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Immigration

Black-and-white image of a Surinamese party in the Netherlands
Rob Mieremet / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jaguar Man
By Raoul de Jong
In this excerpt from the memoir Jaguarman, Dutch writer Raoul de Jong explores the colonization of Suriname, the immigrant experience in the Netherlands, racism, and the lionization of major Black American figures such as James Baldwin and Malcolm X…
Translated from Dutch by Jake Goldwasser
Multilingual
Picture of a bunch of green avocados, viewed from above
Photo by Hitoshi Namura on Unsplash
Swedish for Immigrants
By Judith Kiros
The song of the mosque and the song of the church are two birds falling upward at dawn.
Translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
View of the Las Vegas skyline
Photo by Britta Preusse on Unsplash
Godshow.com
By Ahmed Naji
Another “only in Vegas” site: a yacht graveyard in the middle of the desert.
Translated from Arabic by Rana Asfour
Close-up of cucumber plant hanging from a green fence
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
The Greenhouse
By Fatema Haidari
I could see her white hands and long, thin fingers among the green stems and huge leaves of the cucumber plants.
Translated from Dari by Shekiba Habib
A flowering wisteria branch
Photo by Owen Yin on Unsplash
Black and White: Three Poems
By Nisrine Mbarki
they speak different languages but will learn each other’s
Translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison
Multilingual
The Milky Way is pictured above Earth's atmospheric glow blanketing Earth's horizon
Photo by NASA, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Czech Enough
By Jaroslav Kalfař
Home is an ever-changing aspiration, not a truth or guarantee.
Nuestra Ciudad: Writing the City in Spanish
By Ulises Gonzales
Today, a young writer working in Spanish arrives in New York City to find no shortage of role models.
War of the Species
By Michel Nieva
Completely unaware that this was the kind of sacred moment when you pledge your undying allegiance to a team, through thick and thin, I stated my choice.
Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery
Statistics
By Álvaro Baquero-Pecino
On a bad night, a train car on the red line takes more than half an hour to appear, and no fewer than twenty-one minutes to traverse the eleven stations to the southern tip of Manhattan.
Translated from Spanish by Sarah Pollack
Multilingual
Spanish-language Writing in New York, Then and Now: An Interview with Esther Allen & Ulises Gonzales
By Words Without Borders
While many Latinx writers work in English, there is a longstanding tradition of writers born or raised in this country who work in Spanish.
No One Really Knows Why People Shout
By Mario Michelena
His lips are moist, as though he were stewing on more insults.
Translated from Spanish by Lindsay Griffiths & Adrián Izquierdo
The Common Good
By Sara Cordón
All she can think about is why it ever occurred to her to dress like this in public.
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Plans and Commitments
By Naief Yehya
He checked Mel’s Instagram and Twitter accounts again, waiting anxiously for her to post something, anything.
Translated from Spanish by Samantha Ortega
“A Scream That Can No Longer Be Held In”: Translating Rahma Nur’s “Linguistic Threads”
By Candice Whitney, Alta L. Price & Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
Linguistic threads. IV lines and blood cells. Oppressive silencing. There is a viscerality that emerges when sitting with Rahma Nur’s poem “Fili Linguistici.” In describing her experience as…
Linguistic Threads, translated by Alta L. Price
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.As you make headwaybetween…
Translated from Italian by Alta L. Price
MultimediaMultilingual
Linguistic Threads, translated by Candice Whitney
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In the step that you takeBetween…
Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney
MultimediaMultilingual
Linguistic Threads, translated by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In that step you takebetween…
Translated from Italian by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
MultimediaMultilingual
Afro-Italian Women in Translation: An Introduction
By Candice Whitney, Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, Aaron Robertson & Hope Campbell Gustafson
What is national literature and how is it defined? Often, when one thinks of a particular nation or language, they imagine a specific phenotype tied to a historical narrative. A cursory Google search…
An empty playground with a merry go round
Photo by Loegunn Lai on Unsplash
My Home Is Where I Am
By Igiaba Scego
Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego recalls her childhood experiences in the Italian educational system in this memoir.
Translated from Italian by Aaron Robertson
Soumaila Sacko: Story of the Good Life
By Djarah Kan
But if you drink and breathe and sweat and love in a country that is no longer yours, then you are not a migrant. You are a man.
Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney
Bambi
By Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
In your opinion, why'd he do it?
Translated from Italian by Hope Campbell Gustafson
We Cried a River of Laughter
By Marie Moïse
Writer Marie Moïse describes her search for her roots and traces her family’s history of cross-Atlantic displacement.I spent my youth seeking to recover my roots, which were severed by migration from…
Translated from Italian by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union
By Olga Breininger
I am the same sort of export as a Kalashnikov rifle or our great suicidal writers.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
Aperture: Sudanese Female Novelists Coming into Focus
By Sawad Hussain
Is there some sort of double marginalization at play?
At the Coffee Shop
By Rania Mamoun
This man must be high on something, I thought.
Translated from Arabic by Nesrin Amin
MultimediaMultilingual
Freedom of Flight
By Ann El Safi
She is a woman I have watched for many years, and for as many years she has been unaware of me.
Translated from Arabic by Nariman Youssef
MultimediaMultilingual
Al-Nar Street
By Zeinab Belail
Women are forbidden from setting foot in the swamp.
