We often rattle off what is perhaps the most clich\u00e9 rapid fire without much thought: \u201cWhat\u2019s the one item you would take with you on a deserted island?\u201d Though this hypothetical prompts some good laughs, the current conversation around immigration made me wonder whether a similar, more sincere question could elicit the underbelly of human experience and leave us not only amused, but more connected. So, I asked four women, who have migrated from their homelands to the United States: \u201cWhat is the most meaningful item you brought with you?\u201d <\/p>\n
I initially thought the answers to that question would be a colorful backdrop to my own words. They would humanize my diatribe against the cruelty and coldness enveloping our conversations around migration today. <\/p>\n
However, in soliciting these responses, my words have receded into the page. In fact, you likely will not remember this intro by the time you reach the final sentence of this piece. Rather, it is my hope that you remember the purple plastic suitcase with static wheels, the protective amulets, and the necklace that broke upon love\u2019s embrace. I hope you remember that home is more than where any one of us happens to be born and that for too many movement is a privilege unto itself.<\/p>\n
Below are the stories behind the women, their items, and their lives out loud\u2026<\/p>\n
Magogodi Makhene<\/a> | Writer & KYNDRED<\/a> founder<\/p>\n Where are you from?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m from Soweto. Think Harlem old-school swag meets Brooklyn cool plus the wild rebel heart of London punk. That\u2019s Soweto. A township\u2014the South African equivalent of a Jewish ghetto or Brazilian favela or US segregated slum, ie. the hood.\u00a0<\/p>\n When did you emigrate from South Africa?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ha! Funny question that. Too long. 1999.\u00a0<\/p>\n What prompted you to migrate?<\/strong><\/p>\n Officially, Education. Looking back, A very hungry heart. A taste for wide adventure and making a life in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n What was the most sentimental item you brought with you when you migrated?<\/strong><\/p>\n Honestly, I can\u2019t recall what I packed in my bag. But I remember that bag. It was purple and plastic and had those static 90s wheels. Four small wheels. My uncle bought me that suitcase for boarding school. And it fit my whole little life, coming to America.\u00a0<\/p>\n What feelings of nostalgia does IT bring up for you? Do you associate the suitcase with a particular memory?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think nostalgia is very funny business. As are heirlooms. I came to America unwittingly\u2014I came just for a few years, to attend college. And look at me now, a grown ass woman…still here. Of course, I chose to come. I applied for a visa. I got on a plane. I hustled to make that opportunity real.\u00a0<\/p>\n But like a lot of immigrants I know, economic circumstances played a big role pushing me toward coming and then staying. So, the idea of bringing a piece of home with me did not look like the nostalgic magic heirlooms invoke. My homesickness was my heirloom. My longing to hear my language at the grocery store or taste our singular winter sun on my skin, that was the closest I got for many years to a family heirloom.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s provocative, I think, to consider the ways people bring an irrevocable part of themselves and their homelands wherever they go. I saw this a lot among African-Americans when I first arrived. Still do. A certain nose looked like a cousin\u2019s back home. A piece of jarring syntax that sounded more like someone whose Tswana tongue was forced into translating a sentence into English. And greens! Just the smell of slow-simmering greens. All these things felt like invisible heirlooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heirlooms can sound like museum pieces that belong to a certain class. But everyone came here shrouded in a story. That\u2019s my most precious heirloom.\u00a0<\/p>\n Your writing is very poetic. How has your background informed your writing style and the subjects upon which you focus?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d say my birthplace is my whole written world. Even when the characters seem far from Soweto, they are informed by all the stories I heard as a kid. My writing comes out of our oral tradition, from the African cosmos. That world of storytelling is so ancient and so poetic\u2014it doesn\u2019t really make false distinctions between prose and poetry. In that way, my black women, Tswana, Pedi, tough-gong Soweto street-smart self is very much in all the ink blotting my pages.