Immigrant Strong: Eighth Issue
A Bosnian dishes on his parents, grieving while immigrant, and Korean-American dry cleaners
Thank you to New Women New Yorkers for interviewing me about why I started this newsletter. It’s a wonderful nonprofit organization, and I highly recommend supporting it and letting women who are new to the city know about its programs and resources. In the interview, I mention some wonderful immigrant writers I’ve recommended in this newsletter, including Grace Talusan, Sofija Stefanovic, and Laila Lalami, among others.
Book Recommendation
There are so many parts of Aleksandar Hemon’s “My Parents: An Introduction” where I felt like he’s talking about my parents—how they prefer to make sarme (stuffed cabbage rolls) instead of eating out in restaurants, how they obsess about the weather and how his dad fights raccoons in Canada. Both of our families are from the former Yugoslavia and moved to Canada because of the civil war back home so I guess it’s not surprising I often felt like I was reading about my own family and life. The book (it’s actually a flip-book; the other part, “This Does Not Belong to You,” is vignettes about his life) is filled with wonderful prose and hilarious observations that I think will appeal to many, not just those of us from ex-Yugoslavia. But for ex-Yugos, it’s especially delightful to come across mentions about Fa deodorant and Nivea cream, our language’s impossible-to-translate swear expressions, and even the beloved children’s author Cika Jova Zmaj.
Essays
I recently came across this incredibly sad and powerful Longreads essay, Uncertain Ground, by Grace Loh Prasad. The last sentence—like many in this piece—really resonates with me, and is a key reason why I started this newsletter (it’s not in the quote below, read the whole essay!) I look forward to reading her memoir, “The Translator’s Daughter,” when it comes out.
“Moving to Hong Kong flipped my identity to its inverse, like a film negative: I went from being a racial outsider and linguistic insider in New Jersey, to being a racial insider and linguistic outsider in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Either way, I was a misfit; I was always disappointing someone, always falling short.”
I can’t get enough stories about food and immigration, and how what we eat connects us to home. I enjoyed this Catapult essay by Vandana Pawa, Home Is Where the Taro Buns Are.
“Moving across continents, countries, and states as a child made the concept of home hard to grasp. Home could never really be a physical place because I viewed each space I occupied as temporary and fleeting.”
A friend of mine, Sunny Lee, wrote this really informative piece for The Outline, The uncertain future of your neighborhood dry cleaner, about Korean-Americans working in the industry and the changes they are facing.
“Straddling first and second generations of Korean immigrants, Jang has also been more willing to chat with his customers for a more personalized experience, a stark contrast to the more tight-lipped Korean-American dry-cleaning store owners who spent their formative years in poverty-stricken Korea.”
I recommended Dina Nayeri’s “The Ungrateful Refugee” in the last issue; here is an excerpt from the book in Granta.
“Later in life, far from Isfahan, I would meet kindhearted Muslims and learn that I had been shown half a picture: that all villainy starts on native soil, where rotten people can safely be rotten, where government exists for their protection. It is only amongst the outsiders, the rebels, foreigners and dissidents that welcome is easily found.”
Events
Check out this author talk at Grand Central Library on Saturday with Malaka Gharib, author of “I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir,” and “Americana (And The Act Of Getting Over It.)” by Luke Healy.
On November 13, Sofija Stefanovic hosts This Alien Nation, a regular event at Joe’s Pub that celebrates immigration through storytelling and performance.
Thanks for reading,
Vesna