Monday Matter: #OwnVoices, a new giveaway and the day that never happened
Your weekly Foreign Bodies roundup
Every Monday, we’ll send readers of immigrant mental health newsletter Foreign Bodies a story (or six) we recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Our roundups will become exclusive to paying subscribers in February.
First things first
A little housekeeping
Something I’m just trying to cope with
A celebrity death can feel like a loss of a particular part of your past, psychologists say. But it seems selfish, doesn’t it? To make a grieving family’s trauma about us. To not grieve as loudly for the hundreds lost every single day, whose deaths become statistics before they can even be memorialized.
But I have to be honest. After the sudden death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant on Sunday, I’ve been having a particularly difficult time. It’s strange and it’s morally conflicting, my adoration for Bryant and his Lakers. I didn’t grow up a basketball fan, and I barely tune in for a full game now. But for about a decade, this team and this player were deeply connected to my identity. I tried to make sense of it.
Enter to win Esmé Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias 📕
This gorgeous collection of essays from second-generation Taiwanese American writer Esmé Weijun Wang is an honest and intimate work of art intertwining evidence-based reporting and Wang’s own experience of psychosis. I’ll be mailing the winning subscriber a copy of the collection, packaged with a note from the beloved author herself. Entries accepted through Friday, Feb. 7 at 11:59 p.m. EST.
This is our last public Monday Matter roundup 🥺
Free sign-ups recently received this email from me. The big update: Our main monthly issues (Issue 14 out Friday!) will remain free for all, but these weekly roundups will become exclusive to subscribers. Here’s what’s behind the changes.
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If you’re enjoying Foreign Bodies, tell a friend? Show us some love on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? I could use all the help I can get.
Resource(s) of the week
Something helpful and interesting and cool
Going To Therapy Can Be Hard, Especially For Immigrants — Here's How To Start 🎧: NPR's Lauren Hodges shares some icebreakers for immigrant communities on NPR's Life Kit podcast.
The Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Cross-Cultural Student Emotional Wellness: A consortium of clinicians, educators, and researchers who are passionate about understanding and promoting the mental health of students from diverse backgrounds. Check out these depression fact sheets in English, Korean and Chinese.
Read this!
Stories we’re loving
Two Gay Chinese Dads. One Long and Winding Trip to Fatherhood. (Zeyi Yang, Narratively): “Their journey starts in a country where gay marriage and surrogacy are illegal, and spans four years, two continents, and hundreds of thousands of dollars—all to get a kid of their own.” Read or listen here.
Summer in America (Deniz Çam, Gay Magazine): After graduating college, Turkish immigrant Deniz Çam decided to follow her friends to California. One month after purchasing the plane ticket, her visa expired. “How do we know that Deniz, a young reporter, cannot be replaced by an American?” Read here.
The Day That Never Happened (Farnoush Amiri, NPR): At age 12, Iranian American Farnoush Amiri awoke to a stranger's hand wrapped tightly around her arm, his other hand on the gun strapped to his waist. “For more than a decade, it was the day that never happened.” When Amiri confronted her father in adulthood, wondering why they never discussed that horrific day, he revealed his biggest fear: that they might hate this new country, the country he had uprooted the family and sacrificed everything for. Read here. (🎩Hat tip to Vesna’s Immigrant Strong newsletter for leading me to this story.)
Lullaby of the Onion (Miguel Hernandez, The Paris Review): A poem written in 1988 from Hernandez to his newborn son. The Spanish poet and playwright wrote this after receiving a letter from his wife in which she said she had nothing to eat but bread and onions. “A dark woman/dissolved in moonlight/pours herself thread by thread/into the cradle./Laugh, son,/you can swallow the moon/when you want to.” 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.
How Imposter Syndrome Holds Back First-Generation College Students (Eddie Kim, Mel Magazine): New research on the factors that might worsen the “emotional toll of navigating college” as a first-gen student. Read here.
