#immigrant

The gaping hole in her heart is amplified when she catches a glimpse of the strands of silver hair framing her once young face in the mirror. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#rocio #self-image #stressed #experience

Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place. ↗

— Michael Ondaatje

#experience

Will you keep this?" he asked, holding up the pendant. "Please. Don't show it to your folks. But keep it, please. I'm not asking for anything else. You're going away. God knows when I'll see you again. I can accept what you say about your feelings for me. I have to. But what harm will it do if you take this, and then at least, I'll know that something I got for you is with you. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

The dignity is in the worker, not in the job. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

I suppose I have cause you grief and misery at times, but I have never intentionally caused you embarrassment and discomfort. ↗

— Howard Fast

#the-immigrants #family

Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism. ↗

— Abraham Verghese

#consciousness #immigrants #new-york #intelligence

I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in. ↗

— Mahmoud Darwish

#immigrants #dreams

The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic. ↗

— Dominic Chianese

#background #both #comes #explosive #father

The Center for Immigration Studies found that illegal immigrants cost the United States taxpayer about $10.4 billion a year. A large part of that expense stems from the babies born each year to illegal immigrants. ↗

— Nathan Deal

#babies #billion #born #center #cost

My grandfather was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who lived in Northern Ireland and apparently when he sang in the synagogue he made everyone cry. ↗

— Jessie Ware

#cry #everyone #grandfather #immigrant #ireland