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 international immigrant literature 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 third and fourth 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
800 Saturdays
by Ralph Goldstein
8:30 on a Saturday morning. An empty classroom on the campus of a state university in Southern California. First week of the quarter. I enter and await the arrival of twenty-one students to start the class sharply at 9:10. They had previously attempted but failed to pass the Writing Proficiency Exam, a ninety-minute high stakes test required for a degree or credential. Over the next ten weeks they would strive to create a portfolio containing two revised essays and a final timed writing in lieu of taking the WPE again. There would be a mix of undergrads and grad students, a range of ages, and a blend of maybe a dozen different first languages. One or two students might come to class after working a night shift. Everyone would be motivated, knowing that if they failed here, the university would block their future registration.
My qualifications were relatively scant, holding just an M.A. in English, earned in part from a thesis I wrote on the work of an immigrant writer, Anzia Yezierska. A few years before, unsolicited, a professor handed me Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers which he considered assigning in an upcoming ethnic literature seminar. Why me, I wondered. What led the gentile professor to ask the assumedly Jewish student for an opinion? I didn’t inquire but proceeded to read the ghetto-set novel written more than sixty years before, finding it fluent, immediate, and compelling. Going on to read every novel, story, and essay she published and, through the courtesy of her daughter who lived nearby, her unpublished stories, I was captivated by Yezierska’s determination to make this country her own on her own terms. She came to America at age thirteen without a word of English and defied a future of factory work, teaching or nursing. Instead, she forged her life as a writer at all costs, including her eventual abandonment of her husband and daughter, and toward the end of her life recognized her commonality with newly arriving immigrants.
Later, that same professor became director of the Writing Program. Nobody wanted to give up part of their weekend to teach the Saturday section, so initially as a favor to him, I took it and happily held it for the next twenty-three years until retiring. It meant missing some of my kids’ sports events, but they built their teamwork skills and self-esteem with one less parent on the sidelines.
Most of these students were immigrants, the children of immigrants, or international students on visas. What they all had in common was a belief that their education would lead to meaningful work, financial security, and personal fulfillment. High stakes, indeed. Their aspirations were unlike Yezierska’s artistic ones, but like her they had an urgent sense of purpose. My challenge was to channel it by reading and listening supportively. What was in it for me, besides a paycheck? The satisfaction of being a cultural conduit in the midst of a major immigrant wave, and feeling useful, what Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Yezierska’s American spiritual guides, said is more important than pursuing happiness. Over the years I’d worked menial, clerical, and managerial jobs. I’m related to accountants, actors, chemists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, musicians, real estate investors and other businesspeople, who never told me directly but may have thought I’d missed life’s better opportunities. I haven’t. This class in a relatively short span of time, bolstered language facility, a most precious human gift, in students who sought it most.
On day one, each student interviewed a classmate about that person’s past, present, and hopes for the future. A young man from the Middle East once told me he’d never before spoken in a classroom with a female student. As students were naturally curious about each other, their talk filled the room. When it subsided and the class was about half over, I gave guidance on composing a short introduction of the classmate interviewed. Thus began a sense of community that deepened with a couple of peer response activities later in the term.
Over the next few Saturdays while students were drafting in class, I pulled out individuals one at a time to briefly review their previous week’s efforts and help them plan a revision. First drafts commonly lacked supporting details, so without fussing for the moment over grammar, we concentrated on finding a sharper thematic focus and ways to elaborate going forward. Their second drafts would have some lingering surface errors, but they would be closer to meeting the ultimate objective that essays be thoughtful, well organized, and fully developed. Individual conferences lengthened in the closing weeks as students readied the final drafts of their three- to five-page essays for portfolio evaluation by two other instructors in the program. Leaving campus in late afternoon, I could be tired, but it was a “good tired,” looking forward to a Saturday night dinner with the family and maybe a hike in the mountains or a trip to a museum on Sunday.
