Immigrant Strong: June 2024 Issue

On acts of language, coming out, and lychee

I hope everyone’s summer is off to a good start. I did my first in-person creative writing conference at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing last month, and it truly felt magical and nourishing. It’s hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by other writers, all of whom were incredibly smart and talented, not to mention fun and supportive. I felt more at home with strangers I’d just met—who came from every corner of the country, as well as London and Montreal—than some people I’ve known for years. I’ve never before had the luxury of focusing on just creative writing for a week, and the whole experience was deeply inspiring and fulfilling. I challenged myself that I would only read if I’d written something new at the conference, and am happy to say I met that goal (here is photographic evidence on Instagram!) But more than anything, I hope I’ve built friendships that will last well beyond the conference.

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Book

When I came across Annabelle Tometich’s byline a couple of years ago, I was curious about her background as the “ich” ending is usually a giveaway of Yugoslavian roots. As soon as I heard the half-Filipina, half-Yugoslavian journalist was publishing a memoir, I knew it would be on my to-read-list. The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony is a funny and heartfelt story about her childhood; her smart, hard-working, but fiery mother; and about growing up amidst loss and a search for belonging. I loved Tometich’s detailed anecdotes, her portrayal of her mother’s complexities, and how effectively she uses a child’s point of view to describe her tumultuous coming-of-age.

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Essays and Interviews

I’ll start with Isabella Hammad’s great essay for The New York Review on Acts of Language, in which she explains why it’s problematic that a lot of pro-Palestine speech is automatically treated as a threat.

“Words are not weapons of mass destruction: when we encourage others to use language with care, we should be sure to do the same ourselves. Some metaphors are inappropriate in some contexts. The context here is a quantity of ammunition dropped on Gaza that is equivalent to more than three times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A high proportion of those bombs were US-made and supplied. Those bombs were not made of language, and they certainly were not metaphors.”

Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen wrote a powerful piece about coming out, secrets, and her relationship with her father. For Longreads, here is The Shapes of Silence.

“I should have known that before any other identity, I am Vietnamese American first.  Before I knew I was gay, I knew I was your con gái—your youngest daughter. Before I was Jennifer, I was “Jenny” because Vietnamese elders flattened the “er” sound from its harsh pronunciation.” 

Lisa Ko’s Dream Futures for The Rumpus is one of those well-thought out pieces where it was hard to pull out just one paragraph.

“We are living in a time of interlocking crises, yet expected to pretend everything is fine. Doing great! Getting lots done! It’s the American way, cognitive dissonance with a smile, the obligatory complacency of “going back to normal,” to a version of the past that never existed, an acceptance of mass death and inequity as inevitable. We’re taught that other countries impart their citizens with propaganda, while we are a civilized, moral democracy. This, of course, is our propaganda, an attempt to silence the wars we have continually waged, domestically and abroad. Americans do violence. Violence is done to us. We turn that anger and fear and grief on ourselves and one another in our own slow civil war.”

My friend Kristin Vuković’s debut novel, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter, comes out in August; here is an interview she did about the book with Hannah Howard for The Cheese Professor.

“There’s a line in my novel, “Cheesemaking always leaves fingerprints.” Ultimately, cheesemakers are the authors of their own cheese, and you can taste their unique signature. I think cheesemaking is similar to writing in that you’re always feeling your way through and needing to make adjustments along the way. Cheesemakers take into account time and temperature of ripening and other factors that can change, and writers discover aspects of their characters as they develop and events that can alter the narrative.”

I’ve featured Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders here before; here is a beautiful excerpt, Lychee, from her latest book, Bite by Bite, in The Adroit Journal.

“I had friends who made my heart leap. A different kind of family of Asian American writer pals, still growing, strengthening, all of us trying to make our way into the publishing world, eking out poems and sending them off to try and get published, slowly, but steadily. I still can’t fully explain how we all immediately felt like long-lost cousins who finally reunited in both the quiet and loud spaces among skyscrapers and subway lines. A few lychee martinis here and there. And loads and loads of laughter after various poetry readings in the city together. A different kind of treasure.” 

I’ve also recommended Safiya Sinclair’s debut memoir in this newsletter; here is a conversation between her and Leslie-Ann Murray, also in The Adroit Journal.

“Growing up, it was pretty clear that there was a system of who was in power and who was not—women and girls were at the bottom of the pile and were treated that way. People always want to know my relationship with religion now. “I have none,” I say. But that’s not quite true. I’m a poet and poetry is my own kind of prayer, my own small divination of the world, and I make my way through the world and understand most of my experiences through poetry, so that’s my spirituality. I keep the good things from Rastafarinsm, the things that you just talked about, this idea of Black pride.”

I’ll end with a piece I loved and very much related to as I’m often asked which language I dream in, fret about multicultural parenting, and resort to my mother tongue for phrases that don’t exist in English. For LitHub, here is Priyanka Mattoo’s Dreaming in English of Dreaming in Kashmiri: What You Can Only Express in One Language, excerpted from Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir.

“What language do you dream in?” I’ve been asked, when people learn that English isn’t technically my first. English, I say, always English.

But I wish it wasn’t. I dream of speaking in Kashmiri, because English never feels enough, somehow. How are the kids going to feel the depth of my love, I think, if I’m limited by tidy English phrases? And will I ever be as funny to them as my mother, who has the wildness and intensity of our native tongue at her disposal?”

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 in the human rights and international affairs fields. I have written about my immigrant experience for the Connecticut Literary Anthology 2023, The New York Times, Catapult, Pigeon Pages, the Washington Post, and the New York Daily News. I participated in Tin House workshops in 2024 and 2021, and won the Poet & Author and Parent Writer fellowships from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Find me on Instagram, @vesnajaksiclowe, or twitter, @vesnajaksic.