Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

From Brazil, with love

Last Sunday, a group of five girlfriends and I roamed the largest urban rainforest in the world: Rio’s Tijuca National Park. We learned the once-emptied woodland is part of the Atlantic Forest, which as a whole was decimated during 17th-century Portuguese rule. Logging, charcoal production, and coffee monocultures degraded the lands. Native fauna that once inhabited the forest disappeared, creating a rippling effect among the forests’ ecosystems. A Google search reveals a group of six enslaved Black Brazilians may have been responsible for helping save the land from total destruction. Tijuca has since become the perfect laboratory for replanting what was lost.

On our rickety ride out of the forest, I feel my insides erupt. I can’t shake the parallels with the ongoing ecocide in Gaza. I sob, and my friends let me.

“The full extent of the damage in Gaza has not yet been documented, but analysis of satellite imagery provided to the Guardian shows the destruction of about 38-48% of tree cover and farmland.

Olive groves and farms have been reduced to packed earth; soil and groundwater have been contaminated by munitions and toxins; the sea is choked with sewage and waste; the air polluted by smoke and particulate matter.

Researchers and environmental organisations say the destruction will have enormous effects on Gaza’s ecosystems and biodiversity. The scale and potential long-term impact of the damage have led to calls for it to be regarded as “ecocide” and investigated as a possible war crime.”

— The age of extinction (The Guardian)

It’s Earth Day today. I call my brother. We talk about replanting the olive trees when this is all over. I cry and watch footage of courageous students on college campuses, then pack a water bottle and text a friend to join me for yet another protest.

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Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Resource Guides for Immigrants in Chicago: From Borderless Mag, a one-stop-shop for essential needs for Chicago immigrants, from food assistance to mental health support

• *Palestinian writers: The National Writers Union and Study Hall have compiled a database of editors specifically looking to work with Palestinian writers (journalists, essayists, fiction writers, poets etc.) for English-language publications; your work does not have to be about genocide or war. Please email sauravsarkar2000@gmail.com or Roshan.Abraham@gmail.com. Hat tip: Jen Soriano.

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• ‘My Life Turned Upside Down’: Palestinian women report on their lives amid Israel’s siege of Gaza (Hammer & Hope): “What would I like to do [when this is over]? I would like to have a good shower, a very hot shower. I want to go to my home, to clean my home, to cook real food for my kids. I don’t know. This question actually is the hardest one.” Six women in Gaza tell Hammer & Hope about their lives before and since Oct. 7. Read here.

• Crows in this Part of New Delhi (Shreyasi Sharma, The Rumpus): “There is a way in which the world deposits around these gone trees and we don’t get to know. Trees get cut and not an indoor plant alerts us. Trees, do they ever come to know how we are feeling? New saplings turn up in our yard and we step on them to take an Uber or close the window to begin Zoom meetings. Do we ever come to know what is happening near those roots?” A gorgeous essay from Delhi writer and educator Shreyasi Sharma. Read here.

• Staring Down the Language Barrier (Elmaz Abinader, Panorama): “Arabic was our family language, only spoken at home and when heard by others, somewhat embarrassing… Arabic didn’t have a chance of survival in my body.” On assimilation, language loss and self-discovery during America’s “War on Terror.” Read here.

• How to Stay Alive Underwater (Allya Yourish, ANMLY): “I can’t think of my father without pain, so for a time I try to stop thinking about him, treat every memory like a purpling bruise. There are opposite nights, nights when I prod at my rawest hurts, anxiously play through every voicemail from him I have saved, when I scan my memory to corroborate that I still know his nicknames for me, that I can still hear the cadence of his voice. Most of the time I can’t stand it, though. I have to stay above the grief or I will be beneath it forever, I think.” One of my favorite recent essays on grief. Read here.

• This Little, This Late (Momtaza Mehri, Granta): “Rub my scalp and tell me who I could have been. / Feed me a morsel or two.” One of two beautiful poems from British-Somali author Momtaza Mehri, who won an Eric Gregory Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection with her collection, Bad Diaspora Poems. Read the full poem here.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

To do: write joy

Nine years ago, when my manager asked me the dreaded where-do-you-see-yourself-in-three-years question during my first mid-year review as a full-time newspaper staffer, I remember struggling to come up with a title or job description that felt Important Enough to make my employment worth the investment.

But I do recall saying that what I do want to learn in my time here is how to write more like her, the narrative reporter on the other side of the newsroom who would later invite me to lunch and eventually guide me to write beyond the confines of the paper, the same writer who would convince me to join her MFA program once she’d left to lead it, and who would go on to become my teacher herself.

During our first editing session in February, she pointed out a specific line I’d written about living and dying. In the margins of our shared Google doc, she commented that the line worried her, that we’d need to discuss it in person. When we met for coffee, she nestled beside me, called herself auntie, and told me she needed to believe I have the support I need if I’m to continue this excavation work.

I didn’t know what to do with the genuine concern on her face and in her palms; it didn’t read like the familiar obligation of sympathy. She proceeded to wipe my embarrassment of tears and I apologized for the outburst. I am not accustomed to being read in this way; such surgical tenderness and attention is unnerving.

Last week, after months of working together, she told me she has yet to read evidence of joy in my memoir-in-progress. The realization rocked me harder coming from an editor who’s known me for nearly a decade, who’s seen me giggle with girlfriends even on my worst days. She is confident I am capable of profound joy. So where is it? And what good is my writing if all it does is project the pain?

“I’ve watched the world happen to you,” she told me. “Now I want to see you claim your space in it.”

My non-writing “assignment” for the next few weeks is to rewatch Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and reread excepts of my favorite books of the program so far: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander and An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, two books about two very different losses that sprinkle in the moments of levity, joy, and love that keeps us reading and living. I’m to explore how these artists have masterfully infused joy within trauma writing both on screen and on paper, and understand how that joy is necessary for texture, for dimensional character and story, and mostly for hope.

The task shouldn’t feel as daunting as it does, but it’s going to take some unlearning to really believe my joys, too, are worth my words.

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Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Electric Literature is accepting short stories, essays, flash, poetry, and graphic narratives through midnight Pacific Time on April 14 — or when EL receives 750 submissions per category. Submission guidelines available via Submittable. (Hat tip: )

• Ask yourself what kind of artist you want to be: In this Creative Independent interview, writer and multidisciplinary artist Fariha Róisín talks art and politics — and offers suggestions for liberation-focused life and work. If we don’t have anything to say about the cruelty of the world, can we really consider ourselves artists?

• *Palestinian writers: The National Writers Union and Study Hall have compiled a database of editors specifically looking to work with Palestinian writers (journalists, essayists, fiction writers, poets etc.) for English-language publications; your work does not have to be about genocide or war. Please email sauravsarkar2000@gmail.com or Roshan.Abraham@gmail.com. Hat tip: Jen Soriano.

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• Palestinian (Ibrahim Nasrallah/trans. Huda Fakhreddine, Protean Magazine): “I slept without a bite of bread./I dreamt without dreams./I woke up not missing my hands or feet or reflection in the mirror/or the thing I call my soul./I died and lived./I lit myself on fire. I put myself out with my own ashes,/and nothing came of it.” Ibrahim Nasrallah, born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948, spent his childhood and youth in the Alwehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, then began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. He has been a full-time writer since 2006. Read Nasrallah’s full poem here.

• How ADHD Meds Changed My Life (Said Shaiye, ANMLY): “I grew up in this culture that teaches you to be grateful for everything. Say you come home and say ‘mom, dad, I’m struggling with school. I feel sad all the time, and I don’t know why.’ You would get a shower sandal flying towards your head (for daring to be so ungrateful), followed by a lecture on all the people back home who would kill for the opportunities you take for granted. You might be reminded of all the sacrifices your parents made to get you to this position. The refugee camps, the bullets flying overhead, the near starvation… Being Autistic with ADHD is a unique experience. I have friends who are just Autistic and friends who are just ADHD and friends who are both. The combined experience is something I’ll struggle to make sense of for years, but I am not ungrateful.” A candid, stream-of-consciousness recollection about medication, health care in America and more from Somali writer and disability advocate Said Shaiye. Read here.

• Living With Muscular Dystrophy at 50 Makes Death My Shadow Partner (Alice Wong, TIME): “In my bedroom, with a scary clown ceiling light above me at night, my vivid imagination wondered how I would die–would it be a slow and painful death? Would it be fast from a medical emergency? Knowing my muscles are progressively weakening as I struggled to walk as a child and breathe as a teenager always kept death at the forefront of my mind. Believing I had no future shaped me in ways I am still processing today.” A brief but lovely essay from disabled activist Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project. Read here.

• In Defense of Food Memory in Immigrant Fiction (Jessica Yu, LitHub): ”I ate my food on the couch. Then I went upstairs and lay in bed and cried. I couldn’t even explain the significance of this dish to myself. How tangy and gritty that pork was. Soft and firm like my childhood. I feel like a fool for writing this down even now. I hate people who talk about the significance of food to their childhood, who describe every mouthful like it matters to anyone but them. But I also hate that this has become a trope of so-called immigrant literatures, that in an age of what Yen Le Espiritu calls, ‘panethnic entrepreneurs,’ that we’re considered sellouts for talking about things that might matter to us because they mattered to too many other people before us. It mattered to me. And sometimes I just want that to be enough.” Read here.

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Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

Word vomit: Dualities

This morning at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul was beaten and arrested by Israeli forces. He was on scene with his crew and other reporters to cover the army’s fourth raid into the hospital, where thousands of civilians, including medical staff and patients, remain trapped.

I read this and am enraged at fellow American journalists more than anyone else in the world. Then I open a silly text from a friend that makes me laugh and hate myself for forgetting my anger for even a moment.

I read about another flour massacre and still don’t understand how those words can couple, flour and massacre. My dog hiccups and I smile and hate myself for smiling. I watch a video unboxing the nonsense inside those floating aid packages from our guilty government and find myself at another protest, screaming at the president.

We go out for my friend’s 34th and a mutual friend tells me he sees me and feels me and hurts, too, and then, to keep myself from weeping at this birthday dinner for someone who has saved me in so many ways, I down two whiskey cocktails knowing well and good I can’t hold my liquor. I am grateful for the acknowledgement and don’t know what to do with the weight of it.

It has been 163 days since Oct. 7 and 27,702 days since May 14, 1948. I can’t go anywhere without wearing a keffiyeh either draped over my shoulders or tied to my purse. I read Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ essay in Letters to a Writer of Color on writing trauma and think about my therapist’s advice and try to convince myself that joy is essential to the fight.

I see this tweet: As things get increasingly dire politically, I think it will be important to learn to love the fight. Part of you must find pleasure in defiance, refusal, and even sabotage. That’s needed for longevity.

I think about the laughter at protests. The kids in keffiyehs who always want to hog the mic, the Palestinian aunty who always screams with such passion no one knows what she’s saying but that’s OK, she can scream and we’ll listen for hours. I laugh when I think about the cops whose patronizing body language dwindles as protesting momentum increases, as cars honk in our favor, as speakers call them out one by one. “Pigs!” they yell.

I report for 285 South on a political fracturing among South Asian activists in Georgia over that guilty president of ours and think I might do more of this, that it might be a good use of my time, my anger, my skills as a writer and reporter who is still so furious with the state of American media. I try to believe the work means something.

