Immigrant Strong: January 2021 Issue
American exceptionalism, growing up Indian in West Virginia, and the American dream
Abeer Y. Hoque was born in Nigeria to Bangladeshi parents and moved to the United States at 13. Her memoir Olive Witch takes us across three continents, along her journey of exploring her multicultural identity. I also became an immigrant at 13, so while our cultural backgrounds are very different, this book transported me to some very familiar territory: trying to learn a language and fit in, being hyper-aware of how the way you look and sound make you stand out, and returning to the land of your birth only to realize that a sense of belonging may still evade you. Hoque’s coming-of-age memoir weaves poetry throughout the book and takes a fragmented approach when discussing her time battling depression during a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Essays
Four years of terror, lies, and incompetence are behind us, but the impact of the last administration will unfortunately last much longer. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, countless families have been broken up, allies have been alienated, norms and decency abandoned, science and facts ignored, white supremacists emboldened. I can’t find the words to illustrate the horrors of the last four years and describe the grief I feel for those who bore the wrath and hatred of the racist and corrupt administration for so long.
The day after the former, now twice-impeached president encouraged an insurrection at the Capitol, many of my American-born friends expressed shock, but none of my immigrant friends seemed very surprised. I was quoted about that in this USA Today story that sought input from immigrants.
But others have expressed their thoughts much more eloquently than I, so I’ll start with this great piece: America Is Not Exceptional. Its History of Violence Cannot Be Denied in The Intercept by Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura, a Bosnian writer and genocide educator.
“It is easy to turn to the Balkans and convince yourselves that nationalist violence is a foreign concept that will not touch you. The violence we saw this past summer and the pandemonium of this week’s events show very clearly that no, America is not the Balkans. America is America, with its own brand of violence that stems from its own history, which is very much rooted in brutality, and the exceptionalism that allows most Americans to ignore the brutality.”
When you have time to sit down with this New Yorker piece, please do. Here is Waking Up From The American Dream by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, the author of The Undocumented Americans.
“Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.”
I loved this interview by Donna Hemans with Nadia Owusu, the author of Aftershocks, about identity, the meaning of home, and the need for the United States to reckon with its past in The Rumpus.
“There is a story that America tells itself about who we are as a country, and that story is about our own exceptionalism, goodness, and superior morality. Left insufficiently, and in some cases wholly, uninterrogated are the ugly truths: That we are a nation built on genocide, colonization, and enslavement. That racism did not end with the Civil Rights Movement or the election of Barack Obama; that racism is in the groundwater.”
And I really enjoyed this LitHub piece, The Deep Connection of West Virginia’s Indian Community, by Neema Avashia. The essay is from what looks like a great anthology, Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America.
“They are strangers in the strangest of lands, brought to the capital city of Charleston by engineer and doctor husbands who service the coal and chemical industries. The women spend the majority of their time in white, largely working-class spaces, trying to bridge the divide between their Indian accents and their neighbors’ Southern ones, their Hindu culture and the Bible Belt.”
I love coming across Laila Lalami’s name; here is an interview with her in Guernica.
“Whether the pandemic will result in actual or significant change, I don’t know. It’s too early to tell. But the desire for justice is very deep. And I do know that we all have a hunger to have our stories heard and have our stories recorded. Whenever I talk about the history of Muslims in America, for example, people are always very curious. They want to know more. But obviously it’s not something that is taught widely in in schools.”
André Aciman is always so insightful about subjects I obsess over, like nostalgia and the meaning of home for those of us who have lived in multiple countries. Here is On Yearning for the Not-Yet and What Could Have Been in LitHub, excerpted from Homo Irrealis: Essays.
“I miss these days perhaps because we were no longer quite in Egypt but not in France either. It is the transitional period I miss—days when I was already looking ahead to a Europe I was reluctant to admit I feared, all the while not quite able to believe that soon, by Christmas, France would be mine to touch. I miss the late afternoons and early evenings when everyone in the family would materialize for dinner, perhaps because we needed to huddle and draw courage and solidarity together before facing expulsion and exile.”
I’ll wrap up this section with Every Flavor a Ghost: A Comic, written by Noah Cho and illustrated by Betty Kim for Catapult.
“It smelled as fishy-funky as what my grandmother had made before. But when I tasted it, it tasted so good, so hauntingly familiar, even though I’d never had it before.”
Virtual Event
Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll take part in a free online reading event to celebrate Catherine Kapphahn’s Audible launch of her book Immigrant Daughter: Stories You Never Told Me. I’ll be reading this Catapult essay. If you want a link for the Zoom meeting, please reply to this newsletter.
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.