Chicago show brings immigrant stories, journeys to centerstage (Nissa Rhee, Borderless Mag): A combination profile/interview with Guatemalan American Nestor Gomez, focusing on his storytelling showcase, 80 Minutes Around the World. “We know that if we don’t speak up, then other people are going to tell our stories and other people will be telling information that is either misleading or completely wrong about immigrants.” Read here.
Just an FYI: Trump’s call to dramatically expand the travel ban, explained (Nicole Narea, Vox): Politico recently reported that President Donald Trump is considering expanding the travel ban to citizens of seven additional countries — Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. Learn about the existing ban, how it works and what we know about the countries under consideration. Read here.
+1
One sorta unrelated story on my mind
Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature (Myriam Gurba, Tropics of Meta): Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for one scathing takedown. Chicana writer Myriam Gurba did not hold back in this now-viral criticism of American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins’ heavily promoted new novel about Mexican-American immigration—a book Latinx authors, poets and lit critics have called a “harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama.” The mayhem has also raised questions about who’s allowed to tell whose story, re-upping the popular hashtag #OwnVoices. Cummins identified herself as white just four years ago. Read Gurba’s takedown here. | ➕Also read: This commentary from LA Times journo Esmeralda Bermudez and this list of 17 books on the border to read instead of American Dirt (Texas Observer).
Bookshelf
Books and collections I’m currently reading (plus reader-recommended works!)
Re-reading before watching the blockbuster film: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It’s been more than a decade since I devoured this book, so why not? If you’ve never read Alcott’s 1860s novel, the story follows the lives of four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy who live in Concord, Mass., during and after the Civil War. “Depending on whom you ask (and when), it is a girls’ coming-of-age narrative, a New England family saga, a war story, a love story, a heartwarming Christmas tale, or a feminist text about women’s choices (or lack thereof),” according to the New York Times. Check out the Audible version narrated by Laura Dern and cast.
Four book recs from the Washington Post on finding happiness the un-American way: The Book of Ichigo Ichie by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles; The Little Book of Fika by Lynda Balslev; Cosy: The British Art of Comfort by Laura Weir and The Power of Nunchi by Euny Hong. | Read about the picks here.
Reader rec from Safurah Bharwani: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, her debut novel. This literary fiction work follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Lahiri does what she does best: she expands on the immigrant experience with “her deft touch for the perfect detail—the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase—that opens whole worlds of emotion.” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Remember, we always have tons of wonderful stories and resources available at foreignbodies.net.
Love to see it
Shout-outs, thank-yous and more
Congrats to reader Naina Rao on the new gig! Yay for more womxn of color in journalism.
Just <3 when readers fall a little in love with a story we share. Terrell Johnson (the legend behind The Half Marathoner) and Nisha Mody, we couldn’t agree more about these picks. Read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s phenomenal essay, “Every Moment With My Son Is an Act of Creation” and don’t miss this Bitch Media conversation between writers Alexander Chee and Porochista Khakpour.
Lol @ this #relatable tweet from journalist Sulome Anderson:
Katie Hawkins-Gaar of My Sweet Dumb Brain recently asked her readers for their best habit-building strategies. I loved all of the tips—from “sleep game-changers” to unstructured “alone” time and booze-free joy-sparkers. I especially loved the shout-out! My recommendation: this undated 13-week Best Self SELF journal, which has been the only “agenda” I’ve ever stuck with consecutively for more than a month. As I told Katie, it doesn't feel task-heavy or intimidating; it emphasizes gratitude and reflection over accomplishment; promotes learning from the days we fall behind and, best of all, it normalizes the fact that we're all going to have those days. (Admittedly, what I don’t care for: the quotes. They just don’t do much for me!)
I had an extra copy of Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book to give away, so I asked subscribers to send along their best jokes. Congrats to Nikhil P. of Atlanta for winning! Here’s his contribution in all its corny glory:
We are all Mr. Fox.
And a shout-out to Sophie Vershbow for this gem.
That’s it for now.
Did you absolutely hate this? Open to criticism and suggestions. See ya later!
Love,
Fiza