One of the more popular essay topics centered on how the work students might do after graduation would make the world better. I read essays about their interest in solar energy and hydrogen-fueled cars, “smart” technology and water purification, business management and parenting skills. Some of these major-related essays bored the portfolio readers, but I insisted that students be conversant in their chosen field. Better received were memoirs about family origins and the places they knew. By the time I retired in 2017, I had taught students from over fifty countries, from every continent except Antarctica (yes, there was one student from Australia). These essays recollecting life in various corners of the earth, most of them upbeat and proud but others grim, led me to tease my wife that I needn’t travel because the world had come to my classroom.
The world’s conflicts didn’t play out as some may have imagined. A student from Taiwan worked harmoniously beside one from the mainland. The lone Pakistani student got along well with his Indian counterparts, as did the one from Nepal. Students with an Islamic background trusted me. Surprises were part of what kept me devoted to those Saturdays. In an early draft of an essay on the Tehran garden her father planted, a student wrote that her mother had visited Israel. When asked why that reference was gone in the next draft, she said she worried the portfolio readers would find out she’s Jewish. “It’s ok,” I assured her, “this is America.” Whether the Israel detail stayed in I don’t recall, but what’s memorable is the way she closed the essay showing her intense, improbable love for her native country, writing that on a return trip, as the plane entered Iranian airspace and the pilot spoke to the passengers in Farsi, she shed tears of joy.
A prompt about personal change inspired in part by a reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave produced powerful responses. Among those emerging from darkness into the light were a student who had fled gang life, a Vietnam vet overcoming PTSD, and one whose home in Iraq was destroyed but who was now finishing his engineering degree. There were some essays about escaping a loveless, arranged marriage, but there was also one titled “The Happiest Day of My Life,” describing the writer’s anticipation of her wedding months hence to a man she’d never met in person. A similar essay argued for what the writer termed “rational-based marriage,” recalling how her relatively liberal parents allowed her to peek out the window at the prospective husband standing outside and say yes or no. She said yes, believing that love only develops gradually, and by the time she was ready to graduate with a master’s in Social Work they’d been married for several years and had two children.
The university finally declared the ninety-minute writing exam an impediment to graduation and let the requirement be satisfied differently. Looking back, I was lucky to have taught special groups of students at a time when Los Angeles was called the New Ellis Island, and I’m lucky now to be a one-on-one tutor in the L.A. Public Library’s adult literacy program, albeit remotely during the pandemic. To supplement the workbook and Easy English versions of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, I’ve introduced poems by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and Pablo Neruda. The learning continues, and for our next set of one-on-one sessions we’re reading Anzia Yezierska’s “America and I.”
Ralph Goldstein (USA) is retired from teaching literature and composition at the secondary and college levels in Southern California. He currently serves the Los Angeles Public Library as an adult literacy tutor.
A Cup of Coffee
by Hande Guzey
December 2020. Almost Christmas. Misra was usually alone during the holiday and had been ever since she started living abroad in December 2011. But now... Did she still feel lonely? What about other people?
Last March marked two years since she started working as a substitute teacher in L.A. She also had a new contract working with low-income students as a mathematics tutor. She took a deep breath while making her indispensable morning Turkish coffee. She poured the water that she measured with a single coffee cup into the cezve (coffee pot: the “c” in cezve is pronounced like a hard “g”) and added the ground coffee. Finally, everything was getting better, she thought while mixing her coffee slowly in one direction using a small bamboo spoon. It was worth starting from the beginning again after all the battles in London. She had lots of hopes and dreams after she moved to the U.S. Literally, she had followed her destiny leaving everything behind.
She felt a bit afraid to ruin the coffee cream, sort of like the fear she felt going to the low-income area where the school was located. If she could be patient and careful, everything would be fine, she thought. The idea of inspiring the new generation and helping them build their confidence made her excited. Still, when she remembered one of the sixteen-year-old boys in the class who asked her, “Miss, why do you teach me math? I’m a loser!”, she felt the struggle he must have been facing in his life out of school. The boy looked down in defeat. Even in Los Angeles, real life wasn't like in the movies.