I’m learning to let the anger guide me to the work and the work guide me to the joy and the joy guide me back to anger and so on. I’m learning to love it all, nervously, cautiously, ruefully. I don’t know what else to do but.

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A show of solidarity

One piece of evidence to remind us we’re not alone, that our struggles for liberation are undeniably intertwined

Ireland 🫱🏻‍🫲🏽 Palestine

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest: Open to writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry who have yet to publish or self-publish a book, the 2024 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest runs through May 15. Award: $2,000, review from Aevitas Creative Management and a one-year subscription for one winner per genre. More info at pshares.org.

• *Lampblack literary magazine, a publication committed to the advancement of Black literature and more, is open to poetry and prose submissions. Submit up to 5 pages of poetry or 15 pages of prose to magazine@lampblacklit.com with your name, title of submission and genre in the subject line. Accepted submissions receive $350. More info here.

• *Palestinian writers: The National Writers Union and Study Hall have compiled a database of editors specifically looking to work with Palestinian writers (journalists, essayists, fiction writers, poets etc.) for English-language publications; your work does not have to be about the war. Please email sauravsarkar2000@gmail.com or Roshan.Abraham@gmail.com. Hat tip: Jen Soriano.

• Suicide Response Training for Ohio Imams and Religious Leaders: On Saturday, April 27, Shaykh Dr. Rania Awaad — cofounder of Muslim holistic mental and spiritual wellness org Maristan — and my old pal Dr. Sadiya Dhanani are holding a special training for Ohio religious leaders, individuals who are often first responders in preventing and responding to mental health crises in faith communities. Apply at tinyurl.com/ohioSRT24. Cost: $15/person.

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• Into the Disaster-Verse (Kamil Ahsan, SAAG Anthology): “If this is dying, death sure is noisy. It’s all gotten a bit much, see. All this anticipation of extinction. Almost as if we’ve all signed some collective suicide pact, waiting in the wings to be euthanized. Almost none of us have any ability to change things, which has ossified into an excuse for some very loud resignation.” This beautiful, lengthy essay, which reads like a real fever dream, was eight years in the making. It’s a reflection on disaster of all kinds — global, relational, intimate. It traverses the personal, the political. I feel lucky to know Kamil even a little. Read here.

• Humanity is Not an Abstract Concept (Lana Bastašić, LitHub): “I’ve had people tell me that as a writer I should only think about writing, but this to me is the ultimate triumph of neoliberal capitalism: a voluntary, almost self-congratulatory blindness to that which doesn’t concern my job.” For writers of conscience. Read here.

• To be a Gazan during Ramadan (Noha Beshir, Letters From a Muslim Woman): “I am ashamed of my plush blankets/my soft bed/my full belly/ashamed of the 3 course iftars I will eat/when the sun sets/and the plates of shakshuka and ful/with coffee and jam/I will down without thought/in a hurry before dawn/What does it mean to be a Gazan/during Ramadan/to be a Canadian/during Ramadan/to know that my worldly fortune/is dumb luck/not of my doing/to know/I could be you/and you could be me.” I don’t know who sent this to me, but I am ever grateful. Read the full poem here.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

Like a fucking meteor

It matters that Aaron Bushnell was a white American man who served for his nation and loved it enough to speak on its flaws knowing that the world as it exists, if he’d left it untouched and went on unbothered like so many do with their heads and hearts closed, with their notes on neutrality and their copacetic professions of peace — in a world like this, with the systems he ultimately grew to despise, had Aaron kept his head down and his ire suppressed, he would have likely benefited in some way or another. But Aaron had a heart and a mind broke open, a love for justice so big it had nowhere left to go but up in flames.

The morning Aaron’s video was released, I walked into my neighborhood coffeeshop and noticed my barista heartsick, more glum than usual, and that’s saying something of the oft-sullen sweetheart.

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” she tells me, and I don’t have to ask who.

I get texts from others aghast at the news and read discourse after discourse from white readers about the ethics of sharing the video in the first place, to which I instinctively scoff then admit to my lonesome and to my therapist how I’ll never be able to stomach watching it myself; it feels too much like something I’d do, something I may have done in a past life. The screen grab was enough, the audio a necessary haunting.

But it matters that Aaron was a white American man who served for his nation and filmed it all, making his motives clear from start to finish. It matters that he was composed in his speech, that he wore the uniform, that he was active duty, and again, that he was young and male and white. It matters because I don’t remember headlines in Western media like this, community attention like this, global recognition like this, discourse quite like this after the protester in Atlanta who self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate back in December, a woman who remains in critical condition, whose name I’m not sure we’ll ever know.

It matters and I believe Aaron knew it would. The more I learn about what he’s left behind even after his final act of radical love — the savings he left to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, the ask for his ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine should its natives accept his remains — the more I can’t stop thinking about the what now for us.

Self-immolation is “the rawest testament to the absence of effective courses of action,” Erik Baker writes for n+1. “When war consists primarily of unelected men in undisclosed locations pouring fire on the heads of people we will never know on the other side of the world, there is very little that ordinary people can do to arrest its progress. But we still have our bodies, and it is in the nature of fire to refuse containment.”

The act “illuminates our powerlessness in negative space, but it also affirms the irreducible core of our freedom, that small flame of agency that no repression can extinguish.” The purpose is not to encourage us all to light ourselves on fire but “to scream to the world that you could find no alternative, and in that respect it is a challenge to the rest of us to prove with our own freedom that there are other ways to meaningfully resist a society whose cruelty has become intolerable.”

If his purpose was to challenge the rest of us still here to prove with our own freedom and privilege that there are other ways to meaningfully resist an intolerably cruel society, what does that look like? We prove it through everything, don’t we? The protests, the discussions, the writings, the readings, the organizing, our actions and inactions at the polls and at dining room tables and at career fairs and yes, even at happy hour. We prove it when deciding where we put our money, where we drink our coffee, what we give up. We prove it by accepting discomfort and inconvenience for the greater good, by being honest about who we choose to spend our lives with and why. We prove it in the ways we take care of ourselves so we can resist for everyone else.

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness…doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do,” the late great Audre Lorde once wrote. “I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!” Like a fucking meteor.

A show of solidarity

One piece of evidence to remind us we’re not alone, that our struggles for liberation are undeniably intertwined

On Sunday, a group of Black Atlantans, many current or former HBCU students, led a silent walkout during Rev. Raphael Warnock’s service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in protest of the Georgia senator’s failure to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

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Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Dream Resource Center: a project from the University of California-Los Angeles dedicated to promoting opportunities for immigrant and undocumented youth through fellowships, storytelling, tech and more

• *Acacia Magazine, a new magazine of politics and culture for the American Muslim left, is seeking vol. 2 pitches on the 2024 Presidential election, genocide in Palestine and humanitarian catastrophes in Sudan and the Congo. Editors are also interested in poetry, short stories and timely reviews. Please send pitches for the print edition and web, as well as any questions about submission guidelines to submissions@acaciamag.com.

• *Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest is officially open. Those who have yet to publish or self-publish a book are encouraged to send fiction, nonfiction and poetry for the chance to win publication in the esteemed Emerson College magazine plus $2,000. Deadline to submit: Noon EST on May 15. More details at pshares.org.

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• A World Without Palestinians (Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud, Massachusetts Review): “Our work traverses the intergenerational lovescape of infinite grief and the growth of Gaza in the vastness of our hearts; it ensures that our people are forever protected and nurtured in the womb of the land—tunneling beneath, beyond the reach and away from the gaze of the transnational colonial cult of death… Palestinians teach a fundamental decolonial truth, which the current world is still unable to comprehend—that Gaza has liberated us all.” A reflection on Palestine and resistance against colonialism from scholars Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud. Read here.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue, a departure from the typical Monday letter, is public.

Dispatch from group therapy

In December, during an off-week with my own therapist, I joined a virtual group healing session with Sane in the Membrane holistic therapist Amenah Arman, also the founder of the Palestinian Mental Health Fund. It was a group of about eight of us signing on from our beds or couches on a dark, bitter weeknight. More than half in attendance were Palestinian, and I believe all identified as Muslim in varying capacities.

It had been just a few days since Israeli bombardment resumed following a temporary ceasefire, just a few days since I had two teeth pulled from my mouth at an emergency dentistry practice an hour from home. In my desperation, I clicked to join a room of grieving strangers hoping for some validation for the way my body has been reacting to the live-streamed genocide of Palestinians and the subsequent gaslighting and denial of such terror — for answers to how the hell I can sustain this fight without my body just falling to pieces, without quite literally losing my teeth.

Physical (or somatic) symptoms are common when experiencing secondary trauma, Amenah tells us. The coffee suddenly stops working, the fogginess prevails. Sleep is a dream, and food is either a dangerous salve or an afterthought. And yes, it can go beyond exhaustion and fatigue, even to the point of deep aches in our bones and nerves. This is the grief of injustice, she says. And everyone on this call, she adds, is holding the weight of collective grief with the weight of advocacy. Our nervous systems are on fire, telling us to run, but there’s nowhere to go.

The only thing that will ground us as we live in a heightened state of hopelessness, she says, is community. Like the space we’ve created tonight, to start. Beyond the horrors themselves, it’s the resentment we feel toward those happily existing in their alternate realities, not to mention the alienation from institutions, leaders, our neighbors or ex-friends, that brings our bodies to a halt. You must look to people who understand, where you feel welcome, she says.

One recently-immigrated father on the call says he doesn’t know how to manage their family’s assimilation in America without alienating their Palestinian identity and the plight of their own.

It’s not that we should be removing our children from Western society, Amenah says to him. But in this specific time, if our children are suffering, they need to cling to community so they are not always in spaces where they have to do the work of educating or convincing. That weight alone, especially when unacknowledged or unheard, can break a soul. Once we know we have a community to lean on, we find it easier to integrate without losing ourselves.

I realized in that moment that, for the past several months, I had been doing the work of trying to educate and convince people still adamant on holding neutral, socially copacetic stances. And in that moment, I also decided to stop responding to their messages, to try and put my energy elsewhere. This was so difficult for someone whose conviction is really a guiding force in my every encounter. But I followed Amenah’s and my own therapist’s advice and zeroed in on sustaining the fight in me.

I began reading even more, protesting even more, writing even more — but made sure I was doing this all while in community with others. I joined a writing class with Fariha Roísín, volunteered at local events for Palestine, hugged familiar faces at protests, cried with friends, and stopped scrolling two hours before bed so the nightmares would stop, so I could muster up the physical strength to make it out to the next rally. I am still breaking apart every now and then, and fuck, I am still so damn angry. But slowly, very slowly, I’m learning to embrace the fight for a Free Palestine and for liberation for all as the long game it is and has always been.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has reached out during my hiatus from the newsletter. I have not responded to you all, but I intend to. You are part of the community Amenah told me and the others on that group therapy session to seek out, and I hope I can be a small part of yours.

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Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Pitch call for Misinformation in Immigrant Communities: The Markup is seeking pitches for stories on how misinformation impacts immigrant communities, especially non-native English speakers, in the United States, as a part of our “Languages of Misinformation” series. Pay: $1/word.

• Acacia Magazine: A new magazine of politics and culture for the Muslim left. The first issue features a news story by Naib Mian about the rise of homophobia among certain Muslim American communities, an interview with Mariame Kaba about how Islam informs her abolitionist organizing, short fiction by Mariam Rahmani, cultural criticism by Shamira Ibrahim, a personal essay by Sarah Aziza on growing up in an interfaith household, poetry by Safia Elhillo and Fariha Roísín, and more.

