Come On In Anthology – Thoughts and Doodles

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, 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.

I know my posting schedule has been sporadic and absent at best, but not to worry – I haven’t disappeared completely! Just…hibernating for a bit until I can cobble together some energy to finish writing posts (and socialize). My draft folder is a bit of a horror at the moment.

Note 1: This particular post is going up rather late due to Life Issues, so thank you to the Hear Our Voices team for being patient and understanding!

Note 2: Also a hearty thank you to Adobe Digital Editions for refusing to save the latter 70% of my reading notes and me for not realizing until three weeks later. I always enjoy that.

Why You Should Read (feat. hasty doodles)

• one of the best anthologies I’ve read this year. Which, admittedly, would mean more if I had read more than three anthologies in total. BUT if I compile a list of all the anthologies I’ve read in the past, say, six years, this would still rank pretty high. So there

• aesthetically charming scenes including and not limited to donkeys against sunsets, cigars in teacups
  
• a journey through multiple countries, generations, and families that you’ve never met but ring with notes of familiarity
  

• the wonderful and confounding dichotomy of families, ubiquitous regardless of culture or time. Families driving you insane. Families keeping you sane. Family being your greatest disappointment and your greatest joy. Leaving your family only to return like a rubberbanded slingshot

• not all are feel-good stories about embracing culture and family. Some seep anger and uncertainty–a non-sugarcoated look into hardship and life in the Trump administration. What next? When will it get better?
  
  
  
• Alaya Dawn Johnson having fun with words (“Bones exist not of themselves but as representations of potential, past or future. They are a being reduced to its bleached essence. But it is flesh, so briefly animated, that makes those bones dance, resplendent in gold and jade. It is hope, and then death.”) Her story was, unsurprisingly, one of my favourites

• Tío Reynaldo (Isabel Quintero’s “From Golden State”) and his eternal youth and eyes that see beyond the dark
  
  
  
• tidbit truths about immigrant life that hit you hard (“To have families in two countries is to have part of yourself missing”)
  
  
  
• the fact that, for many readers, the first Korean idiom they’ll learn is one involving butt hairs. All hail Maurene Goo
  

About the Editor

Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City, where he now lives, writes, and spills hot sauce on things. He’s the author of several YA novels including LET’S GET LOST, NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES, and NORTH OF HAPPY.