Since 2018, Restless Books has partnered with the New York Public Library and other public libraries to offer three-session workshops for immigrant writers. Hundreds of participants from around the world have joined in person and via Zoom. They engage with immigrant literature from around published by Restless and produce short pieces—fiction, memoir, poetry—that are workshopped among all the participants. A few have been published in magazines, anthologies, and other places. These are the first two of eight selected pieces by participants, in alphabetical order. Editing was done by students in the course “The ABCs of Publishing” at Amherst College: Sophia Grace Ewing, Deontavious Harris, Ella Peterson, Caroline Seitz, Kalidas Shanti, Camilo Toruño, Colin Weinstein, and Augusta Weiss.
—Ilan Stavans
Chissà se va
by Alessandro Casiraghi
January 7, 2021
Hi Mom, hi Dad,
How strange it is to write you a letter. Since I moved to the other side of the ocean and the pandemic broke out, not a day goes by that we don't hear from each other. We have built our ritual. First I tell you the latest news from this America on the brink of fascism. Then you list the acquaintances who have been infected, in order of proximity—from the farthest to the closest—chronicling the approach of the invisible enemy. We call each other, we exchange messages, we make video calls. We hear each other so often and in so many ways that it would seem absurd to add another one. Yet at this moment, a letter seems to me the only way to really talk to you.
Since I confessed to you that I am lesbian, our conversations have been filled with silences. Out of fear, out of modesty, out of tiredness. We tried harder to omit words than to find new ones to explain ourselves. We let the regret fill the spaces and the emotions were postponed. It has been a long time since I wanted to talk to you. Now the desire has become an urgency.
In March, Trump closed flights with Europe and I can't take a flight back to Italy.
On the contrary, in the world we lived in before, planes traveled fast. We couldn't wait to have time for a trip. Moving away from home was allowed and it was an adventure. It seems like a century ago. In the world we lived in, it seemed strange to me to take the time to stop, look each other in the eye, and speak openly. Everything told me it wasn't important to do it. Everything else always came first. I had to walk, grow, run, study, take the bus, work, earn, shop, cook, save, set aside something for the future. And I was not the only one, there were many who were busy not having time.
But now the world has pulled the handbrake. Even the Bronx, the neighborhood I live in, has stopped. They say it has never been so quiet. The buildings—these mountains of life and lights—no longer speak. Even the streets have nothing more to say to each other. The only noise you hear is that of the 1 Train (empty), which emerges from the bowels of New York City at 191st Street. The cars run on long iron bridges until they pass a few hundred meters from my apartment. In the silence, its sound seems like a rushing gust of wind, until a hissing announces the braking of the wheels on the rails.
These days the subway reminds me of the little train of the Andes. The one we had taken in Peru on the journey from Cuzco to Machu Picchu. I was nine, and that spring you decided to take me on a trip with you. The train crossed the uninhabited mountains. The noisy carriages broke the silence of the valleys. Like a knife, the train ripped through the living flesh of the mountains. And all around there was nothing to take your breath away.
You and dad have always loved traveling, it has always been your status symbol. Others in our village might have spent the money to build a beautiful villa or buy the latest model of car. But you had decided that traveling was the passion that distinguished you from others. You wanted to see with your own eyes what was in the world and tell it. Also—why not—to make friends a little envious. Once we got home, we spent hours projecting the slides onto a white sheet. The images paraded one after the other, and you, enthusiastic, were ready to rattle off every detail of that different culture, but not for that distant.
That in Peru was my first trip outside of Europe, beyond the ocean. I remember that when we traveled by bus at night, I kept staring at the Cruz del Sur, the cross-shaped constellation, from the window. The tour guide explained to me that one of the stars that made it up was the polar star of the southern hemisphere and, in ancient times, indigenous Americans used it as a reference point for traveling. You couldn't see it from Italy. We literally had to go to the other side of the world to find it.
I was so excited by that discovery that when we got home I started reading astronomy books. In the evening I took on the task of closing the shutters to have the opportunity, at each window, to stare at the sky for a few seconds. Then I would go out into the garden to guess the names of the constellations. Even on winter nights I was out in the cold with my nose up, until the Christmas you gave me the telescope, to be able to continue looking at the craters of the Moon even from the bedroom window.
I was amazed by those astronomical distances that accumulated zeros. The sun was thousands of thousands of thousands of miles away—147 million kilometers, to be exact. We had only traveled 10,152 to go to Peru, and it already seemed like a distance in space. Those infinite distances attacked my narrowness and raised infinite questions in my mind. I wondered why people were struggling to achieve this or accumulate that if it was enough to raise your head to understand how small we were.
It was enough for me to see the Earth from another perspective to understand that there was a universe to discover. Since that trip I have never stopped asking myself questions. Since that trip I have never stopped settling for answers. Even now that I can't move from home, I continue to travel. I travel when I close my eyes, I accompany my thoughts out of my head, and I try to find the faces and landscapes hidden behind the darkness of the eyes.