• Publishers for Palestine: A global solidarity collective

• Gaza eSims: Purchasing eSims allows people within Gaza to connect to the outside to communicate with their families during communications blackouts and also to show what’s happening within Gaza

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• The Price of a Father’s Labor (Jamil Jan Kochai, The New Yorker): “He was the ideal immigrant. The American Dream personified. And yet, the moment his broken body could no longer be exploited for its labor, he was doubted and ignored and humiliated.” A gutting, beautiful essay about how America treats its laborers, and especially its migrant and marginalized workers. Read here.

• Palestine and the Power of Language (Elena Dudum, TIME): “In today’s near-constant news cycle on Gaza, Palestinians seem to die at the hands of an invisible executioner. Palestinians are shot dead. Palestinians starve. Palestinian children are found dead. But where is there accountability?” A must-read on grammar as a tool of the oppressor. Read here.

• This Is What They Call It Now (Mary Turfah, Protean Mag): “These same sources that don’t hesitate to circulate Israeli propaganda to manufacture consent for our extermination, concern themselves with facts once the facts are no longer of material consequence—a cheap attempt to reestablish their own credibility.” Mary Turfah brilliantly writes about her ancestors’ town of Salha, massacred and renamed by Israel during the Nakba — and the politics of narrative framing. Read here.

• There Is No Moral Imperative to be Miserable (James Creig, Mental Hellth): “It’s obvious, banal even, that the kind of world we live in has a strong structuring effect on our mental health, and that certain aspects of capitalism—exploitation, domination, loneliness—are especially likely to cause distress,” writes Scottish writer James Greig. “But when it comes to depression and anxiety, we have become stuck in a false dichotomy of either affording people too much agency (the idea you should pull yourselves up by the bootstraps and maybe start journaling) or far too little—capitulating to the idea that you are doomed to unhappiness based on your relation to capital and that there can be no respite from this on an individual level. While good intentions lie behind the tendency to blame capitalism for our mental health woes, leaning too heavily into the idea has unintended consequences. When you’re depressed, rationalizing your way out of getting better is the last thing you should be doing. It doesn’t matter how well-researched or even objectively correct those rationalizations might be.” An appreciated analysis of universalized mental health issues and shared reliance on theoretical solutions to our woes. Read here.

• It Was All Songs: A Letter From Gaza (Nabil S. and translated from Arabic by Sarah Aziza, Mizna): “Our talking—it was all songs, a bit of poetry, letters made of kisses, the eagerness of a lover, and a torment of longing. The talk was hope and the talk was life. It was hours on the phone, and friends always nearby, and coffee—my darling, there was coffee! And when we drank, we sipped it—truly, we sipped. But if any coffee remains, it is by sheer coincidence. Even this precious, scarce coffee, this bon1 is overshadowed by another word—ton. A ton of explosives, a ton of lies about ‘aid,’ and where is the watan, the homeland? My dear life, I’m still searching, little by little, for shelter, or what they call a “tent.” And in the midst of searching for hope for this human soul, all forms of humanity are falling away from us. Yet humanity is within us. And inside us, there is a dignity we can choose…” It feels like a high honor to get to read this letter from Sarah’s cousin, Nabil S., who is currently writing to her from Gaza. Read here.

In the news

Relevant news coverage that doesn’t really fall under the larger Foreign Bodies mission to de-stigmatize through personal storytelling, but is still essential reading for anyone who wants to stay up-to-date on immigrant and refugee mental health and well-being.

• Georgia State University Expands Mental Health Support for Refugee, Immigrant and Migrant Communities (GSU News): Now that the pilot program for The Georgia RIM Mental Health Alliance is complete, researchers have begun applying what they’ve learned to serve more people. In addition to providing one-on-one counseling, the expanded program will offer group-based psychoeducation, which combines elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, group therapy and education. To help address issues rooted in housing and food insecurity or lack of employment opportunities, researchers are also connecting with campus and community partners with the goal of adding support from social workers. Read here.

• For Chicago's new migrants, informal support groups help ease the pain and trauma (Kristen Schorsch, NPR): “More than 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in Chicago since August of 2022 — most of them from South and Central America,” reports Schorsch. Social workers say they’re in survival mode, and are focused on getting their basic needs met. But informal support groups led by volunteers and mental health professionals are popping up in shelters, storefronts, churches and schools to help migrants cope with the loss and trauma they’re ignoring. Ignoring these issues can have a lasting impact on their well-being and brain health, experts say. Read here.

• Sixteen percent of Philadelphians are immigrants. How easy is it to get mental health care in their native languages? (Massarah Mikati, Aseem Shukla & Jasen Lo, The Inquirer): “Mental health professionals are largely in agreement that sharing a language, particularly the patient’s native language, can deeply impact the therapeutic experience for the client and the client’s relationship with the provider,” according to The Inquirer’s team of mental health reporters. “Sharing a native language not only provides more room for connection between the patient and provider, but also allows for the patient to better articulate emotions.” Read here. | Also read: Finding and hiring bilingual therapists in Metro Atlanta is a struggle. (285 South)

Compiled readings for Gaza, Israel

+1

One sorta unrelated story on my mind

• Jack Sprat’s Wife (Kristin Kovacic, Slate): “How do you love someone, not to mention make love to someone, whom you persistently envy? How do you set aside the bitterness you never asked to carry without placing it on his slender shoulders? I suspect I’m not the only lover who’s toggled between desire and resentment in the dark, and if there’s a diet to control this habit of mind, no one ever told me about it.” I love an unhinged, well-written marriage or divorce essay, OK? Read here.

Bookshelf

Books and collections I’m currently reading (plus reader-recommended works!)

• Just finished: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, a novel told in complementary essays that takes place in a Tokyo coffee shop where patrons can go back in time so long as they return before the coffee gets cold

• Currently reading: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, a novel set in a remote Chinese mountain village exploring themes of mothers and daughters, tradition and more

Recommend a book!

Did you absolutely hate this? Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue, a departure from the typical Monday letter, is public.

Reflections from a vigil

On Saturday, a team of three Atlanta journalists and I organized a vigil for the news workers killed in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon since Oct. 7, most of them local journalists just like us who died covering the nightmares unfolding in their homeland, aching for their international media colleagues in the West—for us—to sound the alarm.

Their deaths make up only a fraction of the nearly 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7th and the 18,787 Palestinians killed so far in Gaza. But their deaths, some investigated to be explicitly targeted by the IDF, also reflect a more sinister tactic of authoritarian governments: one of silencing and repressing a vital, necessary free press, press that disseminates information the global community relies on for news at a time when false narratives and propaganda overwhelm the digital and political realm—a tactic used for eons by authoritarians to erase truth and rewrite history.

“The role of journalists in such a situation is absolutely vital,” Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), recently told Al Jazeera.

“Particularly in Gaza, where we’ve seen the kinds of institutions that traditionally also help with documentation about the impact, like UN officials, have left. So we’re really only left with the Gazan journalists doing this very important documentation work.”

According to the CPJ, the press freedom organization whom we relied on for the data used in programming, the conflict in Gaza is the deadliest for journalists it has ever recorded. Over the last 71 days, CPJ says at least 64 media workers have been killed in Israel, Lebanon and Gaza; reports from other sources suggest nearly 100 media workers have been killed. These were reporters, photographers, camera operators, TV and radio correspondents, editors, producers, and others who make journalism possible.

The vigil, held at Freedom Park on Saturday, Dec. 16, came together in under a week. It began with a tweet calling out for Atlanta journalists of conscience in response to my seeing Chicago media promote a beautiful evening of remembrance of their own. In no time, I connected with my good friends and fellow local journalists Sonam and Sophia. Mat joined us soon after. In five days, we put together a logistics, programming, security and promotion plan. We had support from a coalition of local media workers representing nearly every major and independent news organization in the city.

This was not a protest or a rally, and there’s a reason for the careful and cautious language and visuals we organizers have used in communications and programming, even if they conflict with our own personal preferences. We wanted to be intentional about creating a space for our press colleagues, especially our Palestinian American journalists and allies, to be able to show up and collectively mourn without fearing retaliation from their employers. If there were flags, signs, or even calls for a ceasefire as were had by a guest speaker, we did not approve or invite such. Again, even if our personal morals have no qualms with this (#ceasefirenow, indeed), I do want to make note of our intentions as I’ve seen some conflicting news coverage and chatter, just in case anyone who attended the vigil is met with backlash from their workplaces.

This was a team effort, and I would not have had the confidence nor would the gathering have been as effective without every single person involved, including the voluntary labor from our peace marshals, WRFG’s Christopher who set up a PA system and provided this audio recording of our remarks, plus the beautiful reading of names by our guest Arabic speaker, Imam Wazir. You can listen to it all here:

Illustrations from the vigil were kindly contributed by extraordinary cartoonist Gianluca Costantini, who sent us his hi-res files for us to print and use as we wanted. The portraits were part of the focal point of the gathering, a tribute beside a tree for guests to decorate with their own candles and flowers, and to spend time honoring and learning about our killed colleagues.

We also hung white kites in remembrance of beloved professor and Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Dec. 7. Children asked to fly kites shortly after the speeches ended, and the sight warmed my heart.

As the wind came through in full force and the cold rain threatened us with a storm, we cried with strangers, held each other in our collective grief, made new friends with hearts burst open, reunited with familiar, warm faces. I heard people say they didn’t know they needed this. I didn’t either.

It was heartening to see media workers from every outlet in the metro, but especially dear to hug a few reporters, editors and photographers from my former newspaper; I needed, desperately, for these people I’ve cared about and broken bread with to acknowledge what we are seeing happening to our colleagues in Gaza. I needed to know they care as much as I would hope, especially as they haven’t been vocal about any of this online.

It was also heartening to see neighbors who I’ve only met or spoke with once or twice; oh how lucky I am to call them neighbors. It was pleasantly surprising to even have local restaurants and businesses share fliers for the vigil on their window displays. I was giddy (and can’t help but laugh) about seeing my parents front and center, recording every moment. I didn’t expect they would make the trek in the cold and rain considering my mother’s health and inability to stand on her feet for very long.

I was heartened by all the people who I’ve known tangentially or from social media or just through a friend of a friend or, best of all, the people I got to meet for the first time ever, who I can’t wait to be in more community with as hurting, feeling, loving kin. I was, as always, heartened by my dear, dear friends who helped set up, clean up, wipe my tears, feed me, hold me, even if I haven’t been able to be the best kind of friend these last few months.

I was disheartened, however, by the absence of some, especially working journalists in my circles and my own mentors in the field, but I do not want to use my time now to write from hurt. I want to write from love, from gratitude, and remember the purpose here was to honor the dead, and honor them we did, honor them we will continue to do. My dear journalists, press colleagues in Gaza, we hear you. And we won’t let the world forget.

To all who showed up, some examples of your impact: There are rumblings of press colleagues planning their own vigils in Detroit, Baltimore, Connecticut and Australia. A Chicago organizer and I are working on a tip sheet for journalists who have no idea where to start to help create a safe, effective event that doesn’t put press guests at risk. Tomorrow, New York media workers are holding a gathering in remembrance at the New York Public Library. And over the weekend, Bristol, U.K.-based press workers also held a vigil. Will your city be next?

