My father’s voice changes when he switches from English to Farsi mid-sentence. Not gradually. It happens at a hinge — a word he cannot find…
The Difference Between Adaptation and Assimilation
Adaptation is learning to carry your own tea glass through a new city without spilling. Assimilation is pretending you never liked tea at all. For…
The Shame of Forgetting a Word in Your First Language Mid-Sentence
I was standing in my kitchen in a city where no one calls me by my childhood nickname, trying to tell my partner how my…
The Quiet Threshold: Adaptation, Assimilation, and the Objects We Carry
The first thing I learned to adapt wasn’t my accent or my taste in food. It was the way I held a fork. In Manila,…
Adaptation Is Not Assimilation: On Keeping Your Name, Your Spices, and Your Grief
What Arrival Asks of You I landed in Toronto with a jar of berbere in my hand luggage. Not because I thought I wouldn’t find…