Monday Matter: Kesar mangoes, Mandarin and women on the brink

Your weekly Foreign Bodies roundup

Every 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 heavy week

Good Monday morning, Foreign Bodies readers. I’m sitting at my neighborhood coffeeshop working on this newsletter and my dad just popped by with some mangoes— a bright spot during an otherwise heavy week for American women and anyone whose reproductive rights are constantly being challenged. I know how defeating it can be to feel helpless; this thread/document on how to show up for abortion access is a great starting place for the restless. I’m thinking of you, of us, and also of anyone with mother wounds post-holiday weekend. A few things, people, moments I’m holding onto:

• Kesar mangoes

• the blueberry pound cake from Evergreen Butcher + Baker

• meeting Twitter friends IRL

• the final scene of The Sopranos :’)

• the sound of kids’ singing in Monday morning music class, which I can hear from my backyard

• crushes

• FaceTiming my grandparents

• neighborly kindness

• the way the sunlight hits at 7 p.m. in May

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

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

This week’s pick, recommended by reader Janet W., is “Choi Voi” by Vietnamese music producer K-ICM and singer Trung Quân. The song is currently at the top of Billboard Vietnam’s charts.

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• Microaggressions: How and why do they impact health? In this Medical News Today resource, you’ll find a brief history of the term microaggression and the ways both overt and implicit forms of microaggressions negatively impact the health of those on the receiving end.