Immigrant Strong: November 2024

On staying in Lebanon, the cost of being unmarried, and a third father

Hi everyone—a couple of quick announcements:

• Like many others, I’ve moved over to Bluesky, so I hope we connect there or on Instagram as I’m avoiding the right-wing lunatic’s site.

• If you are in Toronto, I’ll be among the readers at the launch of Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, edited by Taslim Jaffer and Omar Mouallem this Monday night!

I realize it’s kinda weird this month’s feature is a book I’m in but I truly think Back Where I Came From would be of interest to readers of this newsletter. In this beautiful anthology, twenty-six writers explore what it means to be a child of immigrants; navigate the complexity, beauty, and hardship of diasporic lives; and take readers on fascinating journeys around the globe. I even love the dedication and the introduction, which does a great job of turning a phrase negatively hurled at immigrants into something we can own and be proud of. The book elevates immigrants and children of immigrants; navigates what it means to live in the diaspora with the nuance that topic deserves; and happens to make a great gift for the holidays! (It’s also published by a fantastic independent press with the best name (Book*hug) in my former hometown of Toronto!

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Essays and Interviews

I will start with Vera Kachouh’s powerful Electric Literature essay, My Father Stays in Lebanon to Know that He Exists.

“How many times can a person leave behind what they love before they begin to feel that they, too, are being left behind with it? Perhaps we spend our entire lives trying to reclaim the pieces of ourselves that we lost by loving something that could never love us back—that hurt us with every gesture of love that we gave. 

I think my father stays in order to know that he exists.”

The New York Times’ Modern Love column is notoriously difficult to get into (I think Harvard may have a higher acceptance rate); here is Karissa Chen’s recent piece, When the Cost of Being Unmarried Is Too High.

“My husband and I don’t talk about what will happen if war breaks out. We don’t talk about what it would mean to leave his mother behind or for him to adjust to a country where he doesn’t speak the language. We know where our marriage papers are, both the original certificate and its English translation, in a drawer next to our passports.”

I’ve had the pleasure of being edited by Victoria Buitron in two anthologies and love coming across her byline. For South 85 Journal, here is her vulnerable and beautifully written piece, Tidal Seasons.

“The first time in Costa Rica I am a newlywed; the second, I see our land; the third is a week before he leaves. On that day, he confesses to lies and omissions with more lies and omissions. The fourth time that I’m back, I have not spoken to the man I’d said vows to in almost a year. The land lacks my name.”

I related to many comments in this conversation in Bomb magazine between Bruna Dantas Lobato and Ananda Lima, including this one by Dantas Lobato:

“I wrote this book while going through my own immigration journey, missing my family, and sometimes feeling very alone and broke in cities where I didn’t know anyone. I guess I had to know I was going to live through it before I could surrender to the page, but I knew it had to be done so I could have in writing all the truths I’d wanted to find in reading.”

I’ll wrap it up with Tiffany Yo’s essay for The Rumpus, To My Third Father.

“Your voice echoed against your tall-ceilinged bedroom with permission I neither needed nor requested. I wanted you to try. To call me Tiffster, to ask questions, to understand how your Caucasian name blanketed my Chinese Indonesian heritage, erasing my origin and ancestry. I wanted to remind you of the previous last names on my court filings: yours and my biological father’s, not my first stepfather’s because his name was never legally mine.”

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 for Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2024, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2023, The New York Times, Pigeon Pages, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and Catapult, among others. I participated in Tin House and Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshops, and won the Poet & Author and Parent Writer fellowships from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Find me on Instagram and Bluesky.