Nov 21, 2019
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.
My parents wanted to give me opportunities that they never had, to let me participate in bizarre American rites of passage.
What did it mean that now both the villages and the qilin were gone? This portal to the ancestors gone forever.
The contours of a border become a lot less rigid when you carry what are deemed to be the right documents.
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.
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.
There are rules to who gets to live the American dream, and who doesn’t.
I grew up in the in-between: white, Hispanic, a pigment of mixtures that blended unevenly.
In Hindi, you don’t say ‘sorry;’ you ask for forgiveness. So, growing up, I made the mistake of apologizing for who I am.
“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.
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. We watched as the Border Patrol agents caught and detained some people while dozens more ran past.
German chemists. They empowered us, they ruined us, they controlled so very much.
What makes immigrant parents like mine worthy of love, respect, and admiration in our country?
How two diasporas shaped who I am.
“When you’ve spent your life apart from a loved one, what prepares you for not knowing how to mourn?”
Raji Lian, my great-grandfather, came over from Syria in 1899.
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.
What does it mean to experience a history of trauma and blood in ephemeralities, in residue?
Luis received the first coins he had ever held. “Keep these safe,” the man said. “You’ll need them.”
After immigrating from Finland, I adopted Florida and all its freaks, swindlers, addicts, and charismatic criminals.
One thing united us, one thing no one else could understand—our lack of legal status in the United States.