\u00a0<\/p>\n You were born in apartheid South Africa, in Soweto. Many outside of South Africa have their own ideas about what that means, but do you have an anecdote to share that most wouldn\u2019t anticipate? A disruptor if you will?<\/strong><\/p>\n Living outside South Africa has helped me understand how little people really know or appreciate about what apartheid was and how high its cost remains. Sure, geographic and temporal distance inform this ignorance. But to be honest, so does the very much alive white supremacy that caused apartheid in the first place. Our pain isn\u2019t really real.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s rightfully vulgar to deny the Holocaust or the impact of hundreds of years of pogroms on Jewish psyche. It\u2019s crazy to not get how the savagery at Charlie Hebdo was an attack on humanity itself. But when it comes to apartheid in South Africa or the Jim Crow South, I generally find an eagerness to look away from the live tentacles of state-sanctioned terrorism and crimes against humanity. That was then. Funny thing is, nothing could be more raw and real. And the best anecdote I can give you is already in front of you.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you visit South Africa, especially Cape Town, it will smack you in the face. Why is everyone serving you black? If you visit the US, the anecdotes will shout for your attention in hairy places people like to pretend don\u2019t exist: in NYC\u2019s very segregated and unequal public schools (and take your pick, Boston, D.C., L.A., same problem), on elite college campuses that have more foreign-born black Africans and Asian minorities than indigenous students or African-Americans enrolled. I won\u2019t even mention the EU migrant crisis or the U.S. prison industrial complex.<\/p>\n What is one thing you wish more people understood about the immigrant experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n America is great. There\u2019s a reason we\u2019re here. But America is not the end all, be all. We came here from somewhere. From proud people. Some place with a rich history and culture and swagged out style. The funny sounding (to you) names we bear honor our grandmothers. Don\u2019t mock them by asking for nicknames or shortcuts. The funny food we eat is what makes dining in Queens, N.Y. a foodie\u2019s surreal-illest wet dream. Respect that. See us. Really see us for the same kind of human as you\u2014ambitious, alive, hungry, proud, hardworking and trying to get by. Trying to make this moment into something good and grand and magical. And while we\u2019re making wish lists, how dope would the U.S. be if we each fully appreciated and respected the truth, that we\u2019re all Johnny-Come-Latelys? How much would this land heal and thrive if we listened with real Respek when its indigenous folk speak?<\/p>\n Pam Nasr<\/a> | Film Director<\/p>\n Where are you from?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m Lebanese, born and raised in Dubai. My grandpa immigrated to the United Arab Emirates from Lebanon in the 60s. Dubai was still a dessert then; there was nothing there, and my family has been based there ever since. I never lived in Lebanon up until recently. At the age of 17, I went to college in the UK and I studied fashion styling and photography. After I finished college, I decided to move to Lebanon and live with my mom for the first time as my sister and I grew up with our dad after their divorce. Living in my country shaped who I am in ways that I never expected it to. And then I came to New York to go after my film career. So that\u2019s been my journey. I\u2019ve moved around a lot in my life.<\/p>\n What was that like? You know, coming home, but to a place that\u2019s receiving you for the first time in a permanent sense?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s so layered because I\u2019ve always had a tricky relationship with Lebanon since I could really feel the effects of the many years of war it endured. Growing up in a city like Dubai, where it\u2019s extremely polished and new, my environment as a kid was very safe. Lebanon on the other hand is quite the opposite, it\u2019s heavy in its history; scars fill the country\u2019s buildings, streets, and its infrastructure. I\u2019d visit Lebanon consistently throughout my childhood, two to three times a year\u2014Christmas, Easter, the summer\u2014and I always felt like I couldn\u2019t relate to my country on a personal level. You know, as a kid I was like, \u201cEveryone is just so angry!