Immigrant Strong: June 2025 Issue

On writing in two languages, fever dreams, and Iran

Book

I finally read Jami Nakamura Lin’s The Night Parade: A Speculative Memoir, which has long been on my to-read list. The Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American writer uses mythology from her roots to write about mental health, pregnancy loss, and her father’s illness. This inventive memoir experiments with structure, form, and point of view, and includes her sister’s gorgeous illustrations. The cover is stunning and the book’s genre-defying structure elevates writing that is gripping and poetic.

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Essays and Interviews

I’m glad to see Iranian American writers speaking out about our government’s latest senseless war. For the Los Angeles Times, here is Porochista Khakpour in ‘Tehrangeles’ author: ‘We don’t want Iran bombed. We don’t want the regime to be there.’

“They’ve been pro-bombing Iran for several decades. I can’t imagine being so morally decrepit that you’re willing to have your loved ones die for a fantasy of regime change.”

For LitHub, Tatiana de Rosnay writes about The Blessing of a Hybrid Brain: On the Joy of Writing in Two Languages.

“The book came along like a two-headed monster, thriving homogenously. I didn’t favor one language over the other, and wanted above all for both texts to end up identical. At times, as I labored over a description, I switched directly to the other language, which instantly gave me a new lift. This also proved to be very efficient method when I was stuck in a dialogue scene that lacked spark.”

I enjoyed this interview with Sanam Mahloudji for Electric Literature, “The Persians” Asks Who We Might Become When We Choose to Immigrate or Not.

“These are questions I ask myself—and are part of what inspired me to write these characters. Some who stayed, some who left. Who would I be if my parents never left? There is a part of me that grieves that person that could have been. Who would she be? My primary language would be different—I speak Persian, but my fluency is mainly to speak in the home with family. What would I be like if I thought in Persian? If my references to culture and music, to land, trees, animals are the ones you’d find in Iran, not the United States or London where I now live?”

For LitHub, here is Fever Dreams: Hala Alyan on Displacement, Trauma, and Memory, excerpted from her memoir.

“During the fever-filled nights, I’ve started dreaming again of desert, a bird that speaks my grandmother’s name, “Seham, Seham,” a book I open to find the baby’s name. A name I forget upon waking. I dream of the squeak of packing tape, a room full of moving boxes, the muscle memory of my girl body. I dream of Oklahoma. I dream of a passport with my discarded name, my borrowed name—Holly—and a long drive up a Lebanese mountain to meet a woman who says she can change it. I dream of Alaska. I dream of Saudi Arabia. Places I’ve never been.”

I featured Sarah Aziza’s debut memoir in last month’s issue; here is a beautiful in-depth interview with her for the Adroit Journal.

“Both the writing and the journey encompassed in the book have left me profoundly convinced that there is a deep knowing within us that is irreducible. In my case, a lot of my eating disorder tied back to the repression, and later recognition, of my inner self. Among other things, I spent roughly twenty years trying to stifle, avoid, or cover up my Palestinian ethnicity as well as my queerness. It was terrifying to approach these things at all, let alone write about them. But it got to the point for me where it was basically: tell the truth about yourself, or die. It’s dramatic in my case, but I believe everyone has some set of choices like this.”

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, children of immigrants and refugees, and others living between countries and cultures. 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 for three anthologies (Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home; Connecticut Literary Anthology 2024; and Connecticut Literary Anthology 2023) as well as Electric Literature, The New York Times, Pigeon Pages, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and Catapult, among others. I was a Writer in Residence at Hedgebrook (‘25), participated in Tin House (‘24 and ‘21) and Kenyon Review (‘24) workshops, and won the Poet & Author (‘24) and Parent Writer (‘20) fellowships from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Find me on Instagram and Bluesky.

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