Monday Matter: My Jamaican grandma, Diane Nguyen and our grief
Your weekly Foreign Bodies roundup (public)
Every Monday, we send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories we recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Today’s roundup is public.
First things first
A little housekeeping
Issue 17 will be out June 17 📅
Friends, today’s roundup is public so that everyone receives this announcement. Our next issue, which was originally scheduled to go live this week with an essential focus on LGBTQI acceptance among immigrant communities, will be rescheduled to a later date. Thank you to the gracious Meera Graham for not only suggesting her story be moved, but also for her relentless advocacy.
I am now focusing my time and energy on a new issue centering black voices, including black immigrant voices, and exploring what combating anti-black racism in non-black immigrant communities looks like.
Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, June 17. And thank you to the 100+ folks who have filled out this form about the common pushback you hear among your communities regarding anti-black racism in the United States. I plan to incorporate any learnings in Issue 17.
We have a giveaway winner! 🎁
Congratulations to Kris B. of Ellensburg, Washington for winning a copy of Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House! Kris was born to Laotian American immigrants and is constantly trying to learn more about her parents’ struggles and histories to foster a kinder, more healing relationship with them. She manages a veterinary clinic and assists in medical procedures in Washington, and when she’s not working, Kris and her partner enjoy caring for their many animals and plants.
She’s also, btw, one of the kindest people I remember from college. We didn’t get to spend much time together (maybe a few months on yearbook?) but I’ve been so fond of her heart and her voice. Can’t wait for you to devour this book, Kris!
If you’re interested:
I created this little watercolor doodle and am selling up to 15 prints (previously 10). All proceeds are matched and donations sent to ActBlue’s network of donors, including the Black Lives Matter Global Network, National Bail Out, Fair Fight Action and more.
I wrote a few words in my personal newsletter about revisiting an old review of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower only to recognize my privilege.
Resource(s) of the week
Something helpful and interesting and cool (🗣️ = storytelling opportunity)
For mental health care providers: Check out this 10-step guide to boost mental health services for Latino immigrants from Informed Immigrant, Immigrants Rising, and FWD.us.
Complimentary subscription: ShineText, a wellness platform created by women of color is offering complimentary premium subscriptions to black individuals looking for mental health resources such as meditations, articles and more. Just direct message Martha Tesema on Twitter!
🗣️ DAME Magazine, which reports on politics, policy and culture is currently accepting pitches for critical essays and features with a priority for black writers and writers of color. You can pitch editorial director Heather Wood Rudúlph directly via heather@damemagazine.com. Rates start at $200.
🗣️ Our Human Family on Medium wants to publish nonfiction recollections of true encounters with micro-aggressions. “Tell us the setting, the act, its intended or real impact, and your response. Note: this is not about exploiting pain or trauma, but to facilitate meaningful conversation to achieve equality,” writes founder Clay Rivers. Read up on these submission guidelines if you’re new to OHF.
Read this!
Stories we’re loving
Speaking to my Jamaican grandma about her depression taught me how to be a mental health advocate (Dana Fletcher, gal-dem): “The word depression was always paired with the statement: ‘Dis yah sickness, is an ugly feeling. Iz not a physical pain. It’s a mental pain.’ She would speak gravely about its ability to ‘tell yuh some ugly things and mek yuh feel fi do some ugly things.’” In a country with heavy stigma against those with mental health conditions, Fletcher writes she “didn’t recognise the radical and life-saving nature of my grandma’s storytelling until I was much older.” Read here.
No One Should Have to Ignore Their Grief, Yet It’s Long Been Expected of People of Color (Nadia Owusu, Catapult): In this column on the experiences of women of color in the workplace, Owusu gets raw about grieving, fearing and living as a black woman. “For our communities, those missing and murdered, caged and dying, are not distant examples, invisible, or forgotten. They are people like our family and friends. They are our family and friends,” she writes. “And while employees of all backgrounds at many progressive institutions do discuss these issues at work, we are often expected to do so in an impersonal or depoliticized way.” Read here.
Of Mufflers and Men: A Comic (Shing Yin Khor, Catapult): This is part of Curiosity Americana, a column exploring icons, roadside attractions, and various objects of Americana as part of Khor’s effort to find and assert their place as an immigrant within this country’s mythos. “When I was small, I was fascinated by classical Greek statues, stately and tall and white,” Khor writes. “As an adult, I found out they were actually painted, bright and garish. I wonder how it feels to be remembered as a bland approximation of what you were.” Read here.