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Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Watching war unfold is distressing — here's how to protect your mental health: NPR’s Malaka Gharib, who has reported on child trauma in Ukraine, Rohingya refugees and Bangladesh and the Syrian civil war, offers expert advice from psychiatrist Arash Javanbakht for those who feel guilty for looking away

• Gaza eSims: Purchasing eSims allows people within Gaza to connect to the outside to communicate with their families during communications blackouts and also to show what’s happening within Gaza

What I’ve been reading lately

• ‘The bombs are still falling. My heart breaks every day’ (Irish novelist Sally Rooney in conversation with British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad, The Guardian): “I’m at a loss to understand this. Nothing can make sense of it. Everything in me rebels against what I’m witnessing. And I think of everything I’ve written to you until now, about geopolitics, about public opinion in the west, and I think: how pointless! Some celebrity said something on Instagram, and I’m asking you whether this is cause for optimism, really? When every time I pick up my phone I’m seeing footage of destroyed neighbourhoods, grieving mothers, mass graves. It makes everything I have to say feel absurd and disgusting. In these moments I lose faith in language, in conversation, dialogue, everything. The only word that means anything to me at such a moment is the word: No. And all I want to do is repeat it to myself again and again, seeing these images of devastation and suffering. No, no, no.” Read here.

• Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide (Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Protean Mag): “We must be engaged in this kind of writing, which calls others into mobilization, generating feelings within our audiences that cannot be dispersed through the act of reading, but must be carried out into collective action. You sit, you read something, you feel grief or anger or joy, you get it all out, you put it down, you go about business as usual—this is the coercive affective system that Craft insists upon. We must write in such a way that there is no business, there is no usual.” Everything I needed to hear as a writer currently stuck in a silent academic institution. Thank you, Fargo. Read here.

• Palestinian Suffering Is Never As Urgent As The Counterfactual (Samer Kalaf, Defector): “Hypothetical peril was treated more urgently than actual slaughter, and then it was mobilized in service of eradicating basic expressions of Palestinian consciousness and solidarity.” An essay that perfectly sums up what many of us are feeling. Read here.

• Among the Protesters (Adam Iscoe, The New Yorker): “Before another demonstration against Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza, activists gather to make posters and paper poppies, and to discuss the danger of stating their views publicly.” Read here.

• The More of Us There Are, The More of Us There Are (Harron Walker and Nan Goldin, n+1): “Solidarity is the answer. The more of us there are, the more of us there are. I feel a deep, tactile pain. The more of us there are, the more difficult it becomes for them to justify this genocide.” An essential interview with renowned photographer Nan Goldin, who recently boycotted the Times, about protesting Zionist institutions and disrupting business as usual on the cultural front. Read here.

• Over 60 Journalists Have Been Killed in the Israel-Gaza War. My Friend Was One. (Lama Al-Arian, The New York Times Opinion): “As a journalist, I’m used to reporting the nightmares others live through… I used to think... the horrors I’ve seen others endure would allow me to bear my own with some perspective when it was my turn. But it hasn’t.” Lama, a good friend of friend and fellow vigil organizer Mat Skene, shared some words for us to read aloud, available to hear in the audio file above. Read Lama’s essay here.

I’ve also compiled readings related to Gaza and Israel, all shared in previous issues of Foreign Bodies, into one place. I’ll continue to update this page. This list of readings is primarily for anyone itching for more clarity, knowledge, understanding or solidarity around what’s happening in Palestine, Israel and more.

Compiled readings for Gaza, Israel

New research or analysis 📑

• Recent immigrants saw biggest spike in mental distress as anti-immigrant sentiment increased (University of California-Los Angeles): New research out of UCLA shows the rate of serious psychological distress more than doubled for immigrants in the U.S. in fewer than five years, largely due to anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Read here.

Bookshelf

Books and collections I’m currently reading (plus reader-recommended works!)

• Just finished: Minor Detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibli, a novel that “begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.” (New Direction Books)

Recommend a book!

Did you absolutely hate this? Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue, a departure from the typical Monday letter, is public.

‘She’s the soul of my soul’

Reem’s grandfather wears his martyred little granddaughter’s earring like a souvenir of their love, a small stud glimmering on the corner of his front pocket, mere inches from his grieving but beating heart. She was the “soul of my soul,” he says.

It’s Monday, Nov. 27th. According to Al Jazeera, the only source I look to these days for news coverage on Israel and Palestine, the initial four-day truce conveniently scheduled during Thanksgiving and Black Friday, will be extended by two days. During the first three days of the truce, 39 Israeli captives were released in exchange for 117 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. A report from children’s rights organizations Save the Children suggests the main alleged crime for these detentions is stone-throwing, which can carry a 20-year sentence in prison for Palestinian children.

There is some hope for a permanent ceasefire, Hamas and mediator Qatar say. But a mere two-day extension, United Nations officials warn, is not enough time to meet the aid needs of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, just under 15,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — in Gaza have been killed. About 1.7 million civilians have been displaced from their homes.

Today’s newsletter is public, and I’ll keep the issues public for as long as I feel desperate for healing, honest words. Here is/are the stories, voices, art that I am learning from, that are offering some semblance of clarity, knowledge, understanding or solidarity. If you’d like to help financially support Foreign Bodies by becoming a paying subscriber, click here.

To start, this song by Palestinian-Lebanese artist Marcel Khalife:

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A resource or two

• Heal, Restore & Act for Palestine: Georgia Muslim Voter Project joins Sane in the Membrane for a virtual healing space led by Georgia Muslim Palestinian therapist Amenah Arman. Zoom registration for the Dec. 7 event is required.

• Watching war unfold is distressing — here's how to protect your mental health: NPR’s Malaka Gharib, who has reported on child trauma in Ukraine, Rohingya refugees and Bangladesh and the Syrian civil war, offers expert advice from psychiatrist Arash Javanbakht for those who feel guilty for looking away

What I’ve been watching/listening to

• Nima Elbagir, chief international investigative correspondent, CNN. In this particular video, she explains why Palestinian families who have had their family members released as part of the hostage deal with Israel may be too scared to celebrate their return.

• Videos of hostages and “prisoners” released, both by Hamas and by Israeli authorities

• Photos and videos of Palestinian love and joy: Here’s press member Hamza Chalan chanting and playing with children in a Gaza refugee camp. Journalist Hind Khoudary shares photos on Twitter of her visit to the sea during the truce. (Israeli authorities later announced that Palestinians are prohibited from returning to the sea during this humanitarian pause)

• Israelism (a rewatch): Directed by two first-time Jewish filmmakers, Israelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.

What I’ve been reading

• On Sharpening Contradictions (Fariha Róisín, How to Cure a Ghost): “We are finally witnessing everything without fear that we’ll be dismissed, because this time, we know the rest of the world is watching, too. Sharpening contradictions!” Raw, honest feelings and analysis from a writer I often look to for solidarity. Read here.

• Witnessing Gaza Through Instagram (Zaina Arafat, New York Mag): “At what stage do we become voyeurs? Are people just watching and not witnessing? To watch is to consume; to witness is to acknowledge, to bestow some degree of legitimacy. But what does it do to see it?” Zaina Arafat on witnessing witness. Read here.

• Israel’s War on American Student Activists (James Bamford, The Nation): “For years the Israel on Campus Coalition—a little-known organization with links to Israeli intelligence—has used student informants to spy on pro-Palestinian campus groups.” What’s happening on American college campuses is not just infuriating, but a dangerous sign for what’s to come. Read here.

• I’m the child of a Holocaust survivor. I know the trauma inflicted on Gaza will last for generations (Elliot Kukla, Los Angeles Times): “It is a profound moral injury for me that the community that taught me to value resistance, peace and the sanctity of each human life is supporting violence and silencing dissent.” A powerful essay from Elliot Kukla, whose father was born in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Read here.

• Why Israel imprisons so many Palestinians (Abdallah Fayyad, Vox): In Israel, detained Palestinians are routinely denied counsel, and cases are often based on specious and far-reaching charges. As part of Israel and Hamas’s recent hostage deal, 150 Palestinian prisoners are being released. But thousands more remain behind bars. In this must-read, Abdullah Fayyad reports on why. Read here.

• Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L. (June Jordan): “I SAID I LOVED YOU/AND I WANTED/GENOCIDE TO STOP/I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE/ACTION AND REACTION/I SAID I LOVED YOU/AND I WANTED MUSIC/OUT THE WINDOWS/I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED/NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY/NOBODY COLD/I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED/JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE…” A poem from the late Jamaican American writer June Jordan. Read the full poem here.

From previous issue(s):

Poetry

• prologue for now - Gaza (Dionne Brand, Jewish Currents): “the editors printed/their carnage again like welcome news/and I was in a ship again/with none of my belongings except my throat/I tell you, I was limbless and talking/I was going to a funeral every day/it was a tv series and I was human, animal…”Oh my gosh, this poem. Read it in full here.

• i wish you knew (Anam Raheem, Liminal Fuzz): “I wish you knew Tala and Omar. Ishak and Farah. I wish you knew Mohammed, Haneen, Asmaa, Aya and Noor. Sereen and Abdallah. I wish you knew Iyad and Saed. I wish you knew Hani and Abdelbaset, Amna and Muhannad. I wish you knew all their stories; the times we bickered, the times we laughed. I will tell all these stories one day, but for now—I wish, I wish… I wish you knew that strawberry fields flourish in Gaza’s winter—heaps of tiny, beating hearts fill the fruit stands. I have always thought it to be a certain kind of mercy to offer the world strawberries in winter, a certain kind of devotion to raise fields of ruby amidst the missiles and drones.” <3 Read here.

• To Our Land (Mahmoud Darwish): “And our land, in its bloodied night,/is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far/and illuminates what is outside it…/As for us, inside,/we suffocate more.” A snippet of poetry from late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was born in Galilee, a village occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Read the full poem here.

Expert analyses

• ‘A Desperate Situation Getting More Desperate’ (Rashid Khalidi, The Drift Mag): “If you believe this theoretical construct — the colony and the metropole — then what activists do here in the metropole counts. You have to win people over. You can’t just show that you are the most pure or the most revolutionary.” A fantastic, mobilizing interview with Rashid Khalidi, a scholar of modern Middle Eastern History and an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies for over 20 years. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Read here.

• How October 7 has changed us all — and what it signals for our struggle (Haggai Matar, 972mag): “Western governments have so far given Israel a free hand to commit these atrocities, showing a consistent double standard between the value of Israeli lives and Palestinian lives — which is part of what brought us to this situation in the first place.” Read here.

Essays and opinion

• ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’ (Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents Mag): “The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straitjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace.” Editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents Arielle Angel on Jewish grief, the roots of this violence and “on recommitting to our movements in this moment.” Read here.

• Palestinians are asking, ‘Are you with us?’ American Jews are showing we are (Josie Felt, 972mag): “We refused to let our religion be held solely in the hands of those who sought to discredit us.” As a rabbinical student, Felt is taking action alongside thousands to challenge the idea that Jewish safety must come at the expense of Palestinian liberation. Read here.