Her grandmother’s slightly smiling voice whispered softly in her ears: “Be patient! Don’t lift the cezve from the fire with panic when you see the coffee cream starting to be formed.” Preparing the coffee carefully and cooking with a low fire with patience was very important. Otherwise, the natural coffee cream would disappear, making the coffee tasteless and awful.
Once, an Uber driver warned her not to walk in the area because they could easily see she was a stranger with a little luggage. She said it was full of books and stationery, and that she also knew Aikido (a Japanese martial art); she could deal with it. The Uber driver laughed at her and said, “They have guns; just don’t walk around this area.”
“Wait!” she heard her grandmother's voice again. “You will feel when it’s ready to pour into the coffee cup.” This is how Misra learned to be patient. “Don’t ruin the coffee cream with a rush!” Her grandmother’s warning was like Lao Tzu’s quote, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
While sipping her delicious frothy coffee on the sofa with a bit of a smile on her face, she thought about how lucky she was. She had the green card that lots of people were dying to have. She must have done something good in her life in the past, and this must be her reward.
Some non-English speakers, when they write their name in English, usually lose or change some letters, or they need to write it using completely different characters as Asian people do. But she didn’t. In fact, she gained a dot because her name was written with the letter “i” without the dot in her native language. Misra was the lucky one again.
It had been the right time and the right decision to move to the United States. For a moment, though, she missed the house with the wide balcony where she lived in London. Who needed a balcony under an all-gray sky? She did!
Her family house had two balconies in Istanbul. There was a small one at the front, and a wide and beautiful one facing the street at the back. She had lots of summer breakfasts, lunches, brunches and sometimes dinners on the bigger one. It was a witness to their happy afternoon-tea chitchats, and to the times they played board games such as Okay (similar to Rummikub) and backgammon with lovely neighbors and friends. For Misra, a house without a balcony was like a bride without a veil: Incomplete. Living in a house with a balcony made her feel like she was at a warm home when she was in London.
She stood up and looked through her windows. There was an ugly building behind the bars covering the windows of her studio apartment in L.A. Behind the bars. Like in a prison. “Are our homes becoming our prisons?” she thought desperately. There was no beautiful ocean view, no wild forest. No more bird songs to listen to. No balconies. Not even one.
Another sip from her coffee and she was once again lost in her memories of London.
Convincing one of her housemates to drink Turkish coffee on the balcony was funny. Her housemate refused to try it at the beginning and explained how she had thrown it out when she tried Turkish coffee in the past. Even though she was Italian, it was too strong for her. Misra had prepared the Turkish coffee in an untraditional way: with half milk and half water, along with a bit of added sugar for her. Sugar ruins the coffee’s taste, but English people love sweets, she thought. In addition to that, milk makes the coffee softer for them. Coffee was always better with friends.
She had experienced lots of obstacles at the beginning of her life in London as a foreigner. Some people were cruel to her — “Your English is not good enough to teach math!” — when she was thinking about her career plan. She had cut those negative people out of her life after a while. She remembered the time when her housemates had tried to make her move out of the lovely old British house but she hadn’t given up.
She was lucky — lucky to have beautiful friends who encouraged her, wiped her tears whenever she needed. Building a business wasn’t easy. She had fears, but she was also brave — brave to live in this world.
A notification sound brought her back to the beginning of March 2020. She had received an email that unified district schools were cancelling lessons for a while. She got another notification before she understood the previous email: “The schools are closing. Please consider applying for unemployment benefits, because we don’t know when the schools are going to open.” She had another part-time job on the weekend that they also cancelled. She felt as if she had been a bird flying in a beautiful sky among cotton clouds and was now suddenly hitting the ground.
How would she pay the rent, afford food? Luckily, she was good with budgeting, but how long could she survive with limited savings?
