The Other

Mosaic Community Essays I am an immigrant. My story of immigration is not a complicated nor a dramatic one. It is an easy and simple one, yet it has shaped and impacted my life for over fifty years. I grew up in Paris from 1956 to 1970. My parents were Polish Jews who both survived […]

Being an immigrant is not fun.

Mosaic Community Essays Being an immigrant is not fun. Moving from country to country is never an easy task as one uproots oneself and then replants oneself in a new society, many times with a new language and new surroundings and usually with no support system to talk of – like family and friends – […]

Growing Up as an American Jew

Mosaic Community Essays Growing up as an American Jew, Israel is absolutely a part of your consciousness. I was taught and the communities that I was a part of were taught that Israel is important for Jews around the world. That defending Israel as a nation state is important, that sort of, regardless of what […]

So I slip out the door. Unnoticed, unmissed.

Mosaic Community Essays My name is Naomi Kim, and this little piece is called, “So I slip out the door. Unnoticed, unmissed.” Why had I thought it wouldn’t matter, the fact that I had grown up in the near-absence of other Asian Americans? In my small town I was used to my otherness, but tonight, […]

Even as a child, I remember wanting to be white.

Mosaic Community Essays Even as a child, I remember wanting to be white. I didn’t have the vocabulary then but there was a sense of inferiority I associated with my Asianness. This hollowed-out feeling arose whenever my mother spoke in broken English to the store cashier, or when I ate from a Zojirushi lunch thermos […]

Dear Andrew, I know you crave assimilation.

Mosaic Community Essays Dear Andrew, I know you crave assimilation. It flies by you. It leaves a dark, muted bruise. Please look at it. Bruises may hurt, but they slowly fade away. This is how you learn. Please stop stretching your fingers out into the wind. You won’t be able to feel the radiant warmth […]

For a culture to be palatable, it may often exist as stereotypes.

Mosaic Community Essays For a culture to be palatable, it may often exist as stereotypes. For a conversation about culture to continue, it cannot remain that way. Recently, I stopped and pondered the image of my own ‘motherland’ I had constructed in America. I have built a cross-cultural identity backdropped against formidable city skylines and […]