• I Joined Gaza’s Trail of Tears And Displacement (Hind Khoudary, The Intercept): “Everything was destroyed. Even the streets were damaged and destroyed. My eyes were trying to document everything, I tried my best to capture everything in my eyes. I wanted to cry my tears out, but I held them inside me. It’s not time to cry, I will cry later, I told myself.” Follow Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary on Instagram and Twitter. Read here.

• The Torture and Hope of the Palestinian Diaspora in the US (Maysa Mustafa, New Lines Mag): “To be American is to know, or finally realize, that you have been not only complicit but also a catalyst in this body’s torture for decades. And to be a Palestinian American feels as though you are yelling, between the stabs and punches, at those who are standing by: ‘Do you see this? Is anyone going to do anything? Do I deserve this?’” Read here.

• No Human Being Can Exist (Saree Makdisi, n+1): “We who live in Western countries didn’t support or pay for any Palestinian to kill Israeli civilians, but every bomb dropped on Gaza from aircraft the US provided is added to a bill that we pay for.” My friends and I have been talking about this essay for days. Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here. | Also read: This Letter to the Editor in response to Segal’s piece

• A Jewish Case Against Zionism (Joshua P. Hill, New Means): “As a child I did not question that Israel had a God-given right to exist. I did not question what I was told about heroic fighters defending the nascent state of Israel from the attacks that began with its founding in 1948 and continue to this day. I did not question the inevitable drum beat that came through in each discussion after Hamas of Hezbollah or others attacked. And it was easy and natural to support all this as a child when your teachers were telling you about their families hunkered in shelters in Tel Aviv. But then I got older.” I’ve been following Joshua on Twitter for a while now. And I’m grateful for his perspective. Read here.

• Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse (George Abraham, Guernica Mag): “Teaching poetry while witnessing the horrors of ongoing murders of Black Americans by the police, anti-Asian violence surging in the pandemic, and medical apartheid policies of the Israeli state in the vaccine rollout, I often returned to Franny Choi’s ‘The World Keeps Ending and The World Goes On’ to open my lectures,” writes Palestinian American poet George Abraham. “The poem travels from the apocalypse of boats to the apocalypse of bombed mosques; from radioactive rain to settlement and soda machine (a reference to the Palestinian boycott campaign against the settler company SodaStream). In naming the collective(s) built in catastrophe’s shadow, the poem offered my students and I new possibilities of language for our grief, and for our survival of an apocalypse which mutates daily and without warning.” Read here.

• ‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’ (Etgar Keret in conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, The New York Times): “If you occupy people, if you put them in a cage, in the end, they’re going to break that cage and go for your throat. If you let them live in a dignified way, at least there is a chance. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know. But I’m saying: All I want is for us to have a chance.” Israeli writer Etgar Keret tries to (but can’t) make sense of the violence and loss around him. Read here.

News coverage

• Journalists based in Palestine/Gaza, a list

• Al Jazeera English live on YouTube for news broadcast and analysis

• Settler violence is erasing Palestinian communities in the West Bank (Louisa Loveluck, The Washington Post): “Adults make sure the children eat first. Children ask the adults why they’re not eating.” Violence by Israeli settlers, long aimed at depopulating rural Palestinian parts of the occupied West Bank, has surged since Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people and plunged Israel into war on Oct. 7. Read here.

• The Struggle to Save Lives Inside Gaza’s Hospitals (Sanya Mansoor, Time Magazine): “The conditions for medical care in Gaza are deteriorating across the besieged 140-sq.-mi. coastal strip. Surgeons are operating by flashlight and rationing water, anesthesia, and the generator fuel needed to perform surgeries, provide electricity for incubators, and care for kidney-dialysis patients… ‘Medical teams are on their knees.’” Read here.

• The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers (Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker): A revealing, harrowing Q&A with Daniella Weiss, a West Bank settler and activist, “about how her religious views shape her view of the conflict, why she thinks human rights should not be considered universal, and her movement’s extreme plans for the region.” Read here.

• Hundreds of journalists sign letter protesting coverage of Israel (Laura Wagner and Will Sommer, The Washington Post): More than 750 journalists from dozens of news organizations, myself included, signed an open letter condemning Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza and criticizing Western media’s coverage of the war. Read here.

• The Families of Israelis Held Hostage by Hamas Speak Out (Time Magazine): “Hamas is not only terrifying for the Israelis, but also for the Palestinians,” said Eyal Nouri, whose uncle was killed, and aunt kidnapped. “It is something I want the world to know. We love the Palestinians. We don't hate them. We want to live side by side.” Read here.

• Letters from Gaza (Protean Mag): “With the power plants shut down, even the last vestiges of electricity—car batteries, personal generators—are running out. The internet has been cut, and now, with the Israeli government poised to expel Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets with a presence in Gaza, communications from the strip, already chillingly few and far between, may cease altogether. As the Israeli military prepares to ramp up its genocidal assault on Gaza, every message that Palestinians manage to transmit may be the last.” In partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Protean Magazine has been translating these messages “so the world can see the humanity buried under the rubble and the spirit of resistance of the Palestinian struggle.” Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here.

Sources I’m looking to for updates and analysis: AlJazeera.com, AJ+, Vox, The New Yorker, n+1, 972mag, Haaretz.com, Jewish Currents Magazine.

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What else I’ve been watching/listening to

• Israelism: Directed by two first-time Jewish filmmakers, Israelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.

• Tantura: Filmmakers investigate controversial events at the Palestinian village of Tantura in 1948, where survivors claimed to witness a massacre of civilians by Israeli troops.

• Can You Tell Us Why This Is Happening? (n+1): “Every day, we say that this is the heaviest day. Every night, we say this is the heaviest night. And then they surprise us. No: there is more.” A series of voice memos from Gaza, edited for length and clarity. Listen.

• Vox and AJ+ explainers on TikTok: Answers to questions you’re too afraid to ask, history of Israel and Palestine, the meaning behind “From the River to the Sea” and more

• Anna Mae on TikTok: This is an American Jewish woman’s experience, from what she was taught about Israel growing up here, what she saw during Birthright and what she’s feeling now

• Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté on the Israel-Palestine conflict as the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th/21st centuries

• Jon Stewart opening up about Israel/Palestine with Talib Kweli on the People’s Party podcast

Resources on Israel-Palestine

• Decolonize Palestine: a collection of resources for organizers and anyone who wants to learn more about Palestine, including a reading list

• Breaking the Silence Israel: A group made up of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans that talks about Israel’s occupation with nuance

• Media Resource Guide on Palestine and Israel from the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association

• Jewish Voice for Peace: the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world

How to help

• Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

• Writers Against the War on Gaza: an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and liberation

• Refer to NPR’s extensive list for humanitarian efforts in Israel and Gaza

Share a resource

Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue, a departure from the typical Monday letter, is public.

Thirty-seven days.

Thirty-seven days of witnessing violence and betrayal, a revolutionary swallowing of bitter truths, the incessant poking at fresh and enduring wounds. Thirty seven days of betrayal lending itself to clarity: We get free together. We get free together. We get free together. My tired eyes make puddles on the ceramic-shielded 6.1-inch display in the palm of my hand and I am grateful to still feel the fire raging within. I will worry when I no longer feel warmth.

Today’s newsletter is public, and I’ll keep the issues public for as long as I feel desperate for healing, honest words. Here is/are the stories, voices, art that I am learning from, that are offering some semblance of clarity, knowledge, understanding or solidarity. If you’d like to help financially support Foreign Bodies by becoming a paying subscriber, click here.

To start, a poem from Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani:

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What I’ve been watching/listening to

• Can You Tell Us Why This Is Happening? (n+1): “Every day, we say that this is the heaviest day. Every night, we say this is the heaviest night. And then they surprise us. No: there is more.” A series of voice memos from Gaza, edited for length and clarity. Listen.

• Israelism: Directed by two first-time Jewish filmmakers, Israelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.

• Tantura: Filmmakers investigate controversial events at the Palestinian village of Tantura in 1948, where survivors claimed to witness a massacre of civilians by Israeli troops.

• Coverage from Gazan journalists

What I’ve been reading

• How October 7 has changed us all — and what it signals for our struggle (Haggai Matar, 972mag): “Western governments have so far given Israel a free hand to commit these atrocities, showing a consistent double standard between the value of Israeli lives and Palestinian lives — which is part of what brought us to this situation in the first place.” Read here.

• The Torture and Hope of the Palestinian Diaspora in the US (Maysa Mustafa, New Lines Mag): “To be American is to know, or finally realize, that you have been not only complicit but also a catalyst in this body’s torture for decades. And to be a Palestinian American feels as though you are yelling, between the stabs and punches, at those who are standing by: ‘Do you see this? Is anyone going to do anything? Do I deserve this?’” Read here.

• Hundreds of journalists sign letter protesting coverage of Israel (Laura Wagner and Will Sommer, The Washington Post): More than 750 journalists from dozens of news organizations, myself included, signed an open letter condemning Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza and criticizing Western media’s coverage of the war. Read here.

• The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers (Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker): A revealing, harrowing Q&A with Daniella Weiss, a West Bank settler and activist, “about how her religious views shape her view of the conflict, why she thinks human rights should not be considered universal, and her movement’s extreme plans for the region.” Read here.

• I Joined Gaza’s Trail of Tears And Displacement (Hind Khoudary, The Intercept): “Everything was destroyed. Even the streets were damaged and destroyed. My eyes were trying to document everything, I tried my best to capture everything in my eyes. I wanted to cry my tears out, but I held them inside me. It’s not time to cry, I will cry later, I told myself.” Follow Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary on Instagram and Twitter. Read here.

• Palestinians are asking, ‘Are you with us?’ American Jews are showing we are (Josie Felt, 972mag): “We refused to let our religion be held solely in the hands of those who sought to discredit us.” As a rabbinical student, Felt is taking action alongside thousands to challenge the idea that Jewish safety must come at the expense of Palestinian liberation. Read here.

• Settler violence is erasing Palestinian communities in the West Bank (Louisa Loveluck, The Washington Post): “Adults make sure the children eat first. Children ask the adults why they’re not eating.” Violence by Israeli settlers, long aimed at depopulating rural Palestinian parts of the occupied West Bank, has surged since Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people and plunged Israel into war on Oct. 7. Read here.

• The Struggle to Save Lives Inside Gaza’s Hospitals (Sanya Mansoor, Time Magazine): “The conditions for medical care in Gaza are deteriorating across the besieged 140-sq.-mi. coastal strip. Surgeons are operating by flashlight and rationing water, anesthesia, and the generator fuel needed to perform surgeries, provide electricity for incubators, and care for kidney-dialysis patients… ‘Medical teams are on their knees.’” Read here.

From previous issue(s):

Poetry

• prologue for now - Gaza (Dionne Brand, Jewish Currents): “the editors printed/their carnage again like welcome news/and I was in a ship again/with none of my belongings except my throat/I tell you, I was limbless and talking/I was going to a funeral every day/it was a tv series and I was human, animal…”Oh my gosh, this poem. Read it in full here.

• i wish you knew (Anam Raheem, Liminal Fuzz): “I wish you knew Tala and Omar. Ishak and Farah. I wish you knew Mohammed, Haneen, Asmaa, Aya and Noor. Sereen and Abdallah. I wish you knew Iyad and Saed. I wish you knew Hani and Abdelbaset, Amna and Muhannad. I wish you knew all their stories; the times we bickered, the times we laughed. I will tell all these stories one day, but for now—I wish, I wish… I wish you knew that strawberry fields flourish in Gaza’s winter—heaps of tiny, beating hearts fill the fruit stands. I have always thought it to be a certain kind of mercy to offer the world strawberries in winter, a certain kind of devotion to raise fields of ruby amidst the missiles and drones.” <3 Read here.

