Blog Post #3 Interview
A barista, musician, writer, and first-generation Ethiopian becoming the woman she dreamt of being in high school
Manna Zelealem
Today I interviewed Manna Zelealem, a first-generation Ethiopian-American girl who loves music, spends her time as an amateur DJ, and loves to write. Manna’s parents moved to America from Ethiopia in the 80s and 90s. Her dad, Ethiopian, and her mom, half Ethiopian and half Eritrean. Manna grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia where her family had lived in the same house since she was one or two years old. “My parents are currently renovating the whole house, so my childhood home will be completely different when I go back home for Christmas. My mom told me to take pictures of it before I left in August” Manna said with a smile on her face.
Manna is the youngest in her family, she has two siblings — a sister and a brother. Her sister is 23 and just moved to Ethiopia this summer and her brother is 21 and studies computer science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Manna’s siblings are both great singers, she told me as her face lit up. She explained how they recently discovered her brother’s music on Soundcloud. “We went to karaoke once in Oakland and he performed the hell out of this Arctic Monkeys song that we both love.”
Besides being a student at Loyola Marymount University, Manna spends her work time as a barista at Sachi, a locally owned coffee shop that’s a few minutes away from campus. “It’s super cute, it’s owned by two sisters that are half Japanese so the whole place is really inspired by their culture which is really beautiful. Sachi means happiness in Japanese. I’ve been working there since January.”
This past summer Manna traveled to New York for two months to intern for Elaine Welteroth, who is a New York Times bestselling author, a judge on Project Runway, and the former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. “She’s someone I’ve admired for a while, so getting to work with her was a total dream come true” she explained. Manna started her internship the week before Elaine’s book launched. “ I really just jumped on board and got to work. My first day was the day of the CFDAs” she said as she laughed at the end. Manna doesn’t have any family in New York, so she was lonely at first figuring out who she was apart from Los Angeles and LMU.
Manna has written for the La Loyolan, a news site for students at LMU. I read her article and asked her if she could sum it up briefly for someone that has no idea what we are talking about. Manna’s response was: “This was something I wrote for a research class I had two years ago. It’s basically just about how a lack of representation in beauty impacts the people who aren’t being represented. And how a person is impacted when they are left out of the standard of beauty.” She seemed proud of her work.
Manna explained how she was still figuring out what her passion is. She likes to write. Manna is a different woman then she was in high school. With a smile on her face, all giddy, Manna said: “I’m doing things now that I only ever dreamed of in high school. I think the high school version of me is in there somewhere, but I’m way more confident now than I was then. Way more open and bolder and straightforward. I don’t think I stood up for myself enough in high school.”
Manna has accomplished a lot by her age, she has lived and worked in New York, she has studied in London, traveled to Beijing, and so much more.
