Immigrant Strong: December Issue
A Korean-American's graphic memoir, an immigrant's knotty dilemma, and junk food
2020 sucked in many ways and was brutal for my writing and reading — I barely wrote and I read more books in the first two months of the year than in the next 10 months of the pandemic combined. But I’m glad I could at least finish the year with these two books.
My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education is a collection of essays by Jennine Capó Crucet, a Cuban-American writer and professor. She reflects on issues such as race and immigration, confronting topics like the lack of diversity among professors, and the privileges she has enjoyed as a light-skinned, white-passing person. It made me think about the roles and identities some of us shuffle in and out of to gain access and benefits. For me — a white immigrant with only a hint of an accent — that can mean hiding my immigrant roots in certain situations to avoid being “the foreigner,” an act of privilege that I realize is clearly the product of my white skin.
I read Almost American Girl, an illustrated memoir by Robin Ha, in one sitting and cried for a big part of it. The author, raised by a single mother in Seoul, Korea, moves to Alabama at the tender age of 14. If you were ever the only non-American in the room, had to learn a new language, or felt like a misfit, this book will tug at your heart strings.
Essays, interviews, and op-eds
I love how everyday objects —in this case a hairstyling tool — lend themselves to stories about the immigrant experience. Here is Comb or Brush? An Immigrant’s knotty dilemma by Anu Kandikuppa for The Rumpus.
“Yet, I did not consider buying a hairbrush. After all, unlike my accent, my clothes, and my face, I could keep my use of a comb private. There was no pressing need to switch to a hairbrush like there was to aspirate my “t”s and “p”s—and alter my spelling.”
C Pam Zhang writes about how food connects her to her father in Junk Food Was Our Love Language in The New York Times.
“I know a taste of the uncertainty that my father, with his thick accent and expired visa, knew. No number of years lived in this country, no degrees or good deeds, can protect me from the anxiety of having a Chinese face in a year that has seen a surge in hate crimes against Asian-Americans.”
I have mentioned Cinelle Barnes’s memoir, Monsoon Mansion, in this newsletter before; here is a new essay from the Philippines-born writer, Resistance Can Be Playful, Too in Catapult.
“In the years I was considered “illegal” by a government, and despite very few resources and my lack of “proper” identification, I wrote essays because language let me play. I could write about politics or history or sex like I was writing a grocery list, a comic book, or a letter to an imaginary friend. When life was impossible, I turned to play and craft as they belonged to the realm of possibility.”
Every time Viet Thanh Nguyen pens an op-ed, I have a hard time pulling just one quote from it, and this New York Times piece, The Post-Trump Future of Literature, is no exception.
“Take immigrant literature. During the xenophobic Trump years, when immigrants and refugees were demonized, simply standing up for immigrants became a politically worthwhile cause. But so much of immigrant literature, despite bringing attention to the racial, cultural and economic difficulties that immigrants face, also ultimately affirms an American dream that is sometimes lofty and aspirational, and at other times a mask for the structural inequities of a settler colonial state.”
I enjoyed this interview by Dorany Pineda in the Los Angeles Times with Karla Cornejo Villavicenio, author of The Undocumented Americans.
“There’s this belief that we’re not supposed to air dirty laundry, and I think that’s the stigma: that we owe our activism and that we owe our collective need for immigration reform, that we owe that cause so much that we need to swallow our own pain and the lasting damage that migration and the American dream has caused in our community.”
Thanks for reading — and have a safe and healthy holiday season. Thanks in large part to immigrants, the COVID-19 vaccine will hopefully bring some relief soon,
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.