Surprised by Grief, Soothed by Korean Television Drama (Wendy Gan, Guernica Mag): For Gan, it’s the family and group dynamics of Korean dramas that kept her so attached to the genre after her father’s death. “I had played the good daughter out of duty for so long that I hadn’t realized how much I would miss being one.” Read here.
What Diane Nguyen Taught Me About Finding Healing Through Failure (Meher Manda, Catapult): In this personal essay, Manda writes about leaving Mumbai, India, for an MFA program in New York City, and ending up homeless and holed up at a friend’s West Harlem apartment while waiting for an employment card. “At twenty-three, I was hurting and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know that the balloon-font-shaped letters inside my head—sometimes taking the shape of arbitrary letters, the other times pointed and vengeful—leaving me breathless were, in fact, anxiety modeling itself after the thing that drove my work. Words.” It was Diane Nguyen from Bojack Horsemen who ultimately helped Manda embrace her “mulish obsession with fairness, her faulty idealism, her inconsistencies, and her unshakeable quest for integrity.” Read here.
In the news
Relevant news coverage that doesn’t really fall under our larger 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.
What Isolation Does to Undocumented Immigrants (Emily Kaplan, The Atlantic): “If you pay attention,” a middle-aged undocumented man named Antonio told Kaplan before he died of coronavirus in April, “you will see that almost every immigrant feels alone and isolated from everything. You leave everything behind. In extreme cases, you lose contact with your family because there aren’t ways to keep in touch. You lose your children and your spouse because you can’t communicate. And when the family disintegrates, depression arrives.” A reported feature on immigrants driven to isolate themselves to protect their lives. Read here.
Fear, Illness and Death in ICE Detention: How a Protest Grew on the Inside (Seth Freed Wessler, The New York Times Magazine): A must-read on the ongoing organizing efforts of detained individuals in the face of a humanitarian crisis within ICE facilities. Read here.
Efforts Launched to Help Immigrants Ineligible for US Federal COVID-19 Assistance (Aline Barros, Voice of America): Immigrant relief funds have been set up in California and Pennsylvania. A similar initiative was launched in Baltimore, Maryland. Read here.
+1
One sorta unrelated story on my mind
Whose Grief? Our Grief (Saeed Jones, GQ): There’s really only one issue on my mind right now—the fight against anti-black racism and police brutality. There are many, many stories to highlight, but I’ve been thinking of Jones’ words ever since I read them on Friday. “My own mother, the woman who used to end the notes she sent to me with 'I love you more than the air I breathe,' died almost a decade ago and I can promise you that when this country finally gets its hands on me, I will be calling out for her too.” Read here. | Also read: African writers in solidarity with African Americans (Al Jazeera) + A Mother’s Birthday Tribute to Breonna Taylor “It’s hard to breathe without her.” (The Cut) + How to Cool It (James Baldwin for Esquire, 1971)
Bookshelf
Books and collections I’m currently reading (plus reader-recommended works!)
Starting soon: Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family by Mitchell S. Jackson, which the lovely Anjali Enjeti dropped off at my doorstep a while ago. The memoir is “both a personal reckoning and a vital addition to the national conversation about race.” (Simon and Schuster)
Currently reading: This free PDF of Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis while I wait on my backordered copy. The book is considered one of the most brilliant, radical and poignant in the case for prison abolition.
Bookmark Ibram X. Kendi’s list of books about racism in the U.S. and how to combat it. The list features Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings among several others.
Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities: a collaborative reading list from Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective that leads with an emphasis on the complex racial history between Asian and black Americans in the United States
Remember, we always have tons of wonderful stories and resources available at foreignbodies.net.
Love to see it
Shout-outs, thank-yous and more
Hell yeah, Lydia Muyingo!
Check out this video on suicide first aid for immigrants and refugees from Bambu Media, Middlesex University, Moviement and Erminia Colucci:
A huge congrats to global mental health researcher Tarik Endale on getting published!
New York City Immigrant Affairs recently emphasized the city’s mental health hotline is available in a variety of languages and is open to all, regardless of immigration status. Just a reminder.
If you enjoy reading lovely and critical writing on culture, media and entertainment, sign up for my friend Jewel Wicker’s newsletter:
An essential resource for my black brothers and sisters from To Write Love on Her Arms:
And, as always, I can’t get enough of Karen Ho’s gentle reminders to just. stop. doom-scrolling.
That’s it for now.
Did you absolutely hate this? Open to criticism and suggestions. See ya later!
Love,
Fiza
Special thanks to our Foreign Bodies Sustaining Members Hannah B., Safurah B., Alex C., Rebecca C., Rodrigo C., Katie H., Liz S., Puja S., Roz T. and my mama, Safia P.
looking forward to june 17 fiza