Translated from Arabic by Nesrin Amin
MultimediaMultilingual
Basma’s Dream
By Amna al-Fadl
She hovers overhead, aimless, surrendering herself to fate.
Translated from Arabic by Katherine Van de Vate
The Birth of the Spirit
By Sara Al-Jack
I didn’t go to the dorms as I had planned; my feet led me to the river.
Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Zohdi
A panel from Lebanese comic artist and musician Mazen Kerbaj's A Subjective History of Lebanon.
A panel from Mazen Kerbaj's "A Subjective History of Lebanon."
“This Catastrophe That Is Called Lebanon”: A Conversation with Mazen Kerbaj
By Words Without Borders
It's shocking to reach a place where you cannot imagine you could be still shocked by something in this country, and then you are proven wrong.
A Slice of Writing by Nikkei and Tusán Peruvian Writers
By Jennifer Shyue
Some of them have often called upon their Chinese or Japanese roots; others have alighted upon the topic only a few times, if at all.
The Park Bench
By Sandrine Kao
But it’s not surprising—with everything you hear on the news, how can anyone be expected to think well of the Chinese?
Translated from French by Jane Roffe
Tokyo Ueno Station
By Yu Miri
My reticence and my incompetence troubled me more than my appearance, but most intolerable was my unluckiness.
Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
Beyond the Circle: Minority Voices of Japan
By Sam Bett
What these authors share, as insiders to the Japanese language, is a firsthand perspective on a culture whose monoethnic self-image often excludes them by default.
From Rainbow Bird
By Shun Medoruma
Even after the credits stopped rolling and the blue government warning turned into a blizzard of static, Katsuya kept staring at the screen, a vague grin on his face.
Translated from Japanese by Sam Malissa
Salam
By Shirin Nezammafi
They were the hands of someone who had never heard of hand cream.
Translated from Japanese by Aoi Matsushima
The World at Home: US Writing in Translation
By Susan Harris
This issue is not a departure but a continuation.
I Am Not Your Cholo
By Marco Avilés
In San Marcos I could be poor and cholo and I didn’t have the pressure of hiding or explaining myself.
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
Multilingual
Bahaa and Shareef Escape to New York
By Ezzedine Fishere
They didn’t get any satisfaction from coming out.
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan Smolin
Multilingual
House Taken Over
By Yuri Herrera
The house knew how to determine what was important.
Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman
Multilingual
The Madman of Bonanjo
By Alain Mabanckou
You can hang a man from a tree, but you cannot hang History with him.
Translated from French by Helen Stevenson
Multilingual
A cup of tea with mint leaves
Photo by FIsh God on Unsplash
The Book of Disappearance
By Ibtisam Azem
We inherit memory the way we inherit the color of our eyes and skin.
Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon
MultimediaMultilingual
Seven Stories
By Osama Alomar
A strange thing began to happen in the country.
Translated from Arabic by C.J. Collins
Roadkill
By Hiromi Itō
“Roadkill’s something you get used to seeing in America”
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
A dirty black chair illuminated in a dark cell
Photo by Spencer Tamichi on Unsplash
A Slice of Darkness
By Hossein Mortezaeian Abkenar
“Why do you think they brought you here?”
Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili
After the Inferno
By Zhang Xinxin
“I’m the Girl-Homer with her eyes wide open.”
Translated from Chinese by Helen Wang
The Assassin
By Tuhin Das
Still we couldn't stop writing.
Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
MultimediaMultilingual
The Sound of Snow
By Khet Mar
While snow was striking the windowpanes, my ears could only hear the sound of screaming and crying from a distant land.
Translated from Burmese by Maung Maung Myint
Multimedia
Vi
By Kim Thuy
The realities of life in Indochina had nothing in common with those of France.
Translated from French by Sheila Fischman
Recalculating the Hexagon: The New French Literature
By Susan Harris
These writers have migrated geographically and, in some cases, linguistically.
from “The Eagle”
By Aziz Chouaki
Boulevard Barbès, Rochechouart, like a film clip, Arabs, blacks, half-whites.
Translated from French by Lulu Norman
Johnny Rotten, Ari Up, Ian Curtis, Joe Strummer
By Négar Djavadi
Because punk is made so people like you will look at people like me.
Translated from French by Tina Kover
Motherhoods
By Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
My son now despises me.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
from “Muslim: A Novel”
By Zahia Rahmani
I was the daughter of a tainted man.
Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
Hot Chocolate
By Rachid O.
I was thirteen years old, it was time to steal.
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
The Man with a Guava Tree
By Shumona Sinha
“Why? Wasn’t there a guava tree at the other guy’s place?”
Translated from French by Roland Glasser
The Bamboo Stalk
By Saud Alsanousi
“Do you know how many policemen’s numbers I have in my phone?”
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan Wright
from “Etenesh”
By Paolo Castaldi
“When we get to Tripoli, you're on your own.”
Translated from Italian by Maaza Mengiste
Dos Manzanas
By Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga
And try to imagine what we will never know for sure: what old grudge (since it did not stem from us) and what precise urgency are at the root of everything that is going to happen today
Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer
Multilingual
A Swiss Army knife
Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash
Translating to and from a Native Language
By Alexei Bayer
In this essay, Alexei Bayer writes about his first and second languages, translating into English, and being translated into his native Russian.