Creating Meaningful Stories: The Immigrant Experience

Making stories had more room for exploration. But having more room also means more options and chances to make mistakes, being overwhelmed with many choices and getting lost quickly in ideas that are also interesting, yet out of the goal. I think I've worked on this poem and sequence for around a week, beating myself up to actually make sense of the immigrant experience.

Me, as a immigrant as well, in a way, felt the responsibility to tell my truth the best I could. I really needed to choose an easy topic during these busy days of December. But you know me. I've decided to go for the big one, something that I initially thought would be so crystal clear considering my experience. But the more I dived in, the deeper it became.

This is a very complex and difficult topic to grasp with grace. Did I manage to do that? I'm not sure. I think what matters is that I feel I captured not only a sense of struggle (which I think is real yet too obvious) but also the loneliness we sometimes experience, even near our home.

The foreigner idea, I wanted to explore it in different symbolic ways. I even wanted to create characters from another planet, but I figured that showing people just doing their job would be sufficient to convey the context.

I keep asking myself, what is the point of all this? My answer during this process was to give a gift, a reminder for those who are alone, struggling in the nowhere. You can carve out your own place and build something that brings people together. It won’t be easy, but it’s worth it. The struggle gives it meaning. You might have great memories from the past; imagine the ones you will build in the future.

Thank you to those who stuck around during this whole year. I’ll do my best next year, always in search of something different and real. I wish you the best in the coming year.