic buddhists" - folks who (or whose parents) came to the US as buddhists, and attend temples or places of practice oriented towards only their kind - e.g. Thai, where all attendees are Thai or Thai ethnically, and speak only Thai together. This seems especially important now, in the heightened era of intense national discrimination against immigrants.