This exceptional and powerful anthology explores the joys, heartbreaks and triumphs of immigration, with stories by critically acclaimed and bestselling YA authors who are shaped by the journeys they and their families have taken from home—and to find home.
WELCOME
From some of the most exciting bestselling and up-and-coming YA authors writing today...journey from Ecuador to New York City and Argentina to Utah...from Australia to Harlem and India to New Jersey...from Fiji, America, Mexico and more... Come On In.
With characters who face random traffic stops, TSA detention, customs anxiety, and the daunting and inspiring journey to new lands...who camp with their extended families, dance at weddings, keep diaries, teach ESL...who give up their rooms for displaced family, decide their own answer to the question “where are you from?” and so much more... Come On In illuminates fifteen of the myriad facets of the immigrant experience, from authors who have been shaped by the journeys they and their families have taken from home—and to find home.
The immigrant story is not one story.
It is a collection.
What do I leave behind and what do I take with me? I am being told to divide myself into pieces and choose which parts of me are the most important.
—Nafiza Azad
“But where are you really from?”
—Misa Sugiura
Travel bans really put a damper on festive occasions.
—Sara Farizan
I know something big is about to happen. And I can’t wait.
—Sona Charaipotra
“It’s so easy for you. You can come and go. You never have to worry.”
—Lilliam Rivera
She calls herself whatever she wants to, because she doesn’t believe in borders or other people naming her.
—Isabel Quintero
We’re leaving everything we know behind. Everyone thinks we are so lucky. Are we?
—Varsha Bajaj
Without more questions, he stamped her passport and smiled. “Come on in,” he said.
—Yamile Saied Méndez
Come On In
15 Stories About Immigration and Finding Home
Edited by Adi Alsaid
Contents
EPIGRAPH
ALL THE COLORS OF GOODBYE by Nafiza Azad
DEDICATION
STORY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE WEDDING by Sara Farizan
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WHERE I’M FROM by Misa Sugiura
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SALVATION AND THE SEA by Lilliam Rivera
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VOLVIÉNDOME by Alaya Dawn Johnson
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE TRIP by Sona Charaipotra
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE CURANDERA AND THE ALCHEMIST by Maria E. Andreu
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A BIGGER TENT by Maurene Goo
DEDICATION
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FIRST WORDS by Varsha Bajaj
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FAMILY OVER EVERYTHING by Yamile Saied Méndez
DEDICATION
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WHEN I WAS WHITE by Justine Larbalestier
DEDICATION
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FROM GOLDEN STATE by Isabel Quintero
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HARD TO SAY by Sharon Morse
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CONFESSIONS OF AN ECUADORKIAN by Zoraida Córdova
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FLEEING, LEAVING, MOVING by Adi Alsaid
STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EPIGRAPH
They came in by the dozens
Walking or crawling
Some were bright-eyed,
some were dead on their feet
And they came from Zimbabwe,
or from soviet Georgia
East Saint Louis, or from Paris,
or they lived across the street
But they came, and when they
finally made it here
It was the least that we could do
to make our welcome clear
—“Color in Your Cheeks,” the Mountain Goats
ALL THE COLORS OF GOODBYE
Nafiza Azad
DEDICATION
To Ishraaz, the brother I left behind.
I love you.
I say goodbye to the hibiscus first.
I planted them with my amma on my seventh birthday. Three red hibiscus plants, two orange, four pink, and one yellow. They have been my responsibility ever since. I water them, I count the buds and wait for them to bloom. Once they do, I tell the flowers my secrets and all the prickles in my heart.
Now I have to leave, and I don’t know who will look after them when I am gone.
This morning my abbu returned with a thick brown envelope from the post office in town. When he opened it, his eyes widened first with disbelief and then with joy. He told us we are leaving. That we are moving to another country. He said that home will be a different shape, color, and feeling from now on. Why would the idea of leaving make him so happy?
A grove of mango trees grows by the road just a little distance from our house. This grove is filled with large boulders and smaller stones that my grandfather placed between the roots of the trees. When the wind rushes through this grove, it sings a strange, mournful tune. I say goodbye to the song and to the stones.
Five months ago, there was a military coup in the capital city. The prime minister, in the midst of celebrating his first year in office with chai and cookies, was deposed, and someone called George Speight announced himself captain. The radio shot bulletins into the air. The media, international and local, went into a frenzy. Some people looted the capital city. Others augured the coming of The End. We, on the other side of the island, some three hundred kilometers from the capital city, found ourselves on a break from school. Suddenly Fiji was no longer safe.
Even though nothing has changed on our side of the island, even though there has been no violence or looting here, people insist that things are no longer the same. They talk about the government and its supposed bias toward the natives of our country. They say that it is time to leave. My father cloaks his eagerness to be away and calls it a concern for my future. My mother is silent—as she always is—in front of my father. I do not want a future if it dawns in a place I do not know, but no one listens to me.
My cousins and I, drunk on the sunshine and the sugarcane, can’t see what the trouble is. Our lives were unaffected by the coup, by the political riots, by everything outside our village—until my father brought home the brown envelope that will change everything.
My room is not very big. The bed, leaning against one wall, faces the door while the other two walls have screened and louvered windows that somehow provide no barrier to the mosquitoes.
