Immigrant Strong: September 2022 Issue
On pregnancy and identity; the first year in America; and migration as love
Between its descriptions of childhood memories, a female friendship, and Yugoslav references, Lana Bastašić’s Catch The Rabbit sent me down memory lane. The novel is an engaging read about two estranged childhood friends’ journey across post-war Bosnia that weaves together narratives about their road trip with those from their childhood. Bastašić, who was born in Croatia (while it was part of Yugoslavia), grew up in Bosnia, and now lives in Serbia, translated her debut novel to English herself (something she has said she would not recommend, but did out of necessity). While I share her mixed Yugoslav roots, I think this prize-winning debut novel will appeal to a broader audience, as it interrogates larger themes about our memories, relationships, and identities.
Essays and Interviews
Sylvia K. Ilahuka writes about language, names, and identity in Pregnancy, a mini-essay in Guernica’s Sketches section, which focuses on reproductive choice.
“In English there were the clinical realities; in Swahili, the emotional layers. Nuances are best processed in one’s mother tongue, but is there language for those who have walked this liminal space? For as long as our human bodies are the site of procreation, the decision to have children or not, how many, and when, will be a driving force behind all our choices.”
Sulaiman Addonia makes so many great points in this interview with Sander Pleij for the European Review of Books.
“I am very proud to be a refugee camp boy. I am not ashamed. It is a place that made me the determined person that I am. I know that I operate in a business that has been the domain of the so-called privileged people. But I have gained a lot of privileges by being in a refugee camp, by seeing people create ideas from nothing. And that’s what I do.”
Here is a great illustrated piece in The New York Times by Rumi Hara, Are you American?’: The Question I Couldn’t Answer. It confronts a question some of us are often asked, and examines what happens when you don’t feel at home in your native country.
“It didn’t seem fair that I was expected to choose just one nationality. What if I was both or neither or something completely different?”
For the Los Angeles Review of Books, here is Yvonne Conza’s interview with Jonathan Escoffery.
“I’m not trying to win at Jamaican Americanness or Blackness. I’m not necessarily trying to beat racial constraints or racism, though occasionally it can feel that way. At times, I might be trying to survive others’ prejudices against, and assumptions about, my identities. I might make certain I’m the best-dressed person in every room I step into because I have to do so just to be treated with dignity, for example. But mostly, I’m just trying to live.”
Boyah J. Farah’s The Danger—And Hope— of a First Year in America, excerpted for LitHub from America Made Me a Black Man: A Memoir is worth your time.
“I can feel the gaze of the white neighbors, wondering who I am and whether or not I speak their language or eat their food or like their music. I am not one of them, but I am eager to become one of them. As I pass by them, they smile. I keep their smiles as a gesture of goodwill.”
Cecilia Caballero wrote this beautiful piece, Other Alive Creatures, for epiphany journal.
“My parents raised me here, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers unite. Here, where the Pacific Ocean pours itself inland to the San Francisco Bay. Where the water meets itself home again. This is the Delta, where you can look and look but find no visible demarcation line between the salt waters and the fresh waters. This means that the fish taught me how to move between elements with ease, that home is an always moving thing.”
Please check out Ucheoma Onwutuebe’s When Migration Is a Gesture of Love, part of her Catapult column, Notes of a Nostalgic Nigerian.
“Our desperation to leave home by any means, through routes safe or dangerous, is not a marker of the headiness of youth, nor are we leaving simply because we desire a change of scenery. Our migrations are motivated by a sense of hopelessness in our country. Our move is triggered by a need for survival, to escape the dire economic conditions at home and to flee the toppling effects of failed governments and policies.”
Here is Killian Fox’s interview for the Guardian with Javier Zamora, whose book, Solito: A Memoir, is out now.
“Often, the media only focuses on the harsh facts. These are immigrants enduring – for most – the worst day of their lives, and they’re getting photographed. The humanity of that individual is flattened and readers only look at them as a product of hardship and violence. As a survivor of trauma, I don’t only remember that. On the contrary, I can still taste the fish we had in Acapulco and remember how happy we were getting food from nuns in a shelter near the border. It’s moments such as these that are absent from news clippings and even other works of fiction and nonfiction about immigration.”
Between ongoing wars and conflict, the climate crisis, and the rise of far-right politicians, the world continues to be a gloomy place—so I’ll end with a humorous piece by Ruth Madievsky; I’m an Immigrant Parent And You Will Accept My Byzantine Displays of Love for McSweeney’s.
“You have a cold? How many times have I told you not to leave the house with wet hair? Put this raw garlic beneath your pillow and flash this quarter at the full moon. Here’s enough chicken bouillon to drown a mountain lion.”
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. 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.
Looking forward to reading Catch The Rabbit- thanks for the rec!
Thank you so much for sharing all of these wonderful stories.