Oct 05, 2022
The Language of Plants Was Shaped By a Colonial Past
The more elaborate my mother’s garden grew, the more elided was the strenuousness of her efforts.
The more elaborate my mother’s garden grew, the more elided was the strenuousness of her efforts.
This right to return offered to Jews makes me think about who is entitled to join Europe and who is not.
If I approached my immigration experience the same way people approach a start-up, maybe I could optimize the amount of time it took me to integrate.
I was enjoying what exists of this place today—be it Croatia or Yugoslavia—without the need for comparison.
My husband’s grandfather wrote an immigration guide called “Before You Leave for America.” We could have used one in reverse—for moving to Bulgaria.
As her family saw it, my mother’s life in London was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true.
Though no place is home upon arrival, I make it my home by the time I leave.
Time amplifies division; I fear that we’re never going to be a big family again, that my newborn son will never consider his cousins to be siblings like I did.
At home, in Goiânia, I didn’t have to be Brazilian; I could just be me.
Comforting each other is more natural when we’re physically present, which is what the pandemic made it impossible for my not-husband to be.
We don’t crave the things we’re close to, even if they’ve shaped us into who we are.
If you’re looking at something, you don’t know where it’s going; if you know where it’s going, you don’t know where it is.
In class we’d learned the Australian flag was blue to represent the sky and ocean both, our collective identity shaped by that constant hue.
I love our Little Odessa because it is the closest approximation to a home I will never really know.
Sometimes, the word “belonging” feels more apt when snapped into two: be longing.
“The borders don’t even matter,” Kartik said. “The British just made them up.”
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.
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.
