Diaspora Quotes Quotes

“Your dignity will never know cages and days without showering. Will never know the shame of running from a place because you weren't born disposable. If you feel threatened about living in a country full of sleek, dark, and beautiful creatures arriving on boats smiling and glowing though nobody has welcomed them, stop watching the news. Stay safe, with truths that bloom from kindness.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“my mother thinks i’m a living proof of cultural appropriation
but aren’t i a foreigner in my own country
an outsider
but only on the inside”
― Xayaat Muhummed, The Breast Mountains Of All Time Are In Hargeisa

“How do I tell them that so many words in their language rattle like cages without birds? Do you call it grief when the nest you fall from disappears into the sky with the sillage of a memory that will
never be done? That isn’t grief for us, we call that hüzün.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“I allude to birthmarks and scars when you ask where I'm from because speaking about it makes life now sound
make-believe.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“What else is loneliness but a lower smoking on a ledge near a bed that always smells of then?”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“I want to hold the truth between us but there's no currency for love in memories like ours. I want to hold the truth between us to survive love without running.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“I have forgotten the weight of carrying four names all this time here, lost I’ve been surviving with two.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“I hope I go dreaming in Arabic because love there sounds like the wind passes through every vowel. somewhere buried in my voice there is asphalt singing as brothers build rooms for one another everyone gets a duaa to float across the lake and watch disappear/this is mine.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“I have waited my entire life to come out of this. My entire life to fly away.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“In the one place everyone looks like me--has my name--i am the most foreign.”
― Kazim Ali, Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities

“I was already too afraid to say anything.

I can't even properly say my own name,”
― Kazim Ali, Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities

“On the rare occasions when Romani Gypsies meet south Asians from India or Pakistan, they are astonished to discover that they can understand many of the words these people use in their language, such as Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. There is thus a connection with eastern Europe - Romania and Hungary - but also with far-away India.”
― Yaron Matras

“Here is a secret Chang E knew, though her mother didn't.
Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew.
At a certain point, this stops being sad - but who knows if any human has ever reached that point?”
― Zen Cho, The Four Generations of Chang E