By Yaldaz Sadakova
Foreignish came into the world two years ago.
I’ve now spent two years of self-publishing my memoir stories about immigration.
Two years of trying to push back against those simplistic sanitized immigration narratives which have become so entrenched in popular culture.
Narratives which gloss over the emotional breakdowns, the alienation, the depression, the anxiety, the humiliation, the failures, the poverty.
Narratives which suggest that for an immigrant to succeed, all they have to do is work hard.
Narratives which downplay or dismiss the role of institutional barriers, systemic discrimination and macroeconomic factors.
Narratives like: Hamid came to Boston from Beirut with just $700 in his pocket. He lived in a squalid apartment with five other people. For two years he couldn’t find a job in his field of finance, so he worked in a shawarma restaurant. But he persevered, and now he’s a bank teller. The moral of the story: never give up!
These simplistic accounts have always felt like a slap in the face for me, especially in my pre-Foreignish days. Because here I was, working my ass off and still not getting the results I wanted.
I felt there was a need for non-fictional immigration stories which did not spare details about the painful realities of immigration—including realities like dealing with systemic barriers which cannot be overcome by individual effort alone.
No matter how persistent you are, you’ll never be able to eliminate, through your individual efforts alone, the restrictive and arbitrary rules around the H-1B visa application process for skilled immigrants in the United States.
You’ll never be able to eradicate, through your individual efforts alone, the widespread discriminatory practice in Canada where employers require applicants to have Canadian work experience and devalue non-Canadian credentials.
So, yes, I felt there was a need for more realistic immigration stories—and the stories I was most familiar with were my own. My own stories of failure, anxiety, shame, loneliness, poverty, discrimination, repeated encounters with systemic barriers.
I’ve learned a lot for the past two years of publicly sharing some of my most personal stories—and thus exposing myself to judgment, both from people who know me and from strangers.
But perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is courage.
The courage to trust the validity of my feelings, experiences and insights.
The courage to write my stories.
The courage to share my stories and stop hiding.
The courage to ignore what others think of me when I publish my writing.
For me, this is a big deal because in my pre-Foreignish days I was a deeply insecure person in many ways.
I was a minority even before I became an immigrant, so I frequently felt marginalized, invalidated, underestimated and overlooked by my environment, regardless of where in the world I happened to live. (Even today, this is still the case for the most part.)
As a perpetual outsider, I craved belonging and external approval. So, of course, when I started publishing my work and openly talking about my vulnerabilities, I was worried what other people would think of me.
In fact, that fear hasn’t disappeared completely. Here are the thoughts that sometimes go through my mind when I write and publish my stories:
What if people think I’m a narcissist? All I write about on Foreignish is myself, and I’m just an ordinary person.
What if people use my weaknesses against me? Here I am, offering publicly a detailed map of my shortcomings and vulnerabilities while most people keep their cards close to their chest.
What if people think I’m stupid, incompetent or lazy? I write about my failures a lot.
What if people think my life has been nothing but a string of failures? I don’t emphasize my successes nearly as much as my failures in my writing.
What if people feel sorry for me?
What if people think I’m a negative person who just likes to complain, a downer and a party pooper? The stories I write are depressing because they highlight immigration issues most people would rather not consider.
What if people think I’m an angry woman who doesn’t have a handle on her emotions? Many of the stories I write are dripping with anger. (Of course, while angry men are admired—“he’s so passionate!”—angry women are believed to lack self-control and rationality.)
What if people think I don’t understand the importance of overcoming anger? What if people think I don’t understand that you can’t effectively fight injustice from a place of anger and righteousness?
What if people think I’m a delusional naïve person who lives in her own little leftist world of no borders? Most of my stories denounce the injustice of borders and the inhumane immigration rules tied to them.
What if an editor (or employer) refuses to hire me because of character flaws and failures I’ve revealed in my writing? What if I’m making myself unemployable in my field? What if I’m exacerbating the power imbalance that already exists between an outsider like me and potential employers?
What if people question my writing skills or the legitimacy of my stories because I self-publish my work? If my stories were that good, shouldn’t they appear in respectable outlets which publish memoir, like Catapult or Granta?
I’ve learned not to engage with these thoughts when they appear in my mind.
Some people might think these things about me. But I remind myself that this is inevitable.
People will always judge me. Whether I publish my personal stories or not, people will judge me.
We’re hardwired to judge others. It’s how we make sense of the world.
So, at any given point, everyone is subject to some kind of negative judgment.
Given that some people will judge and misunderstand me even if I wasn’t self-publishing my memoir writing, then I might as well keep doing it, to the best of my ability, within the restrictions I have.
As Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic, “Let people have their opinions. More than that—let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else’s blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people’s judgments about you are none of your business.”
I also remind myself that people’s judgments about me are usually an expression of their own insecurities rather than an objective indictment of my character or my work.
At this point in my life, what I find scarier than others’ judgment is the prospect of regret.
I don’t ever want to regret that I didn’t do the creative writing I wanted to do, that I didn’t take the creative risks I wanted to take, that I didn’t make an effort to fulfill my writing potential—all due to fear of judgment. ♦
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