\u201d and everybody is just yelling at one another in the streets, honking. You can definitely feel the people\u2019s frustration, and I wasn\u2019t used to it. Moving to Lebanon was a very instinctual thing. It\u2019s not like I got a job there that made me stay there or somebody made me stay there. But once I got there, I knew that I was seeing Lebanon differently for the first time. I was in my early twenties and I was more aware about the world we live in, about the history of my country and the pain that my people went through, and I made it my job to dissect it in my own way and try to understand it as much as I could. I wanted to build a personal relationship with my country, for nobody but myself because I felt like I placed a lot of judgment on it. I quickly realized how strong, passionate and full of life my people are. A few months after being there, I noticed how much of me was my country. I felt like all of the things that I was complaining about, I had in me and I was running away from myself in a way. Once I decided to give my country the respect and benefit of doubt it deserves, I found a lot of comfort in who I am. It was the most beautiful shift that I have ever experienced. And it informed my creative path, it informed my personality, it informed my taste buds! I really found myself through my country.<\/p>\n Is there a specific item that you brought with you from home whenever you migrated?<\/strong><\/p>\n Always. I always bring my mom\u2019s stuff that I\u2019ve taken from her. She had these beautiful white pointy leather boots with a tiny kitten heel. I don\u2019t remeber how I discovered them at home, but I did, and she said they don\u2019t really fit her, so I was like, \u201cCool, I\u2019m taking them,\u201d even though she has an obsession with shoes, she\u2019s one big shoeaholic, she couldn\u2019t really say anything about it because she knew she\u2019d never wear them anyway. I think<\/p>\n I\u2019ve had them for about five years now. I wear them all the time and always get compliments on them. They make me feel safe. They make me feel like [my mom\u2019s] around. I think of her every single time I look at them. Every time I put them on, I feel like she\u2019s close to me. I also always make sure to pack my favorite bread called Saj, or Markouk \u2013 it\u2019s a super thin flatbread that I eat with pretty much every meal. Mom gets it fresh from our local bakery every Tuesdays and Thursdays. It\u2019s the best.<\/p>\n Did you struggle when you moved from Lebanon to New York?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. I did not. I don\u2019t know how, but I was so ready to be here. Everything was calling for me to be here, every part of my body and my mind wanted me to be here and I was ready. Before moving here though, I knew it was going to be a big change for me, another big change in my life, but I\u2019m very familiar with the effects of constantly moving around. Ever since the age of nine, my sister and I would travel at least twice a year to see my mom, so I was always felt like I lived in between two cities. It shaped how I treat my life, how I treat myself. I\u2019m very used to it. Before moving to New York, I knew that I wanted to be based here, but at the same time, I couldn\u2019t fully guarantee it, because the powers of me being based here, for however many years, are beyond my control. It comes down to paperwork and visas, which I struggled with for months; I had to apply twice because the process is so nuanced. I also say struggled because it was super long and I couldn\u2019t fly home to see my family for over a year \u2013 which I\u2019m not used to, but I\u2019m very proud to say that I just got my visa. They call it a non-immigrant visa because it\u2019s a work visa, the O-1, artist visa.<\/p>\n Is there anything that you wish more people understood about the experience of migrating and, you know, of making a home in a foreign land?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, it is something that I think about a lot, especially when I\u2019m back home and surrounded by family that haven\u2019t really left. They\u2019re still based where they grew up, many of them never left and some of them don\u2019t have the privileges that I was blessed with, to be able to fly across the world and get an education, gain experience. It\u2019s a huge privilege that I am very grateful for. I just feel so lucky to be able to inhale and grasp the world physically. I\u2019ve learned so much about myself through learning about other cultures. I feel this openness within me because I was exposed to it first-hand, but more importantly, I was curious about it and see it as my job to educate myself about other cultures. And that\u2019s something that is priceless, but at the same time it costs a lot of fucking money. So, yeah, I believe knowing more about the world and its people makes you a better person. But then again, it hurts when I look at others that are able to travel all around the world and don\u2019t have that mentality of truly learning about one another and still find it within themselves to mistreat people based on their race or their gender or their background. So, it\u2019s a very conflicting theory that I have, but it\u2019s one that I apply on myself and that I wish others would apply to themselves too.<\/p>\n