“Shab bekheir, buenas noches and good night”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 07.05.05 | 9:30 AM ET
Marsha Mehran’s family moved around so often when she was younger that her parents required her to say good night in three languages. Her essay about growing up as a citizen of the world—she was born in Iran, and subsequently lived in Argentina, Australia, Ireland and the United States—ran in the Lives section of this weekend’s New York Times magazine, and it’s a terrific look at how identity isn’t so cut and dried in the age of jet travel and globalization.
“I know that identity is a major concern for many first-generation immigrants in America, but I find that I’m not preoccupied with hyphenated labels,” she writes. “When people ask me where I am from, I say I am Persian, born in Iran. I write and dream in English, I curse in Spanish and, after a few pints of Guinness, I dance a mighty Irish jig. And when people ask me where I live, I tell them Brooklyn is my home.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