• To Our Land (Mahmoud Darwish): “And our land, in its bloodied night,/is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far/and illuminates what is outside it…/As for us, inside,/we suffocate more.” A snippet of poetry from late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was born in Galilee, a village occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Read the full poem here.

Expert analyses

• ‘A Desperate Situation Getting More Desperate’ (Rashid Khalidi, The Drift Mag): “If you believe this theoretical construct — the colony and the metropole — then what activists do here in the metropole counts. You have to win people over. You can’t just show that you are the most pure or the most revolutionary.” A fantastic, mobilizing interview with Rashid Khalidi, a scholar of modern Middle Eastern History and an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies for over 20 years. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Read here.

Essays and opinion

• ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’ (Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents Mag): “The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straitjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace.” Editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents Arielle Angel on Jewish grief, the roots of this violence and “on recommitting to our movements in this moment.” Read here.

• No Human Being Can Exist (Saree Makdisi, n+1): “We who live in Western countries didn’t support or pay for any Palestinian to kill Israeli civilians, but every bomb dropped on Gaza from aircraft the US provided is added to a bill that we pay for.” My friends and I have been talking about this essay for days. Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here. | Also read: This Letter to the Editor in response to Segal’s piece

• A Jewish Case Against Zionism (Joshua P. Hill, New Means): “As a child I did not question that Israel had a God-given right to exist. I did not question what I was told about heroic fighters defending the nascent state of Israel from the attacks that began with its founding in 1948 and continue to this day. I did not question the inevitable drum beat that came through in each discussion after Hamas of Hezbollah or others attacked. And it was easy and natural to support all this as a child when your teachers were telling you about their families hunkered in shelters in Tel Aviv. But then I got older.” I’ve been following Joshua on Twitter for a while now. And I’m grateful for his perspective. Read here.

• Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse (George Abraham, Guernica Mag): “Teaching poetry while witnessing the horrors of ongoing murders of Black Americans by the police, anti-Asian violence surging in the pandemic, and medical apartheid policies of the Israeli state in the vaccine rollout, I often returned to Franny Choi’s ‘The World Keeps Ending and The World Goes On’ to open my lectures,” writes Palestinian American poet George Abraham. “The poem travels from the apocalypse of boats to the apocalypse of bombed mosques; from radioactive rain to settlement and soda machine (a reference to the Palestinian boycott campaign against the settler company SodaStream). In naming the collective(s) built in catastrophe’s shadow, the poem offered my students and I new possibilities of language for our grief, and for our survival of an apocalypse which mutates daily and without warning.” Read here.

• ‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’ (Etgar Keret in conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, The New York Times): “If you occupy people, if you put them in a cage, in the end, they’re going to break that cage and go for your throat. If you let them live in a dignified way, at least there is a chance. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know. But I’m saying: All I want is for us to have a chance.” Israeli writer Etgar Keret tries to (but can’t) make sense of the violence and loss around him. Read here.

News coverage

• The Families of Israelis Held Hostage by Hamas Speak Out (Time Magazine): “Hamas is not only terrifying for the Israelis, but also for the Palestinians,” said Eyal Nouri, whose uncle was killed, and aunt kidnapped. “It is something I want the world to know. We love the Palestinians. We don't hate them. We want to live side by side.” Read here.

• Letters from Gaza (Protean Mag): “With the power plants shut down, even the last vestiges of electricity—car batteries, personal generators—are running out. The internet has been cut, and now, with the Israeli government poised to expel Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets with a presence in Gaza, communications from the strip, already chillingly few and far between, may cease altogether. As the Israeli military prepares to ramp up its genocidal assault on Gaza, every message that Palestinians manage to transmit may be the last.” In partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Protean Magazine has been translating these messages “so the world can see the humanity buried under the rubble and the spirit of resistance of the Palestinian struggle.” Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here.

Sources I’m looking to for updates and analysis: AlJazeera.com, AJ+, Vox, The New Yorker, n+1, 972mag, Haaretz.com, Jewish Currents Magazine.

Leave a comment

What I’ve been watching/listening to

• Palestinian journalists based in Gaza, a list

• Vox and AJ+ explainers on TikTok: Answers to questions you’re too afraid to ask, history of Israel and Palestine, the meaning behind “From the River to the Sea” and more

• Anna Mae on TikTok: This is an American Jewish woman’s experience, from what she was taught about Israel growing up here, what she saw during Birthright and what she’s feeling now

• Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté on the Israel-Palestine conflict as the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th/21st centuries

• Jon Stewart opening up about Israel/Palestine with Talib Kweli on the People’s Party podcast

• Al Jazeera English live on YouTube for news broadcast and analysis

Resources on Israel-Palestine

• Decolonize Palestine: a collection of resources for organizers and anyone who wants to learn more about Palestine, including a reading list

• Breaking the Silence Israel: A group made up of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans that talks about Israel’s occupation with nuance

• Media Resource Guide on Palestine and Israel from the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association

• Jewish Voice for Peace: the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world

• Death toll reveals the scale of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A troubling infographic from the New York Times

• How the Israel war, blockade affect mental health of Palestinian children: An explainer from Indlieb Farazi Saber of Al Jazeera featuring insights from psychologists and psychiatrists

How to help

• Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

• Writers Against the War on Gaza: an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and liberation

• Refer to NPR’s extensive list for humanitarian efforts in Israel and Gaza

Share a resource

Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue, a departure from the typical Monday letter, is public.

Taking some time to read and listen. Join me?

Friends, like many of you, I am overcome with grief. I simply do not have it in me to make words of my rage right now, but I do want to continue to share words from the writers, poets and others I’ve been reading and listening to. Beyond taking action, slowing down to really spend time understanding each other will do us much better than the onslaught of headlines teeming with the all-too-familiar, dehumanizing and passive voice. Some of these readings are from the last issue of the Monday Matter. I’ll be updating this list every now and then, and I welcome your own recommendations.

To start, a poem from Mahmoud Darwish:

Note: I’m also educating myself on the recent crisis in Sudan, which led to thousands killed and millions more displaced. I admit I didn’t see or read much prior to this week, and that really worries me; what else have I been ignoring? I’m learning. I hope you’ll join me.

Leave a comment

What I’ve been reading

• prologue for now - Gaza (Dionne Brand, Jewish Currents): “the editors printed/their carnage again like welcome news/and I was in a ship again/with none of my belongings except my throat/I tell you, I was limbless and talking/I was going to a funeral every day/it was a tv series and I was human, animal…”Oh my gosh, this poem. Read it in full here.

• i wish you knew (Anam Raheem, Liminal Fuzz): “I wish you knew Tala and Omar. Ishak and Farah. I wish you knew Mohammed, Haneen, Asmaa, Aya and Noor. Sereen and Abdallah. I wish you knew Iyad and Saed. I wish you knew Hani and Abdelbaset, Amna and Muhannad. I wish you knew all their stories; the times we bickered, the times we laughed. I will tell all these stories one day, but for now—I wish, I wish… I wish you knew that strawberry fields flourish in Gaza’s winter—heaps of tiny, beating hearts fill the fruit stands. I have always thought it to be a certain kind of mercy to offer the world strawberries in winter, a certain kind of devotion to raise fields of ruby amidst the missiles and drones.” <3 Read here.

• ‘A Desperate Situation Getting More Desperate’ (The Drift Mag): “If you believe this theoretical construct — the colony and the metropole — then what activists do here in the metropole counts. You have to win people over. You can’t just show that you are the most pure or the most revolutionary.” A fantastic, mobilizing interview with Rashid Khalidi, a scholar of modern Middle Eastern History and an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies for over 20 years. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Read here.

• ‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’ (Etgar Keret in conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, The New York Times): “If you occupy people, if you put them in a cage, in the end, they’re going to break that cage and go for your throat. If you let them live in a dignified way, at least there is a chance. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know. But I’m saying: All I want is for us to have a chance.” Israeli writer Etgar Keret tries to (but can’t) make sense of the violence and loss around him. Read here.

• No Human Being Can Exist (Saree Makdisi, n+1): “We who live in Western countries didn’t support or pay for any Palestinian to kill Israeli civilians, but every bomb dropped on Gaza from aircraft the US provided is added to a bill that we pay for.” My friends and I have been talking about this essay for days. Read here.

• The Families of Israelis Held Hostage by Hamas Speak Out (Time Magazine): “Hamas is not only terrifying for the Israelis, but also for the Palestinians,” said Eyal Nouri, whose uncle was killed, and aunt kidnapped. “It is something I want the world to know. We love the Palestinians. We don't hate them. We want to live side by side.” Read here.

From the previous issue:

• ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’ (Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents Mag): “The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straitjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace.” Editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents Arielle Angel on Jewish grief, the roots of this violence and “on recommitting to our movements in this moment.” Read here.

• To Our Land (Mahmoud Darwish): “And our land, in its bloodied night,/is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far/and illuminates what is outside it…/As for us, inside,/we suffocate more.” A snippet of poetry from late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was born in Galilee, a village occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Read the full poem here.

• Letters from Gaza (Protean Mag): “With the power plants shut down, even the last vestiges of electricity—car batteries, personal generators—are running out. The internet has been cut, and now, with the Israeli government poised to expel Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets with a presence in Gaza, communications from the strip, already chillingly few and far between, may cease altogether. As the Israeli military prepares to ramp up its genocidal assault on Gaza, every message that Palestinians manage to transmit may be the last.” In partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Protean Magazine has been translating these messages “so the world can see the humanity buried under the rubble and the spirit of resistance of the Palestinian struggle.” Read here.

• A Jewish Case Against Zionism (Joshua P. Hill, New Means): “As a child I did not question that Israel had a God-given right to exist. I did not question what I was told about heroic fighters defending the nascent state of Israel from the attacks that began with its founding in 1948 and continue to this day. I did not question the inevitable drum beat that came through in each discussion after Hamas of Hezbollah or others attacked. And it was easy and natural to support all this as a child when your teachers were telling you about their families hunkered in shelters in Tel Aviv. But then I got older.” I’ve been following Joshua on Twitter for a while now. And I’m grateful for his perspective. Read here.

• Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse (George Abraham, Guernica Mag): “Teaching poetry while witnessing the horrors of ongoing murders of Black Americans by the police, anti-Asian violence surging in the pandemic, and medical apartheid policies of the Israeli state in the vaccine rollout, I often returned to Franny Choi’s ‘The World Keeps Ending and The World Goes On’ to open my lectures,” writes Palestinian American poet George Abraham. “The poem travels from the apocalypse of boats to the apocalypse of bombed mosques; from radioactive rain to settlement and soda machine (a reference to the Palestinian boycott campaign against the settler company SodaStream). In naming the collective(s) built in catastrophe’s shadow, the poem offered my students and I new possibilities of language for our grief, and for our survival of an apocalypse which mutates daily and without warning.” Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here.

• News sources I’m looking to for updates and analysis: AlJazeera.com, Haaretz.com, Jewish Currents Magazine.