Curiosity has led me away from you. It took me to the New World, on the other side of the ocean, on the other side of my life. In the city where the world gathers. Where some arrive to get rich, others to improve themselves, still others to find themselves. I came to live as a foreigner, in this country that seems to be without memory, inhabited by men and women who struggle to remember their origins.
I realized that it is difficult to call a new land “home.” It requires patience. Don't be in a hurry. In order to feel less distant, I tried to invent some tricks. For example, for some time I have decided to go shopping in the same bodega, in the hope that the cashier will tell me something more than usual "How are you today?" And one day it worked! I was placing the fruit I had chosen on the counter. When she picked up the lucuma to weigh it, she looked at me with a smile and told me it was her favorite fruit. I confessed to her that I was crazy about that caramel flavor that it left in my mouth. I told her that I had tasted it for the first time on our trip to Peru. She told me that she came from Peru, she was born there, in a small village near the Titicaca Lake. There she spent her childhood, and then she moved to America to look for fortune. Her smile wasn't just courtesy anymore. It had become an invitation to enter her world, her home. To feel at home, we have to leave the front door open.
Sometimes I wonder if it was right to leave. The buildings in New York are frightening, they intimidate me with their majesty. When I walk on the street, no one recognizes me or stops to greet me as was the case in our country. And now, when people get scared if you sneeze, feeling less alone has become even more difficult.
And then, looking back at history it seems to me that every time someone moves it creates a disaster. Take Christopher Columbus, for example: he wanted to get to the other side of the world and exterminated entire populations, bringing violence and disease. Or the phylloxera, the parasite of the vine that was imported from America in the nineteenth century and destroyed all European vines. Whenever living things move, epidemics try to stop them.
But I can't stop, it’s stronger than me. I began to feel compassion rather than anger towards those who stop and who would like everyone to stop. They are the ones who say “They'd better stay at home.” The Americans say it about the Mexicans. The Italians say it about Africans. I feel sorry for them, because they have not yet seen what is on the other side of the world.
Here, with this letter I needed to tell you that I will never stop.
Even if you have never told me clearly, I know that you would have wanted me to stop, to take root. You would have desired for me a family, with many children, a job in the office with a permanent contract, a private villa with a garden and a garage next to yours. But what I felt—and what I feel—is different from what you expected. And if I can't stop, it's also thanks to the world that you introduced me to through travel. It is also thanks to the universe that you made me glimpse through the telescope.
I'm sorry if I have disappointed your expectations, sometimes even hurting you. And I'm sorry if I never managed to explain to you that there was nothing wrong with not following them. But I didn't succeed before, because I myself have only understood it now.
I remember that my grandmother, when I was little, used to sing a song by Raffaella Carrà to get me to sleep. It is called Chissà se va. In the text the Carrà sings like this:
Life is so beautiful but
if there is no courage
it is not tasty
without a bit of trouble
better a tumble
than never try
you can't stand still
I throw myself into the fray
follow me a little
Ever since my grandmother left and I was unable to say goodbye, I often think of her. I see myself in her arms as she sings these words to me. She tells me to try. She confesses that it is not possible to remain still. She advises me to have courage. I want to keep letting me lull from her.
The day will come when we can talk to each other by looking into each other's eyes and touching our skins again. But I couldn't wait to thank you for letting me have the freedom to never settle.
Elisa
Alessandro Casiraghi (Verrès, Italy) lives in The Bronx, New York. He has a degree in International Relations from Università Cattolica in Milan. He is business developer of an ecological landscaping business, and blogger.
Oxygen
by Michelle Ding
Inhaling and exhaling. Lynn was flying. Lynn was flying to the moon.
In the unlimited dark without oxygen, Lynn closed her eyes and enjoyed her body floating up. “Let me play among the stars, let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.… In other words, hold my hand.” She explored outer space by herself and freed her right hand to reach out to the light over there.
“HONEY!” A voice stopped it. “You know…I…” After a sigh, “I really can’t think in such a noisy environment!” Her husband couldn’t stand it and protested. “Can you play it later?”
Again, even though Lynn played the alto saxophone at a pretty low volume in the most distant room, she still intruded into his working “territory.” Unlike electric keyboards, there were no headphones for the wind instrument that could pass the sound only to her ears rather than the space they shared.
Normally, Lynn would give in and close the sax box, but not this time.
In the backyard, Lynn sat with this golden woodwind instrument—the alto sax, accompanying her youth, traveled across the ocean to comfort her present. Then, under the blue sky, she played. Empowered by a breeze, taking a deep breath, Lynn instilled oxygen into the vertical conical tube just like water rushed into a water tube slide, set various barriers with her quick fingers, and heard notes bumping as well as leaping to express moods! Jazz never failed to fly her soul to not only the moon but the distant place she missed. Losing track of time and place, Lynn swung with her golden therapist from afternoon to evening until the man’s admiring smile showed up. “What a solo concert here!” Daniel praised his wife, to her surprise!
