Oct 07, 2020
When Your Country Calls You an Alien
Sometimes, the word “belonging” feels more apt when snapped into two: be longing.
The Champawat Tiger
“The borders don’t even matter,” Kartik said. “The British just made them up.”
Aug 04, 2020
What I Carry in My Bag of American Dreams
When we decided to immigrate to the US from Iran, I thought I was ready to face any possible hard times ahead—but there was still so much I had to learn about living.
Jul 21, 2020
For My Immigrant Parents, a Vacation Is a Reprieve from Labor—for Me, It’s a Time to Work
My parents wanted to give me opportunities that they never had, to let me participate in bizarre American rites of passage.
Nov 21, 2019
Where Once Were Qilin: Return to Nanjing
What did it mean that now both the villages and the qilin were gone? This portal to the ancestors gone forever.
Oct 16, 2019
Why Do Borders and Passports Dictate What Country I Get to Call Home?
The contours of a border become a lot less rigid when you carry what are deemed to be the right documents.
Sep 19, 2019
Tailoring My Clothes, Fitting into My Life in America
My idea of home had changed, so I took the symbolic step of finding a new tailor—marking Philadelphia as a place that now fit me right, too.
Jun 25, 2019
How I Find Home in the Persian Poetry of Hafez
Home means that you’re anchored in something deeper than second-hand nostalgia, that you miss your country because it is a part of you.
Jun 12, 2019
What Do I Gain From Citizenship—and What Do I Lose?
There are rules to who gets to live the American dream, and who doesn’t.
Nov 27, 2018
When Your Mother Country Becomes a Foreign Land
I grew up in the in-between: white, Hispanic, a pigment of mixtures that blended unevenly.
Oct 10, 2018
How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren’t Your Fault
In Hindi, you don’t say ‘sorry;’ you ask for forgiveness. So, growing up, I made the mistake of apologizing for who I am.
Oct 02, 2018
Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls
“Nobody will stop a young blond girl, that’s the truth,” you said. This was when I grew angry with you, when I wanted to scrap our week-old friendship.
Sep 25, 2018
Why We Cross the Border in El Paso
I felt my mom’s grip tighten around my hand as dozens surged across the Rio Grande, the water waist-high. Adults held children in their arms or carried them in rebozos across their backs.
Aug 30, 2018
When Turkish Carpets Were Good Enough for Australia, But the People Who Made Them Were Not
German chemists. They empowered us, they ruined us, they controlled so very much.
Aug 28, 2018
My Father Is More Than a Model Minority
What makes immigrant parents like mine worthy of love, respect, and admiration in our country?
Aug 21, 2018
The Armenian Community I Carry in My Vietnamese Heart
How two diasporas shaped who I am.
Aug 20, 2018
Mourning My Birthplace
“When you’ve spent your life apart from a loved one, what prepares you for not knowing how to mourn?”
May 07, 2018
Manhattan’s Vanished Little Syria, and the Work of Preserving My Family’s History
Raji Lian, my great-grandfather, came over from Syria in 1899.
May 02, 2018
Untimely Immigrants: My Family Within and Without, From Brazil to the United States
Each time I am lured by the mirage of progress, someone knocks at the door and I am reminded of being thirteen and having nightmares about ICE at our door.
May 01, 2018
Writing Letters to Mao
What does it mean to experience a history of trauma and blood in ephemeralities, in residue?
Apr 19, 2018