What about students, K–12? What were those students going to do without school, especially low income students? Some of them didn’t have a home to go to, maybe had an abusive parent. She didn’t know their exact stories, but she was told they had problems, that school was helping them to overcome their situations and build a bright future for themselves and for the country. What will happen to them, and to the country? Children are the future.
Christmas... Joy, seeing family, taking care of each other, giving and receiving gifts. It had been nine months since the pandemic started like a train wreck. New babies had been born in a “new normal” world. New normal? How many of them could go to college in the future? Would they have a happy life even if they didn’t prefer to go to college?
She remembered her housemates in London again. How was the situation in the UK?
Misra had lived with three other foreign girls. The youngest girl was Irish with light brown hair and had lived there already a year. Her room was above Misra’s. The English girl with beautiful curly red hair had moved in a week before Misra. She was down-to-earth. Flecks on her face made her look like a doll. Another one, with black hair, moved into the house a few days after Misra. Her room was next door. Misra never got along with the last one.
The Irish girl, Laura, seemed more friendly than the others. She was so young, 19 years old at that time. She told Misra that she left home because when Irish children reach adult age, their families expect them to leave and build their own life. Misra found this very interesting. Whatever job Laura did in London, she couldn't manage her life and moved to another city, Bristol. Her main reason was that Bristol was cheaper than London.
Misra’s landlord and his father were nice. She thought they were good at reading people. They were originally from another country in the Middle East, but her landlord was born in London. In one of their conversations, they mentioned to her that the families in the UK don't teach children how to manage a house. It meant that none of the girls had the discipline to live in a house with housemates. They didn't know how they could keep it clean or live with each other peacefully. Because of this, there were lots of conflicts among the girls in the house, especially about cleaning, even though the landlord provided them with a cleaner once a week. Misra hoped that they had better habits in this pandemic.
Living with someone is not easy; with three other girls from different cultures, it’s even more difficult. Misra’s English wasn’t perfect, but she always found a way to deal with any problems.
The red-headed English girl, Cassie, was the only one she could easily communicate with. She had gotten skin cancer after her holiday in Morocco. Her boyfriend looked after her. Misra was surprised none of her family members offered to let Cassie stay with them until she got better. Even her sister! They were living in another city in the south of England. One day she told Misra she had to stay at her boyfriend's house for ten days after the operation. Misra’s eyes opened wide with shock. She told her if she had a Turkish family they would never let her be alone, especially after a surgery. Misra told her whenever she needed anything, she was there to help. They hugged each other. It was a great moment after all the conflicts.
When Laura, the Irish girl, moved out, an Italian girl moved in. She was vegan. Whenever she and Misra ran into each other in the kitchen, they talked for hours. When they realized they should stop talking and continue doing other things, they laughed at themselves. Is it because of their personalities or because both of them were from Mediterranean countries? They couldn't solve that puzzle. They had great conversations on the balcony and in the kitchen. They even went out together for a cup of coffee and cake. Misra learned a lot of things about nutrition and the vegan diet from her. The Italian girl became a vegetarian after living in the same house with Misra. It was probably because she was always convincing her to try her delicious oven-baked pastries or non-vegan salads.
Christmas time, when the others went to visit their families, they were alone at home. She cooked some vegan dishes, and Misra made Turkish-style bulgur salad (kisir—hey, there are extra dots too!). Misra decorated the top of her salad with a rose made from the skin of a tomato. She tried to make it look like a rose, at least. They had a fun Christmas while "Last Christmas" by Wham! played in the background.
Misra finished the coffee, then turned the cup upside down on the saucer and allowed it to cool. Who was going to read her fortune from the coffee grounds remaining in the cup? She felt her loneliness again. A voice whispered to her, “Sometimes the universe takes you from where you are, puts you in another place, and says, ‘Continue to live from here!’”
She asked, “What’s next?”
Hande Guzey was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics. She lives and works as a substitute teacher and a mathematics tutor in Los Angeles, California.