***
The air between this couple three months ago didn’t flow as smoothly as it did now. Here, the new country and language shrank Lynn from a thirty-year-old, capable woman to a wobbly toddler struggling to walk and speak. The covid-19 pandemic, rising casualties, and sad news consistently made her anxious! Not yet adapted to the clash between dreams and reality, Lynn didn’t know how to protect her loved one and herself in this unfamiliar land! Therefore, reheating and disinfecting, focusing on him, and all day reminding him of hand-washing as well as wearing doubled or tripled masks when going out became her lifebuoys, but his layer upon layer of stress. The relationship, as a patient almost suffocating, no doubt, was sent to the ICU.
“PA! PA! I’ve heard it THOUSAND times!” He broke out. “You fear EVERYTHING! How can you live here like that?”
Her husband Daniel, famous for being peaceful and having bright smiles with double eyelids up in a light-hearted angle, was furious now. The roar was surging as fast as a hundred-mile-an-hour tornado into the tiny door gap of the bathroom where Lynn was hiding as well as her ears. It was the first time she got frightened by a person she knew like the back of her hand becoming suddenly new. It was a decade from the very first time they met.
“Already half a year, how long will I have to bear it?”
What did he mean? The virus, or me?
The severe thunderstorm came and went. Since then, cooking and doing house chores were as usual. Reminding was as usual, but no more nags and emotions. Lynn carefully kept the right distance. For a smart guy like her husband, sensing nothing about his wife’s change was out of the question, so Daniel chose to avoid or react in a stiff friendliness. In the small house surrounded by her favorite roses and his favorite irises, love was still there, except the two persons were trying hard not to hit a nerve. What did I do wrong? Why did I put all my heart and effort in to make you happy but made you mad? Lynn was frustrated. Didn’t we hold on together a lot of tough times before moving to this Land of the Free? Why couldn’t the fairy tale last longer? She didn’t get it! When will the weather clear? The couple got more space to breathe, true, but only in cold air.
He was still the one who had been tied up with work; she was the one getting lost.
***
English was Lynn’s exit. Without huddling together on the sofa, betting on the Red Sox or Yankees, words and sentences had been turned into close mates with time. The peace grew in her as she read news, poems, and stories while sitting on the wooden chair in the corner. Also, the pandemic opened up plentiful online resources and the immense virtual world for curing the healthy-bodies-weak-souls disease. The alto sax, lying on the deep side of the shelf, one day, was taken and wiped. Lynn sweated as she groped for the correct keys. Finding the place, she played the first note. The second note came, followed by the third and the fourth… and later on became a beautiful song.
Where was Daniel then? He disliked noises for sure, but more walking around, drinking water, and questions about the little wife’s new likings revealed his intention to stay nearby.
Here, when the prince and princess appeared to reconcile, it could be the same old story but for a twist—the princess seemed different.
A couple of times, not until some noticeable sounds arose was Lynn aware of Daniel’s approaching. Those activities and explorations in literature and music taking her attention were the pastimes and the nourishment to her inner strength. She wasn’t aware even—in the place away from her hometown, in the process of detachment from things—she was becoming a new person.
Was Daniel happy? The yes must have been for the returning of productivity in work and the off-work quiet. “Maybe I am happier alone!” But he’s really not. Day by day, the noise, being depended on, his heavily-dependent wife, and the intimate world with her became more and more special.
That solo concert complicated it moreover! The magic in her music and her confidence brightened the dull afternoon in the backyard and fascinated him. He floated in outer-space with her for a moment. “What makes her different?” The farther Lynn was, the closer Daniel tried to be. Like a young boy playing hide-and-seek with a young girl, he was eager to solve the puzzle of this ancient mysterious curiosity.
***
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness. Let the winds of the heavens dance between you.” Touching words on the page, Lynn felt the great Kahlil Gibran was like a caring elder talking to her.
“Dear Lynn, you and the one you care about are like the earth and the sun. The beautiful sun that you see rise and fall each day comes from the earth revolving around the sun and its rotation. Getting too close or too far causes only chaos, so don’t stop each other’s turning! Keep this amazing balance, the two persons can breathe and dance with each other. It could be the class of a lifetime, and your first day is just starting now.”
That’s why she was running now! Focusing on inhaling and exhaling; landing her feet on the ground, Lynn was jogging around the residential area alone! Extended pavement freed her imprisoned body and soul, and the sunlight recharged her power. Opening her arms, she shouted: “F–R–E–E–D–O–M!” I miss you so much!
"NOT SAFE!" A sudden cellphone ring intruded into her jogging “territory” the next day. Daniel said it pantingly. “Let’s jog together! STAY there—I’m COMING! WHAT THE…” Lynn burst out laughing! One was good, but two were not bad. Slowing her pace, she sat on the chair and enjoyed the street scene with various houses, tall and short, as well as shops lined in good order.
While warm golden afterglow bathed the Sunset District, a chubby man, having bright smiles with double eyelids up in a light-hearted angle, was running toward the sitting petite woman ahead… and another beautiful sunset of their own.
Michelle Ding lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and loves logic and art, pursuing the balance of rationality and sensibility.