Leave a comment

What I’ve been watching/listening to

• Palestinian journalists based in Gaza, a list

• Vox and AJ+ explainers on TikTok: Answers to questions you’re too afraid to ask, history of Israel and Palestine, the meaning behind “From the River to the Sea” and more

• Anna Mae on TikTok: This is an American Jewish woman’s experience, from what she was taught about Israel growing up here, what she saw during Birthright and what she’s feeling now

• Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté on the Israel-Palestine conflict as the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th/21st centuries

• Jon Stewart opening up about Israel/Palestine with Talib Kweli on the People’s Party podcast

• Al Jazeera English live on YouTube for news broadcast and analysis

Resources on Israel-Palestine

• Decolonize Palestine: a collection of resources for organizers and anyone who wants to learn more about Palestine, including a reading list

• Breaking the Silence Israel: A group made up of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans that talks about Israel’s occupation with nuance

• Media Resource Guide on Palestine and Israel from the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association

• Jewish Voice for Peace: the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world

• Death toll reveals the scale of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A troubling infographic from the New York Times

• How the Israel war, blockade affect mental health of Palestinian children: An explainer from Indlieb Farazi Saber of Al Jazeera featuring insights from psychologists and psychiatrists

How to help

• Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

• Writers Against the War on Gaza: an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and liberation

• Refer to NPR’s extensive list for humanitarian efforts in Israel and Gaza

Share a resource

Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s issue of the Monday Matter is public.

A message for the hurting

For those of us being made to feel crazy right now:

I have been unsure about how to or when to write about the violence plaguing our world in this moment. The last time I was forced to wade through such heaves and sobs, such feelings of deceit and dejection, this anger that’s so quick to harden to hate — I was just a preteen, reckoning with a post-9/11 America, wearing what felt like poison-skin.

I understand the histories of Israel and Palestine are “complex” (edit: never mind it’s actually not complicated at all once you’ve done the learning) but I do understand we are products of what we are born into or taught to believe as truth, which, again, is why the work of learning is essential. But one aspect of all this that terrifies me is our inability to contain multitudes for ourselves and for each other.

We can hold space for grief, let it encompass us, maybe even paralyze us for a while as I think grief is meant to do, slowly seeping into our hearts to be forever absorbed, swimming to the surface every now and then, always lurking, forever teaching.

We can also, I believe, remain cognizant of how the collective grief of a historically wronged people is being weaponized to fuel even more grief without their consent or endorsement.

We can try and understand, even still, how a nation’s flag or hashtag might unintentionally dehumanize or alienate the consistently dehumanized and alienated.

We can recognize that one’s mourning, when truncated and discarded amid talks of war beyond a layman’s understanding, can harden a heart. I feel the pain of Jewish and Israeli friends, just as I hope the world, especially the people I share air, time and memories with, would try and feel the suffocating damage resulting from decades of injustice inflicted upon our Palestinian friends. This has been said a hundred times over by artists and writers and poets, the only ones offering the kind of refuge I’m so desperate for these days.

Watching and reading reports from Western leaders and Western media, my loved ones and I have been made to feel like we’re going fucking crazy. We feel betrayed and gaslit by the newsrooms we’ve championed, by the lawmakers we’ve voted for, by the countries we made our homes, whether out of desperation or desire. I feel foolish for it, but I refuse to lower my expectations.

There is really not much I can say or do to take away the collective pain that anyone who’s been shaken by colonialism, apartheid, injustice — and of course, the countless allies rising up around the globe who recognize this historical wrong for what it is — is feeling. I just hope you know that I am with you in your hurt and in this fight, that I’ll always be here, searching for the words that might inch us forward, together.

Leave a comment

How I’ve been coping

I really, truly, have not been coping well. But here’s some word vomit: I’m being honest with my friends if I’m just not in the headspace to be there for them and exactly why — no ‘I’m tired’ or other excuses. I’m contextualizing whatever I see because I believe our only way out of this begins with understanding. I’m indulging in pets and family time and also indulging in libations, unfortunately. I’m reading poetry, particularly by brown and Black writers writing from the depths of colonization and oppression. I’m watching global protests against genocide and for Palestine. I’m talking to my brother. I’m talking to my writer friends. I’m reading and loving my anti-occupation Jewish friends. And I’m remembering to move my body, eat my meals, make time for therapy and do whatever it takes to wake up to another day.

What I’ve been reading

• ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’ (Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents Mag): “The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straitjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace.” Editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents Arielle Angel on Jewish grief, the roots of this violence and “on recommitting to our movements in this moment.” Read here.

• To Our Land (Mahmoud Darwish): “And our land, in its bloodied night,/is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far/and illuminates what is outside it…/As for us, inside,/we suffocate more.” A snippet of poetry from late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was born in Galilee, a village occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Read the full poem here.

• Letters from Gaza (Protean Mag): “With the power plants shut down, even the last vestiges of electricity—car batteries, personal generators—are running out. The internet has been cut, and now, with the Israeli government poised to expel Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets with a presence in Gaza, communications from the strip, already chillingly few and far between, may cease altogether. As the Israeli military prepares to ramp up its genocidal assault on Gaza, every message that Palestinians manage to transmit may be the last.” In partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Protean Magazine has been translating these messages “so the world can see the humanity buried under the rubble and the spirit of resistance of the Palestinian struggle.” Read here.

• A Jewish Case Against Zionism (Joshua P. Hill, New Means): “As a child I did not question that Israel had a God-given right to exist. I did not question what I was told about heroic fighters defending the nascent state of Israel from the attacks that began with its founding in 1948 and continue to this day. I did not question the inevitable drum beat that came through in each discussion after Hamas of Hezbollah or others attacked. And it was easy and natural to support all this as a child when your teachers were telling you about their families hunkered in shelters in Tel Aviv. But then I got older.” I’ve been following Joshua on Twitter for a while now. And I’m grateful for his perspective. Read here.

• Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse (George Abraham, Guernica Mag): “Teaching poetry while witnessing the horrors of ongoing murders of Black Americans by the police, anti-Asian violence surging in the pandemic, and medical apartheid policies of the Israeli state in the vaccine rollout, I often returned to Franny Choi’s ‘The World Keeps Ending and The World Goes On’ to open my lectures,” writes Palestinian American poet George Abraham. “The poem travels from the apocalypse of boats to the apocalypse of bombed mosques; from radioactive rain to settlement and soda machine (a reference to the Palestinian boycott campaign against the settler company SodaStream). In naming the collective(s) built in catastrophe’s shadow, the poem offered my students and I new possibilities of language for our grief, and for our survival of an apocalypse which mutates daily and without warning.” Read here.

• Where the Palestinian Political Project Goes From Here (Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker): “It’s really important for us to go back to centering the primary cause in any anti-colonial struggle, which is colonial violence. It’s crucial to ground the discussion in that context.” A Q&A between Chotiner and Tareq Baconi, the president of the board of the think tank Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. Read here.

• A Textbook Case of Genocide (Raz Segal, Jewish Currents Mag): “Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” writes Segal. “In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent.” Read here.

• News sources I’m looking to for updates and analysis: AlJazeera.com, Haaretz.com, Jewish Currents Magazine.

Leave a comment

What I’ve been watching/listening to

• Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté on the Israel-Palestine conflict as the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th/21st centuries

• Jon Stewart opening up about Israel/Palestine with Talib Kweli on the People’s Party podcast

• Al Jazeera English live on YouTube for news broadcast and analysis

Resources on Israel-Palestine

• Decolonize Palestine: a collection of resources for organizers and anyone who wants to learn more about Palestine, including a reading list

• Breaking the Silence Israel: A group made up of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans that talks about Israel’s occupation with nuance

• Media Resource Guide on Palestine and Israel from the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association

• Jewish Voice for Peace: the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world

• Death toll reveals the scale of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A troubling infographic from the New York Times

• How the Israel war, blockade affect mental health of Palestinian children: An explainer from Indlieb Farazi Saber of Al Jazeera featuring insights from psychologists and psychiatrists

How to help

• How to Help the Victims of This Week’s Deadly Attacks: An org list from Harper’s Bazaar for anyone looking to fund aid to Palestinians and Israelis

• What you can do beyond reading the news about Gaza, shared by Nikita Gill on X/Twitter

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Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little babbling and housekeeping

How do you feel about this time of year?

There’s little I love more than the change of seasons and this slow creep from summer to autumn in particular never fails to make me all giddy. What is it about this shift that I’m moved to gab endlessly about, to write about, think about, smile about? Is it the simmer of summer chaos and swelter? The consensus among us to give each other a little more grace for cancelled plans and the yearning for solitude, just for a bit? Early autumn is like a sigh of relief between seasons of commotion. And if you know me at all, you know I love my lulls. How do you feel about this time of year?

Leave a comment

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

A perfect little song from Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Marie Ulven Ringheim (known for Girl in Red) to kick off spooky season.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Rooted & Written Conference: Writers of color are encouraged to apply for this Nov. 4-12 in-person conference in the Bay Area featuring nine full days of classes/workshops, mentoring, plus the opportunity to participate in sessions with featured literary luminaries. Applications due Oct. 16.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping (or babbling)

New therapist, who dis?

Look, I’ve been through my share of therapists. The first one blew me away; she was a savior of sorts when I didn’t know what I needed, where I was headed, whether I’d make it to next week. She showed me how to be and why to be and forced me to fall in love with the little things we overlook when we feel weighed down, overwhelmed, shortsighted. Think of sunlight and how it colors the room gold just before it says goodnight, or the way a nod to a stoic stranger can turn them into putty. I’m at the point in my life where I’m happy to be here, which honestly still feels like a miracle of sorts. Pinch me, I’m alive. But as I’m writing about family, migration, all the stuff that once felt paralyzing to discuss, I’m realizing I need a sounding board to make sure I can cope, write and have the capacity to be there for my people, who I’m realizing need to lean on me more and more as I get older. Here’s to session two this week.

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A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick, recommended by Luis A., is Puerto Rico-born urban genre/reggaeton/latin trap artist Gabriel Mora Quintero, professionally known as Mora. The singer, songwriter and music producer gained popularity in 2017 after collaborating with Bad Bunny, Big Soto and others. His debut studio album, “Primer día de clases” was released in February 2021.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Esmé Wang’s free Unexpected Shape Café: A digital space for ambitious writers living with limitations to talk about their dreams, frustrations, and questions as they pursue the writing life

• In Their Own Words: a new series on the South’s youth mental health crisis from Rainesford Stauffer, who worked on this project with Scalawag through the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, which also helped launch this newsletter in 2018

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s very short holiday issue is public.

First things first

A little housekeeping (or babbling)

A single mom who works 10 jobs 🎶

Good afternoon, dear readers. Today’s edition of the Monday Matter is going to be very short (and hopefully very sweet). And it’s available to both free and paying subscribers! I’ve got about six deadlines to make before Sunday and no idea how I’ll make it happen before my guests and pet sitters arrive, but here we are. A huge shout-out to my neighborhood coffeeshop for keeping me company on this quiet Monday with their new cardamom iced latte and delicious quiche.

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A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

I’m simply in a Beach Boys mood and this song was playing on my rewatch of The Bear, so…

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Scalawag Magazine is accepting pitches for the Salt, Soil & Supper section of its inaugural Fall Almanac issue. The Southern magazine is open to fiction, non-fiction, and poetry submissions, as well as multimedia short film, audio, digital art, multimedia & photo essays, and social media specific content. Submissions should “broadly consider the ways in which Southerners both rely on traditional and new means of preservation in the face of environmental catastrophe, antiblack, white supremacist violence and state terror.” Deadline for submissions is Sept. 8. Pitch by filling out the pitch form here, or send an email directly to tea@scalawagmagazine.org.

