Tag: Immigration

Gabriel Thompson takes us into San Francisco Immigration Court and the labyrinthine system that asylum seekers—and attorneys and judges—are up against.

When your name is Osama and you’re living in post-9/11 America, you always know The Question is coming.

In her quest to become truly American, Jakki Kerubo discovers what it means to belong in a place.

Naz Riahi recalls her vibrant childhood in a suburb of Tehran, and considers how the harsh realities imposed by the still new Islamic Republic seeped into her family’s life.

California native Katya Cengel contemplates whether living in Ukraine prepared her for life in the South.

Anjoli Roy struggles to understand the conservative father she dearly loves.

In recent novels, Ocean Vuong and Nicole Dennis-Benn tell stories in which young queer characters affected by migration and displacement are worthy of seeing themselves reflected in others.

Dina Nayeri’s patience is tried as she accompanies an immigrant family into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Wars and heightened border security have created a humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean.

Yifat Susskind stands at three of the world’s most militarized borders and reflects on what is revealed about these zones of separation and violence when we see them from the perspective of mothers.

Madhushree Ghosh continues to honor her late parents’ memory…through the simple act of making fish curry.

Grace Loh Prasad realizes that mourning is complicated when home and homeland aren’t the same place.

In the wake of having his writing career belittled, Jackson Bliss becomes an interpreter for a refugee and comes to see words, translations, and storytelling as important acts of resistance.

“We, as family, got so much from their trash. I never wanted to forget that I was the janitor’s kid before I was anything else.”

My on-again, off-again love affair with Engelbert Humperdinck.

Italy’s “Salvini Decree,” passed last November, has already altered life for many migrants to the country.

Gabriela Garcia’s short story about a women fighting a cold war with her new neighbor is deeply political without explicitly being about politics at all.

As a result of Trump-era immigration policies, fewer highly skilled and educated legal immigrants — like 26-year-old Akirt Sridharan from India — are being hired by U.S. companies, despite their qualifications.

Guy Gunaratne’s Man Booker-longlisted “In Our Mad and Furious City” recognizes multiple, overlapping versions of London and its inhabitants, examining the ways violence can bubble up through the city’s fissures.

When Naz Riahi was 9, she escaped tragedy in Iran only to be confronted by a cruel new world in America. Food became her solace and her tool for assimilating.

The Mexican teenager who became one Mexican-American family’s maid taught a young woman that el oltro lado, the other side, is as much about class and good fortune as it is an international border.

In two recent books about immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S., the authors’ attempts to help become part of their subjects’ stories.

Siddhartha Mahanta looks back at the small suburban starter house in Texas that helped his immigrant father redefine “home.”

And how many times can you start your life all over again from zero? If there’s anyone who knows the answer, it’s Claudia Amaro.

My Soviet husband said we’d need 24-hour day care for any children we might have. Many years and the fall of an empire later, I finally realized why he said it.

Sharmila Sen grew up understanding distinctions between castes and religions, between the educated and the illiterate. Race was a distinction she didn’t understand until she came to America.

In Mario Chard’s “Land of Fire,” was it the truth or a lie that killed the migrants in the desert? And what if that’s the wrong question? What if we say it was a horse?

Journalist Rebecca Mead explains why she first left England for the United States, and why she’s now moving back to a country that isn’t necessarily home.

As a teen, Jabeen Akhtar discovered that trying to be an exceptional immigrant can make you do stupid things.

A poet reflects on finding her words in the face of injustice.