05/12/2026
Every journey begins before the boat, before the border, before the leaving. It begins in the place that became unsafe, or unlivable, or simply somewhere a future could no longer be imagined - or somewhere a different future called. Migration is not a single event. It is a long unfolding - a negotiation between what was carried and what must be let go, a tension between the experience held in the body and the experience required to survive.
Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander communities have crossed oceans under colonial flags and fled wars that others started. They have arrived in countries that did not want them, and yet - having navigated exclusion laws, xenophobia, occupation, and displacement across centuries - they have kept thriving.
What diaspora produces is not grief alone. It produces literature, music, ceremony, and coalition. It produces people who carry two worlds, with a complex relationship to both.
Voices of the Crossing
Ocean Vuong arrived in the United States as a refugee from Vietnam at age two, raised in Hartford, Connecticut, by a mother who could not read in any language. His debut novel...
The Korean American poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong grew up in Los Angeles as the daughter of Korean immigrants, navigating the particular invisibility the United States reserves...
Tusiata Avia is a poet and performer of Samoan and New Zealand European descent, born in Christchurch during the era of Dawn Raids, violent government sweeps targeting Pacific Islander communities...
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian American poet born in Seattle and raised across the Arab world...
READ MORE about these authors at https://bit.ly/4dfOFId.
Reflection: What has been carried across generations in your own family, spoken or unspoken, that shapes who you are today? What would it look like for your congregation to move beyond solidarity from a distance into genuine relationship and covenant with immigrant and diaspora communities?