• *Barrelhouse is open for fiction, poetry and nonfiction submissions from Latinx writers for a new online issue on LATINE MONSTERS, guest edited by Ofelia Montelongo. Accepted writers receive $50 (plus no subscription fee). Deadline: Sept. 21. Hat tip to Sonia Weiser’s Opportunities of the Week newsletter for this gem!

• *Newslines Mag wants essay pitches for its new weekly series, “The Past, the Present and Beyond.” Essays should examine an overlooked or misunderstood part of history. Pitches and submissions should be sent electronically to submissions@newlinesmag.com.

Read this!

Personal stories and poetry I’m loving

• The Limits of Self-Care (Victoria Chan, The Walrus): “Sharing a bedroom with the people who raised me felt like living in a fishbowl; I yearned to recover a sense of privacy and the ability to carve out my own identity, which seemed lost in limbo... Between my physical circumstances and my cultural upbringing, I began to tie my identity to the selflessness I grew up with. My childhood led me to internalize the idea that I should always consider the feelings of others before my own. By the time I became an adult, I was hungry for a sense of self that wasn’t tied to others—so I began to embrace a radical form of self-care.” I think many of us here will relate to Victoria Chan’s memoir essay. Read here.

• I Can’t Offer Up My Culture for Consumption (Christine Kandic Torres, Electric Literature): “How can I explain that growing up in Queens, we didn’t go to dumpling houses in Flushing or on Queens Boulevard; that there had to be a special occasion to even agree to spend money at a restaurant… How one of my earliest memories is in fact sitting beneath a stained-glass lamp inside an old Pizza Hut and eating a slice with green bell peppers on it—an exotic American delicacy to me. How one of the first times my mother brought me to eat a meal outside of our house that wasn’t a fast food restaurant, she brought me to the vaguely Greek, Georgia Diner for my fifth grade graduation, and that to be honest, she’s still not entirely comfortable ordering off a menu to this day.” A must-read from The Girls in Queens author Christine Kandic Torres on refusing to “offer up my culture to be consumed without context.” Read here.

• My Time Machine (Arthur Asseraf, Granta): “Growing up, the entirety of the human past appeared to fit in one person: my grandmother,” writes Asseraf. “She told me, for instance, that she had been born in Morocco. As far back as we knew our family had lived in North Africa. She would also say that at some point the family ‘came back’ to France. I could not understand how you could return to a place you had never lived in before. She would show me pictures of palaces and say, look, this is where I was born, we were rich then, then we were poor, then we were rich again, then we had to leave… I never told my colleagues the truth: that I knew colonialism not only through reading books, but also because its representative served me fish fingers after school.” Oof, this essay on dissolution of memory and family dynamics is so worth your time. Read here.

Bookshelf

Books and collections I’m currently reading (plus reader-recommended works!)

• Currently re-reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, one of my all-time favorite novels spanning the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the multi-generational Buendiá family.

• Recs on recs from Hannah Bae in this Datebook listicle, featuring Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias, This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara, What We Kept to Ourselves by Nancy Jooyoun Kim and more heavy hitters, many of which have conenctions to the Bay Area

Recommend a book!

Did you absolutely hate this? Notice any link snafus or grammatical issues? Open to criticism and suggestions.

Special thanks to our growing Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members for keeping this newsletter going through all my ups and downs

We got issues. Read 'em!

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping (or babbling)

Word vomit: Dispatch from our gratitude journals

Last week, a good friend joined me for a coworking coffee date where we ended up laughing about the motley assortment of entries in our gratitude journals. Vulnerability came up a lot (surprise: she’s a Pisces and I’m a Libra) as did animals and trees and also video games, but only because the games preoccupied her partner and left her with some much-needed alone time. In an entry last week, I wrote about feeling grateful for my body when it actually does what my brain wants. And in my latest, after a six-hour flare-up that kept me in bed for an entire workday, I found myself thanking my body for failing me every now and then. “You force me to slow down, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” I wrote. Today’s entry: “my dog, Lady. Also, peaches.”

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A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick (recommended by me!) is British singer-songwriter Cleo Sol, best known for her soul and alternative R&B. Born and raised in Ladbroke Grove, Sol comes from a family of multiethnic musicians.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Storyknife Writers Retreat: Applications are open for women storytellers itching for the time and space to explore their craft without distraction. Food and lodging is covered during the period of this 2-4 week residency in Homer, Alaska. Applications for 2024 residency sessions close on Aug. 31.

• Borderless Magazine: a member-supported nonprofit newsroom based in Chicago that’s working to dismantle racist and harmful media coverage of immigrants

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

Back to school I go…

The second year of my MFA program begins this week and I am in dire need of inspiration and community to get this book moving. Each of our five semesters at the University of Georgia’s low-res Narrative Nonfiction program begins with a weeklong residency packed with classes, speakers, readings and lots of bonding — a most perfect kickoff for a successful semester of writing. After graduation next summer, I’m thinking of building makeshift residencies at the top of each year to continue the tradition. Who’s interested?

Leave a comment

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

In honor of the late Sinéad O’ Connor, her iconic rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Little, Brown Spark is accepting submissions for its New Voices Award program. Applicants (unagented writers from underrepresented backgrounds) can submit a “non-fiction book proposal on any topic within any branch of psychology.” The award provides a $50,000 advance, ticket to the Psychotherapy Networker’s 2024 Symposium in D.C. plus a $500 travel stipend. Deadline: Oct. 15. Hat tip to Study Hall XYZ!

• Open comment period: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) seeks detailed comments on its Harm Reduction Framework. Where do you see gaps? How can the draft be improved? Deadline to add input: 5 p.m. Aug. 14th. Submit comments here. | Also read: What is harm reduction?

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

Putting my roots down 🌱

I talk a lot in both my personal and professional life about this lifelong search for place and community, how nearly every choice I make in adulthood — from the people I invite in to the coffeeshops I choose to call my second or third homes — this achey yearning for community leads the way. Moving around so much all my life, living across continents and states and counties within states, I’d never grasped the concept of a hometown or a childhood friend who’s known you from start to now. And I think I’ve always resented not having that base. I’d reinvent myself in every new space, unknowingly losing fragments along the way. Now that I can — and boy, does this come with privilege — I’m chasing every chance to put my roots down.

Leave a comment

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This funky tune, recommended by reader Jolene G., is from 1980s Indonesian fusion jazz group Bhaskara.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *PEN America is accepting applications for the Bare Life Review Grant program, which supports literary works in progress by immigrant and refugee writers. Narrative nonfiction, poetry and fiction welcome. Winners receive $5,000 each. Deadline: July 21.

• Creating Space: A free guided community session on mental health centering Asian voices led by psychologist Dr. Jenny Tzu-Mei Wang, author of Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans. The Brooklyn Nets, a sponsor for the session, will be generously giving away 200 copies of Wang’s book to the first 200 attendees. Event is scheduled for 4-7pm at the Barclays Center. A livestream is in the works for non-NYC residents. Please RSVP to rsikar@31philliplom.com.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

A birthday to forget

For its 247th birthday, America seems to be celebrating by time-traveling backwards to a worse, less equitable place. The doom and gloom feels overwhelming, I know. And I don’t really have the words. Only the rage. How are you dealing? Me, I’m just diving deeper into Bravo Reality TV and chowing down on shrimp tacos until my stomach aches.

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick, recommended by reader Julien H., is South Korean shamanic folk-pop band, Ak Dan Gwang Chil — or ADG7. This nine-piece ensemble draws inspiration from traditional Korean folk music and contemporary K-Pop.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Re-imagining family stories: A virtual two-hour creative writing workshop from Bangladeshi American writer Aaisha Bhuiyan that will “take a closer look at individual family systems with an option to imagine alternative stories with characters inspired from our very own.” Scheduled for 12-2 p.m. EST, Sunday, July 16th. Tickets: ~$80 (fees included). Hat-tip to subscriber Hannah Bae for the recommendation!

• ActionNYC: A free legal hotline for immigrants. To access, dial 800-354-0365 or call 3-1-1 and say “ActionNYC.” The free, anonymous hotline operates between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, and is available in more than 200 languages.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

We are stardust, we are golden 💫

Happy newsletter Monday, dear Foreign Bodies readers! It’s been an eventful weekish since I last met you here. I recently had the pleasure of witnessing the great Joni Mitchell for a live jam at the gorgeous Gorge Amphitheatre and am still on a high from the experience. Overall feeling grateful for this slowdown before the next semester of grad school begins. Now to get disciplined about my current lackadaisical reading and writing routine…

Photos from Joni Jam with my baby brother:

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick, recommended by reader Jalen C., is Honduran Punta rock group Banda Blanca, best known for their 1990 song, “Soap De Caracol.”

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Asian Mental Health Collective Virtual Support Group for LGBTQIA+ Asians: An 8-week healing justice space designed by and for LGBTQIA+ individuals of Asian descent. The third session, scheduled for Tuesday, June 20, will explore ancestry and family of origin. Follow @asianmentalhealthcollective on Instagram for week 4 details! Hat tip to dear Kris Banda, who will be cofacilitating. Register for the upcoming session here.

• How to talk to your (skeptical) family about therapy: The latest installment of Sahaj Kohli’s Washington Post advice column features seven strategies for not only normalizing therapy and mental health care, but discussing the subject in a way that actually reaches our loved ones.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

Get me out of this reading slump!

I haven’t finished a book in weeks and I blame #Scandoval and my brother for introducing me to Bravo reality television. It’s all I can talk and think about these days. An upcoming trip to the canyon, I’m hoping, will help me disconnect, because I sure as hell can’t find the self-control on my own. What’s a book that’s gotten you out of a reading slump?

Leave a comment

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

A little Joni Mitchell as I gear up to see my favorite Canadian next week!

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Asian Mental Health Collective Virtual Support Group for LGBTQIA+ Asians: An 8-week healing justice space designed by and for LGBTQIA+ individuals of Asian descent. The first session, scheduled for Tuesday, June 6, will explore identity and names. Hat tip to dear Kris Banda, who will be cofacilitating. Register for the first session here.

Read more

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping

Can’t taste a damn thing, but at least I’m writing

Happy Monday, friends! I hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather wherever you are. I’ve been frantically Googling how long my post-Covid loss of taste is going to last because I still can’t taste the juicy Kesar mangoes my dad brought me and it’s driving me nuts! But other than that: I’ve been admittedly having some trouble balancing school and work this semester, so I feel especially grateful for the grace from professors and editors. The (slow) writing work is finally on the upswing!

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick, recommended by reader Anh K. is Nghiêm Vũ Hoàng Long (best known as RPT MCK) of Hanoi, Vietnam, a Vietnamese rapper known for his rap melodies. In 2023, RPT MCK released his first full length album, 99%.

Recommend a song or artist!

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• 27th Annual Rosalynn Carter Georgia Mental Health Forum: An in-person and virtual event on May 18 exploring pressing mental health issues in Georgia and the rest of the country

• Chronically Lit: An online literary magazine of personal essays, interviews, and reviews by and about people with chronic illness

Read more