Immigrant Strong: July 2022 Issue

On being adrift in America, Rihanna's maternity clothes, and white suburbs

True Biz follows a group of students and the headmistress of a residential school for the deaf. Written by Sara Nović, a Philadelphia-based writer with Croatian roots, this New York Times-bestselling novel is a coming-of-age story that gives a heartfelt look into a small slice of the Deaf community.

In this newsletter, I tend to focus on books that have some kind of theme related to immigration—something True Biz does not have; much of it is set at a school in Ohio, and I don’t recall any character having international roots. But just like immigrants are often othered, vilified, and misunderstood, so too are many members of the Deaf community. Through characters who are deaf, CODA (child of deaf adult(s)), and hearing, we learn about some of the struggles members of these communities face as well as the intimate bonds they form with each other. The story is mainly about the young characters’ journeys—including their family relationships, love interests, and teenage angst—but it is also about finding identity, community, and belonging in a world that does not always accept you for who you are.

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Essays and Interviews

I’ll start with David Treuer’s essay in The New York Times Magazine, Adrift Between My Parents’ Two Americas. Born to a Native mother and an Austrian father, Treuer explores the contradictory nature of America through his parents’ lives. The author was not shy about acknowledging some of this country’s vast problems—something far too many Americans glance over, or ignore.

“But then there was my mother, a Native woman who grew up as an outsider in her country and for whom America was a constant threat — a country seemingly determined to grind her down and against which all of her skeptical ferocity was aimed. And so I grew up — the recipient of both my parents’ attitudes about the republic — perplexed, confused, almost paralyzed.”

If all goes as planned, I will be visiting Croatia soon. I’m already thinking about how I’ll bite into tomatoes like apples, how fresh-cut prosciutto will leave grease on my fingers, and how olive oil will glisten on sardines that one of my family relatives always grills for me. Food has always been a bridge to our roots, and I’ll never tire of reading about the bonds it awakens in us. Tomi Obaro writes about this in Giving Up Meat Made Me Love Cooking Nigerian Food Again for Catapult.

“Eating together with my partner was an important aspect of our relationship as well. He cooked meals for me that he came up with, which made me want to cook for him too, to show him the delicacies of Nigerian cuisine. In longing to share meals with my partner, I had begun to understand the losses that came with having given up cooking Nigerian dishes. I thought about hypothetical children of mine and what they would eat. What would they know about Nigerian cuisine unless I taught them? What did I even know myself?”

I’m a big fan of Rihanna so I loved coming across this piece, Rihanna’s Approach to Maternity Clothes Helped Me Redefine Motherhood, by Miyako Pleines in Electric Literature.

“It was as if her clothing choices were single handedly redefining motherhood to incorporate more than just that perfect yet inaccurate image of whiteness, purity, and virtue, a choice that feels both necessary and radical during this moment in history where pregnancy and the right to one’s own body are dangerously close to being forced backwards in time.”

Here is an interesting creative nonfiction essay by Mimi Iimuro Van Ausdall, There are Girls Like You in Japan, for Hippocampus Magazine.

“You land in Narita. You breathe in the cool air, sensing the age of this land. You feel that you understand a little of why you don’t fit in the United States. It is like a young, showy colt—fast and sloppy—while Japan is old and careful like an elephant. You have always been old. You feel that you are small in the long history of this place. You feel a sense of home for the first time, as if nothing you could experience would be something someone else had not already felt before you, again and again. You feel less lonely. You think this must be jet lag setting in.”

I enjoyed Richa Kaul Padte’s interview for Hazlitt, ‘How Many Accents is it Normal to Have?’ with Pyae Moe Thet War.

“From switching accents to passport privilege, from baking a “perfect platter of fudgy brownies” to never cooking Myanmar cuisine, the essays in Pyae Moe Thet War’s debut collection are engaging, spirited, and fast-paced accounts of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today—both inside and outside her country’s borders.”

Here is a great piece about suburbs and their whiteness, and living there as a person of color. In Small Patches of America: When America’s Suburban Romance is Undone for Catapult, Pranay Somayajula blends personal narrative and research to discuss how suburbs were designed to keep communities of color out.

“As part of this myth, communities like my own are sold the false promise that so long as we work hard, keep our heads down, and avoid stirring the pot, we too can achieve whiteness by proxy—enjoying all the privileges and protections of whiteness, despite the dark skin and foreign accents that would otherwise betray our status as perpetual outsiders. In both a literal and metaphorical sense, the suburbs represent the culmination of this proximity to whiteness. And for recent immigrants, who are told that the only way to be accepted as “true” Americans is to assimilate into American culture, suburban life can offer an enticing way to walk the fine line between cultural assimilation and preservation.”

I enjoyed Yara Zgheib’s LitHub essay, From Memoir to Fiction: A World More Beautiful and Real than Reality.

“If it were fiction, No Land to Light On could be about anybody whose life was changed by forces outside their control. It could be about a different executive order, about any executive order; about Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan; about scholarship students and refugees, about anyone who ever left their country, by force or by choice; anyone who left home, searched for home, struggled with what that word means. It would still be true; both novels are still true. They are about what I believe: that the right way is good, that the right way is forward, and that the journey, life, really, is beautiful.”

I’ll leave you with Zeina Hashem Beck’s The Last of the Bougainvillea Trees, a beautiful piece in New Lines Magazine about cities, leaving them, and finding a place that feels like home. As a city person at heart, someone who’s lived in three countries (and grew up in a house surrounded by a bougainvillea tree!), I loved this Lebanese writer’s exploration of the powerful draws of city life, and the mixed feelings that emerge when we’re on the cusp of leaving one place for the next.

“I’m no wandering soul who can go back to her country whenever she pleases, who can safely age there, who can transfer savings to a bank there for years and years without having them evaporate like ours did. And I’m not the person, like many in Lebanon who are stuck there without a visa to travel elsewhere, longing to leave and watching everything around them fall apart. And I’m not the person who, despite everything, still chooses to stay even when they have a chance to leave. I’m grieving and grateful. I’m romantic and cynical. I’m angry and tired. I’m hopeless, and I still catch myself thinking: Maybe in 10 years, when my kids are independent.”

Thanks for reading,

Vesna

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About this newsletter: Writing about immigrant and refugee life—the struggles, triumphs, and quirks—by immigrants and refugees, and children of immigrants and refugees. For more info, here is a Q&A I did with Longreads about the newsletter. Photo in the logo: Miguel Bruna/Unsplash.

About me: I grew up in the former Yugoslavia, then immigrated to Canada, and now live in the United States, where I work as a writer and communications consultant for nonprofits focusing on human rights and social justice. I have written about my immigrant experience for The New York Times, Catapult, Pigeon Pages, the Washington Post and the New York Daily News. Last year, I attended Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing conference as a parent-fellow, and participated in the Tin House Summer Workshop. Find me on twitter, @vesnajaksic, or on my website, www.vesnajaksic.com.