Immigrant Strong: August issue
On being Iranian and American, getting mocked for your name, and Hiroshima's anniversary
I know it’s the last day of August, but better late than never… Plus, I finally finished reading my first book since the pandemic shut everything down in the middle of March—including my brain, energy, and child care. I know that’s hardly an accomplishment, but hopefully it’s at least a step towards some kind of normalcy for me.
The book is Porochista Khakpour’s Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity. Khakpour came to the United States as a refugee from Iran (I realize this newsletter’s title is about immigrants, but as the explanation on the bottom says, I feature both immigrant and refugee authors, and children of immigrants and refugees). Many of us with hyphenated identities will enjoy her writing, in which she contemplates being Iranian and American, the stereotypes she battles, and issues of race, religion, and visibility associated with these identities. For more about the author, check out a recent interview with her by Wendy Lee for The Margins by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Essays
A friend introduced me to the Calvert Journal and given its focus on Eastern Europe, it’s not surprising I found many gems in there. But when I read What the end of Yugoslavia taught me about belonging, I wondered if the writer, A. Baric, was in my head given how much we have in common.
“When the former Yugoslavia dissolved, so did my family’s sense of belonging. The process of starting a new life in the United States was never going to be easy, but it was made more difficult by the fact that our former homeland was obliterated as a country and concept.”
It’s not surprising a piece on Yugoslavia resonated with me, but I’m always struck but how many commonalities I have with immigrants who come from cultures much different than mine. I found this piece by Elham Khatami so heart-wrenching and relatable. In her Guernica essay We Were All We Had she writes about bridging cultures and carrying one’s heritage into the present and future—something many of us struggle with.
“I worry about losing my parents and trying to make sense of myself in America without them. I fear losing my only connection to my ancestral homeland, Iran—a country I have visited only a handful of times, each trip an overwhelming barrage of emotion that stays with me for months until it dissipates. I worry about maintaining my Persian culture and language when my parents die, and whether I am up to the task.”
I’m fascinated by how immigrants and children of immigrants handle bilingualism, how we grasp one language while losing another, and how this influences our relationships, identities, and connections to home. I loved Sara Goudarzi’s New York Times piece, We All Speak A Language That Will Go Extinct, in which she considers the ties between language and culture.
“That’s the thing with languages. Though we can give each a name, no two people really speak the same one. But in a quest to feel understood, we hold on to what we presume is a common one like a life raft in a sea of expressions, often orphaning old words and sayings to make room for new ones. And as the old float farther out, they become as unfamiliar and foreign to us as Tehran is to me now.”
Here is a really nice piece by Yasmeen Khan for The Rumpus, Diaspora, Reconstructed.
“Through my birth, my parents have completed the final step in assimilation. By rejecting their cultures, they created a rootless daughter. A baby at the bottom of the Atlantic. A woman free-falling from her nations, her body pinwheeling into endlessness.”
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; here is a must-read piece for Narratively by Erika Hayasaki, Daughters of the Bomb: A Story of Hiroshima, Racism and Human Rights.
“For me being biracial meant figuring out on my own that this society, actively racist against me, also wanted to fold me into a kind of racelessness. When it really came down to it, I realized such a middling existence was a lie. I love all of my family. But I have only ever walked through this world as an Asian-American. If internment came, my whiteness would not have spared me then, just as it would not now.”
I’m a big fan of Alexander Chee so I always love seeing his byline pop up. Here is his latest essay, My Family’s Shrouded History Is Also a National One for Korea, for The New York Times.
“By now I had learned about the occupation the way many Korean-Americans do. Inhibited by the silences in our families, we turn to books.”
Immigrants in the United States frequently confront ignorance, bigotry and racism—and sometimes, it can start with something as simple as one’s name. Osama Shehzad does a great job of describing what it’s like to have his name in post-9/11 America in this Longreads essay, “Do You Get Shit For Your Name?”
“As I wait at Heathrow to board my final flight, I practice introducing myself to others. I try to imagine every possible reaction from them — and what an appropriate polite response to it might be.”
Esmeralda Bermudez writes beautifully about the communities she covers for the Los Angeles Times and this piece is no different. Here is On the shoulders of our parents — the cooks, nannies and gardeners — we’ve traveled far, in which she interviews children of immigrants about their parents’ jobs.
“I see traces of her by the garment district, in the seamstresses who wait at dusk for their bus home. I see her inside office buildings, in the janitors who quietly empty all the trash bins. I see her sometimes at the park, in the nannies who come down from the hills with babies in their arms.”
Thanks for reading,
Vesna
About this newsletter: Writing about immigrant and refugee life—the struggles, triumphs and quirks—by immigrants and refugees, and children of immigrants and refugees. Photo in the logo: Miguel Bruna/Unsplash.
About me: I grew up in the former Yugoslavia, then moved to Canada, and now live in the United States, where I work as a writer and communications consultant for nonprofits focusing on human rights. I have written about my immigrant experience for The New York Times, Catapult, the Washington Post and the New York Daily News. Find me on twitter, @vesnajaksic, or on my website, www.vesnajaksic.com.